“We are going to a diner that serves pie for dessert,” I announced to get her excited.
We went to a local place with vinyl booths and the smell of coffee and fried food.
Daisy ordered a grilled cheese and a chocolate milkshake with extra whipped cream.
The waitress asked if she had a good grandpa, and Daisy replied that I was okay while looking at me with a smirk.
“I heard your teacher emailed me about the school play where you were the narrator,” I said during lunch.
Her face changed and she told me that she had eight lines if you counted the welcome.
“Did your father come to see the play?” I asked while I ate my meatloaf.
She said he left after her second line because Toby had hockey practice and Amber stayed with Toby.
Mrs. Gable had been the one to take her home and buy her ice cream after the play was over.
“What about your birthday back in March?” I asked to see how that had been handled.
Daisy sighed and said they had a grocery store cake at home but no friends were invited.
“Amber said they couldn’t do big birthdays every year after they went to the water park for Toby,” she explained.
She told me that she would have chosen a strawberry cake if she had been given the choice.
I made a note of that detail because small facts are the architecture of true repair.
After lunch, we went to a store and I told her to pick out anything she wanted.
She moved through the aisles with caution and only chose a few small items like nail polish and gummy bears.
“You are allowed to want things, Daisy, and I am not going to run out of money,” I told her with a smile.
She eventually added some colored pens and a plush turtle to her small collection.
I called Mrs. Gable later that afternoon while Daisy was busy with a word search book.
The neighbor told me that she had tried to tell Patrick that leaving the girl alone was wrong.
“They asked me to just keep an ear out, but they never gave me medical authority or emergency info,” she said.
She admitted that she had seen a pattern of neglect for a long time and felt guilty for not calling me sooner.
“Daisy does not ask for much because she has learned that asking leads to disappointment,” Mrs. Gable noted.
By late afternoon, Daisy was painting my fingernails with silver glitter on the living room rug.
My phone rang and it was Patrick again, so I answered it and walked into the hallway.