Part 7

Forty-five minutes later, the timer went off.

I graded both tests myself at my desk while they waited in the break room.

Caitlin got an 89.

Alexis got a 94.

I walked back in and told them they were both hired.

They’d start Monday at 6:30 in the morning, and they’d need work boots, steel toe, and I’d pay for the first pair.

Alexis hugged me so hard my back popped.

Caitlin shook my hand, very formal, the way she used to when we played office as kids, but her eyes were wet.

When I walked them out to the lot, Justin was sitting in the passenger seat of the van with his arms crossed.

Dad was standing by the driver’s door, looking at the building.

He didn’t say goodbye.

He waited for the girls, backed out of the lot very slowly, the way he drives when he’s upset, and pulled onto the highway toward Ames.

Harvey was standing in the front window with his coffee when I walked back inside.

“Well?” he said.

“Two out of three.”

He nodded.

“That’s a good day’s work.”

Caitlin and Alexis showed up that Monday at 6:20 in brand-new steel-toe boots with the price stickers still on the soles.

I put Alexis with Kirby because Kirby is the most patient man alive.

I put Caitlin with a journeyman named Roy who could estimate a job in his sleep.

By the end of the first week, Kirby came into my office, stood in the doorway for a while, and said, “The little one’s good.”

That was four words.

From Kirby, that’s a standing ovation.

Alexis really was good.

She had the same thing I had at fifteen.

She wanted to know why.

She asked Kirby so many questions he started writing the answers on a notepad before she could ask them.

Caitlin didn’t love the fieldwork, but she was fast with numbers.

By the third week, she’d caught a material cost somebody had entered wrong on one of our bids, a mistake worth about $11,000.

I told her if she kept that up, she’d be in the estimator’s chair sooner than she thought.

I asked once how things were at home.

Alexis said, “Quiet.”

Caitlin said, “He’s been reading a lot.”

In my family, that means somebody is sulking.

Two weeks after they started, Mom came to the shop.

She came on a Wednesday afternoon.

Arla called back to my office and said, “There’s a lady here to see you. She brought muffins. I’m keeping one.”

It was Mom, in her library cardigan, with a plate of blueberry muffins and a shoebox under her arm.

She hugged me for a long time and said, “You got so tall.”

Which isn’t true.

I’ve been the same height since I was seventeen.

I didn’t correct her.

In my office, she opened the shoebox.

Every card I’d ever sent her, in order, with rubber bands around each year.

And underneath, all my old report cards.

Straight A’s, every year, except one B in eighth-grade Spanish.

“I kept them in my locker at the library,” she said. “Your father never knew.”

I didn’t know what to say.

So I said the thing I’d been wondering since the Monday the applications came in.

“Mom, how did they find this place?”

She didn’t even pretend.

She just smiled a little and folded her hands in her lap.

“I printed out your job posting and left it on the kitchen table, next to the coffee maker. Your father reads everything that’s left next to the coffee maker.”

“He didn’t know it was mine?”

“Of course not. It said Hagadorn Electric. He remembered Mr. Hagadorn. He said, ‘Well, at least it’s a real business.’ And he made them all apply that night.”

I sat back in my chair.

“You set this whole thing up.”

“I left a piece of paper on the table,” she said. “Everybody else did the rest.”

Then she looked down at her hands, and her voice got quieter.

“I should have done more seven years ago. I stood in that kitchen, and I let him put your things on the porch. I’ve thought about that every single day. I don’t expect you to forgive me for it.”

“Mom,” I said, “you came to my graduation.”

She looked up.

“Top row,” I said. “Library cardigan. You waved with both hands.”

She started crying then, and so did I, a little.

Arla knocked, took one look at us, set two coffees on the filing cabinet, and backed out.

Before she left, she told me that after that Thursday, she’d finally told Dad about the cards.

He asked to read them.

She told him no.

They were hers.

“First time in thirty-two years of marriage I ever told your father no,” she said, buttoning her cardigan at the door. “It felt wonderful. I may do it again.”