“Scared of what?”
He thought about it.
“Of you telling me I wasn’t your dad.”
Kaylee pulled back and looked at him. Like he’d just said something in a foreign language.
“Travis,” she said. “Who do you think taught me how to braid my own hair?”
That’s when I had to get up and go stand at the kitchen sink for a while.
The next morning was Friday.
My father called at 6:15. Which, for him, is sleeping in.
He wanted to know if the rose was in water.
He said a rose that good ought to last a week, if you cut the stem at an angle.
Travis cut the stem at an angle. He put it in a canning jar on the windowsill over the kitchen sink.
It lasted nine days.
My father said that was a record for a flower shop rose in October.
Travis never made a speech about any of it again. He’s not that kind of man.
