“I’m sorry, Mrs. Patterson,” she interrupted. “It’s specifically for fathers and daughters. If we start making exceptions, it wouldn’t be fair to the other families.”
I gripped the edge of the washer.
“But my daughter has never had a father,” I said. “That’s… not something I can fix with a phone call. She’s eight. All her friends are going. Isn’t there any way—”
Connie sighed.
“Then perhaps this event isn’t appropriate for her,” she said. “There will be other school activities she can participate in.”
It was the kind of sentence that lands softly and crushes you anyway.
I thanked her because I didn’t know what else to do and hung up.
Then I slid down the laundry room wall and cried on a pile of clean towels.
Telling Sita was worse.
She came into my room that night in her pajamas, hair in two lopsided braids she’d insisted on doing herself.
“Did you call?” she asked, eyes hopeful.
I sat on the bed and pulled her into my lap.
“I did,” I said. “And… they said the dance is only for girls who have their dads to take them.”
Her face crumpled.
“Oh,” she whispered.
I’d never wanted to punch an abstract concept like “tradition” more in my life.