The second girl walked out with her mother and her stepfather.
I noticed that. Of course I noticed that.
I didn’t look at Travis. But I felt him notice it too.
The rose went to the mother. The stepfather put his arm around both of them.
The third girl had both parents and a grandmother in a wheelchair, pushed out by an uncle. The grandmother got the loudest cheer so far.
Then Mr. Halvorson looked down at his index card.
And I saw him pause. Just slightly. The same way Mrs. Larson had paused on the phone.
Then he read it.
“Number seventeen. A middle hitter and four-year letter winner. Kaylee Brandt. Escorted tonight by her grandfather, Mr. Duane Ostrem.”
A murmur went through the bleachers.
Half the people in that gym had bought milk off my father at one time or another. Or ridden the school bus with him in the seventies. Or sat on a church council with him.
