Each day I wondered if the girl would be there the next. She carried her stuffed backpack whenever she left and rarely came home when promised. She slept huge swaths of the day, raided the pantry—dry cereal shaken into her mouth, fingers dragged through peanut butter and jam—then slipped out in the late afternoon.
She reminded me of Henry, a scruffy terrier I adopted in my twenties, an alert-faced mutt who’d likely been on the run for some time. Whenever he entered a room, his eyes shot to windows and doors. He studied furniture he might climb should he need a high escape. He ran away with some regularity, but I always managed to find him and return him home. Until I didn’t. Until I never saw him again.
And what would it matter if this girl left and never returned? Why did I feel a loss each time she was gone yet declined Peter’s requests to stop by? I suspect I wasn’t ready to have Peter know about the girl, was worried he’d think she belonged elsewhere, because I harbored the same thought. But there was more to it than that, something the girl and I had in common that Peter and I did not. She and I shared an ignorance of each other. That is what I missed when she went out, the relief of another’s presence without the false notion that I was known.
IN THOSE FIRST DAYS, we focused on the basics: plans for her return to school, the purchase of clothing and supplies. I instituted two household rules, the need to appear for dinner and to let me know where she was. She seemed confused by these simple courtesies. “You do know I’m sixteen. I haven’t had to ‘check in’ since I was ten.” When I assured her that nevertheless it was a requirement of the house, she shrugged and muttered under her breath, “Now, that’s just plain weird,” then to me as if she hadn’t already spoken, “Sounds reasonable enough.”
Providing appropriate attire proved challenging. My inclination toward simple, functional clothes was more than a matter of preference; it was a statement of belief. We are all equal, and clothing should never suggest otherwise. Daniel had been easy. He lived in jeans and tees, a flannel shirt or two. Plain clothes suited him.
I was not so dimwitted as to think it would be the same for a girl. Still, I saw only virtue in my suggestion that she use Katherine’s things and only thoughtfulness in my offer of needles and thread for whatever alterations she chose to make. She did wear some of that clothing around the house, but she never picked up the sewing kit, and when she walked out the door, she wore only the outfit in which she’d arrived.
The fourth day, when I saw her leave once more in her stained jeans and pilled red cardigan, I understood the shame she’d feel in arriving at school wearing the discarded clothes of a middle-aged woman. It shocks me how slow I was in coming to that, but grief leaves little room for anything else.
I finally saw her as the other students would. They’d sniff poverty, a lifestyle beneath their own, and give it a wide berth. They had done that with Jonah, the skirting away. Even Daniel might have avoided him if I hadn’t urged him to keep Jonah in his group. And Evangeline had no friend like Daniel to break her path. She would be walking in alone, more than a month behind, hardly needing the additional hurdle of being embarrassed about her attire.
It was my habit to engage in a process of discernment, and I did so then. It’s nothing more, really, than sitting in stillness. Some would call it meditation, but I don’t think of it that way. When I do, my mind becomes busy with judgments about my posture or the thoughts that invariably pass through. I question if it is okay to shift position or scratch an itch. No, my process was nothing as complicated as meditation. I simply waited for the murk of my mind to settle, to reveal the answer already there.
In the end, I set up a credit at the local mercantile and sent the girl over. Though she was likely disappointed in the plain selection, she came home with a couple of long, loose tops, leggings, and a pair of soft ankle boots. She also bought a simple knit dress I suspected would make her appear an entirely different girl.
BUT I HAVE AVOIDED THE MOST IMPORTANT DETAIL of those early days. I knew that the girl was pregnant. Each morning around seven, she raced to the bathroom and slammed the door. Though she blasted the shower, it wasn’t enough to drown out the noise of her gagging and puking. After a half hour or so, she’d go back to bed, showing up in the kitchen hours later, sometimes looking fine, other times rather gray. I wanted to assist her however I could, but I was a fifty-year-old stranger and she a sixteen-year-old girl. To ask after her health, her body—how would it not feel like an intrusion?
On Wednesday, her fifth day with me, she wandered into the kitchen around ten particularly ashen. She refused the eggs I offered but, at my insistence, accepted a serving of oatmeal. I sat opposite her, reading the news. She hunched over her bowl, poking at the cereal as if it were a snake not quite dead. Her table manners struck me as inadequate, and she often failed to thank me, but I had larger concerns. I made a decision and lowered the paper. “I’m making an appointment for you with my doctor.”
Her head jerked up. “Why? I’m fine.”
“You may be fine, but you need to see a doctor.”
“Oh,” she said. She was at a loss for words, a condition rare for her. After a moment, she returned to digging at her breakfast, and I picked up the paper.
“How about this?” she said, taking a few more jabs at her food. “How about you make the appointment with an OB instead?”
Given all that has happened since, it’s hard to remember many details of those first days, but I remember that moment, because she glanced up to catch my expression, and while I can’t say what she found in mine, I was startled by hers. I expected the darting eyes of embarrassment, perhaps even shame, but I confronted a defiant chin, eyes narrowed, almost a jeer, as if she were saying, This is what you’re in for old man. You sure you’re up for this?