A Child's Wish

“Yep.”

“Well, I knew it wasn’t serious,” Evelyn said brusquely. Then she added, “I love you, Meri.”

“I love you, too, Mom.”

“Be safe.”

“You, too.”

Meredith clicked the phone shut and took a long swig of soda. She was tired and the day had hardly begun.

“SUSAN INVITED US over to her house for dinner tonight. You want to go?” Mark had been working up to the question most of the morning and now they were almost at school.

His daughter, ponytail centered on her head after a third try, turned away. “No.”

He could barely hear the words aimed at the passenger window, but her slumped posture said enough and his mood slipped a notch.

“How come? She’s going to make chicken alfredo. You loved her alfredo, remember?”

“I just don’t wanna.”

“But Monday night’s our night to have dinner with Susan.”

“It’s your night, not mine,” Kelsey said. “I never said I wanted to.”

This was going from bad to worse.

“Talk to me, Kelse,” Mark said, taking the long way to school. “Why don’t you like Susan? Do you resent the time I spend with her?”

“No.”

“Then what? Is it that she’s not your mom?”

“No!” The derision in the child’s tone put that one to rest.

Mark pulled onto the shoulder of the country road he’d chosen, put the car in Park. “Then what?”

His question garnered no response. Not even a shake of the head. But he had plenty of time to analyze the perfection of the ponytail his daughter was showing him.

“Why don’t you like her?” he asked again. He couldn’t deal with what he didn’t know.

“I do like her.”

Really? “Then why are you so quiet around her?”

The hardness in the eyes that turned to face him shocked Mark. He’d had no idea his daughter was capable of such strong negative emotion. “She treats me like I’m an alien from Mars.”

“No, she doesn’t,” he said, and then wished he’d bitten his tongue instead. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to discount your feelings.”

Kelsey showed no reaction other than to stare out the windshield at blacktop, gravel and emptiness.

“Susan’s not very good with kids,” Mark said. “But only because she’s never been around them and not because she doesn’t like them. She never had a chance to be a kid herself. But she likes you, Kelse. She wants to get to know you, to be your friend.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

Don’t argue perspective, his schooling taught him. It was a lose-lose approach. “Why do you think that?”

“I dunno.” Hard not to argue, when the opposing side gave illogical answers.