A Child's Wish

“You don’t have a problem with Ms. Foster—Meredith,” he said, in response to his daughter’s knowing glare. Meredith had been at their house the previous Thanksgiving for dinner, helping Susan with the meal. She’d granted the child the right to call her by her first name, since Kelsey had graduated from her class months before. As long as she could remember not to do it at school.

“So?” Kelsey said, sliding down in the seat as she crossed her arms over her chest. When had his precocious pal turned into a drama queen?

“She and Susan are best friends.”

“So?”

Well, he didn’t know. That was the point of this conversation. He thought. But obviously Kelsey didn’t think so. Until the past few months, they’d had no problem communicating. What had changed?

Not him. At least he didn’t think so.

“You never talk to Susan.” He tried a different approach, glancing at his watch. In fifteen minutes they were going to be late.

Good thing he was the boss. Because he was willing to miss the whole damn day if that was what it took to reach an understanding with Kelsey again.

“She never talks to me.”

This was getting more frustrating by the second.

“But you don’t wait for Meredith to talk to you.”

The child’s eloquent answer to that was a shrug.

He could make her clean her room. He could make her brush her teeth. He could make her do her homework. But he couldn’t make her share her confidences.

“What do you two talk about?” he asked, without much hope of enlightenment.

Kelsey sighed. “I’m growing up, Daddy. Girls have stuff.”

Stuff. Uh-huh. For the first time since his daughter’s birth, Mark felt completely incapable of caring for her.

“What kind of stuff?”

“You know,” she said, having a stare down with him. “Girl stuff.”

He almost choked. Did girls start that stuff at nine? He’d thought he had more time….

And then he caught the uncertainty in Kelsey’s innocent gaze. The child was out of her league.

At least they still had something in common.

“You don’t want to tell me.”

“Nope.”

“Is everything okay?”

She glanced over at him and then away. “Sure, why wouldn’t it be?”

He had no idea.

“Have you ever tried to talk to Susan about some of this ‘stuff’?”

Kelsey’s silence said far too much.

Watching her for another minute, thinking over everything he knew about child development and patterns of behavior, Mark figured it was best to cut his losses for the moment. He pulled back onto the road and drove the rest of the way to school in silence.

And the first thing he did when he arrived was phone Lucy’s mom to say that Kelsey wouldn’t be coming on Friday, after all. Then he called Susan and cancelled dinner that night. As always, she was understanding.