“Grandma,” she said. “Dad said he couldn’t.”

“I know what your dad said.”

“I don’t want you mad at him.”

That was it. That was the thing. Standing on that platform in a dress that made her look like a movie star, my daughter wasn’t thinking about herself.

She was worried about her father.

Worried that Grandma would be mad at him. Worried that he’d get in trouble. Worried that this dress would cause a fight.

Seventeen years old. And she’d already learned the thing I’d spent eleven years trying not to teach her. That her job was to keep the peace. That if she asked for something and didn’t get it, the right thing was to say it’s fine. Twice.

Darla set her purse down.

She set it on the floor beside the big upholstered chair. She stood up. She walked over to the platform. She took her granddaughter’s hand.

“I’m not mad at anybody,” she said. “I’m buying my granddaughter a dress.”

Sadie’s chin was shaking.

“Listen to me,” Darla said. “Your father is my son. I love him. I’ll love him till the day I die. Nothing you do or I do is going to change that.” She squeezed Sadie’s hand. “But that’s got nothing to do with you. You hear me? Nothing. You don’t have to protect him. That’s not your job.”

“But…”

“Your job,” Darla said, “is to stand up there and be seventeen. And look like that. And let your grandma buy you a dress.”

Sadie cried then.

Right there on the platform. In the emerald green dress. In front of the three-way mirror and Britt and the other customers and me.

Not loud. Just tears running down her face. Darla held her hand and let her cry.

I turned around and looked at a rack of shoes very hard for a minute.

It was $389.

Britt rang it up at the glass counter. She didn’t say anything about the price tags in Darla’s purse. She just found the dress in her computer and typed it in.

Three hundred and eighty-nine dollars. Plus sales tax.

Darla paid in cash, counted out slowly on the glass counter.

She took a thick envelope out of her purse. A white bank envelope from First Bank & Trust in Howard. She took out the bills one at a time. Twenties, mostly. Some tens. A few fives.

She counted them out loud. Very slowly. Laying each bill flat on the glass.

“Twenty. Forty. Sixty. Eighty. One hundred.”

I knew where that money came from.

Not a pension. Hairdressers in small towns don’t have pensions. Not savings, exactly. Darla’s savings are a coffee can in her pantry. Everybody in the family knows about the coffee can.

That money came from Friday mornings. Eleven women from the Lutheran church. Fifteen dollars a wash and set. Cash. Every week. For three years since she retired.

Darla had been saving it in that coffee can for something. She never said what.

Now I knew.

“Three hundred and eighty,” Darla said. “Three ninety. Four hundred. Four twenty.”

She pushed the stack of bills across the glass counter to Britt.

Britt counted it. She gave Darla her change. Twelve dollars and sixty-four cents.

Then Britt did something I didn’t expect. She came around the counter with the dress in a long black garment bag. She handed it to Sadie herself.

“You look beautiful in it,” she said quietly. “Have the best prom ever.”

Chapter Eight: The Post

In the parking lot she took a picture of Sadie holding the garment bag.

Right there on Phillips Avenue. In front of Boutique 605. With the big glass windows behind her and the dresses glowing in the sunlight.

“Hold it up, honey,” Darla said. “So I can see it.”

Sadie held up the garment bag. She was smiling. A little shy. Her eyes still red from crying.

Darla took the picture with her phone. She held it out at arm’s length and squinted at the screen. She took three more, just to be sure.

Then she sat behind the wheel and typed with one finger for a long time.

Sadie got in the back seat with the garment bag laid across her lap. I got in the passenger seat.

Darla didn’t start the car. She sat there with her phone in both hands, holding it close to her face because her reading glasses were in her purse and she didn’t want to dig for them. She typed with her right index finger. One letter at a time.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

She stopped. She read what she’d written. She deleted something. She typed some more.

I didn’t ask what she was writing.

I wanted to. I could see her face. It was very serious. Her lips were pressed together. Every few seconds, she’d stop and look out the windshield at Phillips Avenue, and then go back to typing.

It took her almost ten minutes.

Then she pressed something on the screen. She set the phone face down on the console.

She started the car.

She posted it before we reached the interstate.

We were on Russell Street, heading north toward I-90. Darla’s phone buzzed on the console. Then again. Then again.

“Aren’t you going to look?” I asked.

“Nope,” Darla said. “I’m driving.”

I didn’t look either. I wanted to. I had my phone in my lap. But I didn’t.

I don’t know why. I think I was afraid. Of what she’d written. Of what Rory would do when he saw it. Of what Sadie would see.

Sadie was in the back seat with her garment bag. She had her earbuds in again. She was looking out the window at the Sioux Falls skyline getting smaller behind us.

She didn’t know Darla had posted anything. She hadn’t seen her typing.

Eleven minutes later, my phone buzzed.

We were just past Hartford. On I-90. Seventy-five miles an hour, exactly. The fields flat and brown on both sides.

I looked down at my phone.

Rory.

He never calls me.

Not in eleven years, unless it’s about a weekend. Can you bring her Friday instead of Saturday. I’ve got to work, can we switch to next week. She left her charger here.

That’s it. That’s all. Eleven years of calls about weekends.

My phone kept buzzing in my hand. His name on the screen.

Sadie saw his name on my screen and went very still in the back seat.

I didn’t know she was watching. I didn’t know she’d taken her earbuds out. But I glanced in the mirror on the sun visor and saw her face.

White. Very still. Watching my phone.

Darla glanced over at me. She didn’t say anything. She kept her eyes on the road.

I answered.

He didn’t say hello.

“Jodi. Did you see what my mother just posted?”

Chapter Nine: What Darla Wrote

“No,” I said.

It was the truth. I hadn’t looked.

“Well, you’d better,” Rory said. His voice was tight. “It’s all over. Tasha’s sister already called. My boss called. Everybody in Mitchell’s seen it.”

“Rory…”

“Did you put her up to this?” he said. “Did you call her? Did you tell her about the dress?”

I didn’t answer right away.

“Yes,” I said. “I called her.”

He was quiet on the line.

“I didn’t tell her to do anything,” I said. “I told her what happened. That’s all. Plain. No opinions. She decided the rest.”

“She made me look like…” He stopped. “She made me look like the worst father in South Dakota.”

I put the phone on speaker.

I don’t know why I did it. I think because Sadie was watching. I think because she’d always put him on speaker so I could hear. And it was her turn.

“Rory,” I said. “You’re on speaker. Your mom’s driving. Sadie’s in the back seat.”

Silence.

Total silence on the line. I could hear him breathing. I could hear a TV in the background.

Then Darla reached over. She took the phone out of my hand. She held it up in front of her mouth, with her other hand still on the steering wheel at ten o’clock.

“Rory,” she said. “It’s your mother.”

“Mom.” His voice was different now. Smaller. “Mom, why would you do that? Why would you post that?”

“Did you read it?” Darla said.

“Yes, I read it.”

“All of it?”

“Yes.”

“Then read it to your daughter,” Darla said. “Right now. Out loud. She’s sitting right here. She hasn’t seen it.”

There was a long silence.

“Mom…”

“Read it, Rory.”

Another silence. The interstate hummed under the tires. Sadie was holding the garment bag against her chest with both arms.

Then, very slowly, Rory started to read.

“My granddaughter Sadie,” he read. His voice was quiet. “Seventeen years old. Senior at McCook Central. Volleyball. Honor roll. Works twenty hours a week at the Casey’s in Salem and gives half her paycheck to her mom for groceries.”

He stopped. He cleared his throat.

“Keep going,” Darla said.

“This week,” Rory read, “she needed a prom dress. She asked one person for help. That person said he couldn’t. She said it was fine. Twice.”

His voice cracked on twice.

“So today, Grandma drove her to Sioux Falls. She tried on six dresses and checked every price tag before she looked in the mirror. On the seventh one, I tore the tags off. She looked like her great-grandma Ingrid. She looked like herself.”

Silence.

“Keep going, Rory.”

“Fifty-one years ago,” Rory read, very slowly, “I didn’t go to my own prom. My dad said he couldn’t swing a dress that year. I stayed home and said it was fine.”

He stopped. I heard him breathe.

“I’ve never told anybody that,” Darla said quietly. “Not even you.”

“I said it was fine twice,” Rory read. His voice was shaking now. “I’ve been saying it was fine for fifty-one years.”

“Finish it,” Darla said.

 

Click here to continue reading PART 5: My Daughter’s Father Said He Couldn’t Afford Her Prom Dress, but That Same Night He Bought His Stepdaughter a $600 Gown