Chapter 10

I pulled the Blazer into the parking lot at Calvin Academy just before noon the next day. Cecelia and I were walking toward the trees on the western side of the property when we heard the bell ring – faintly, as we were outside the buildings and not right up against them either. It wasn't long till Darlia caught up to us, taking Cecelia's left hand, as her long-standing custom is. I always hold Cecelia's right hand, since I'm left-handed and she's the opposite.

We found a spot with enough shade to keep us cool, for the September sun, while by the light going quickly into fall, was still plenty warm. It wasn't the same tree as I'd gone to sleep under nearly three years before, when I'd been trying to find out where rumors of a teacher molesting children had come from – that was further into the grove, and it was a larger tree too, one of the first that Dr. Chalmers had planted.

Cecelia shrugged off the backpack that carried lunch for me and her, and Darlia began unpacking her own lunch, which she carried in a paper bag from the cafeteria. Sometimes she takes her lunch to school, sometimes she buys it, depending on what it's going to be. The school's cooking isn't up to what we get at home – institutional cooking never is – but Cecelia's made suggestions that have improved the cafeteria's food and it isn't bad at all.

We all ate like hogs, which is normal for us. It's a good thing I don't get fat, because I don't work out nearly as often or as hard as Cecelia and Darlia do. I run occasionally, maybe push a little weight around once in a rare while, do calisthenics from time to time, and walk a lot just for fun, but I've never had any sort of real exercise program. I've just never gained weight much, though as Cecelia had said I do weigh more now, and take up a bit more space, than I did when we got married.

When we were all done, Darlia's trash back in the bag and the leftovers that Cecelia and I hadn't eaten in their containers and the containers in the backpack, Cecelia opened the conversation. "We don't have an infinite amount of time, honey," she said, "so I shall dispense, to the limits of my ability, with my propensity for prolix utterances."

"Coulda fooled me," I muttered, earning a dark look from Cecelia. It must have been the wrong time for that joke.

"The problem which faces us, Darlia," Cecelia went on, "is that if I am to pursue the possibility of obtaining my own private investigator's license, I must be away from home more than I have been, and at odd hours. This requires more juggling of time than formerly, and it also means that there will be periods when I simply won't be home to care for you. Your father had a brilliant suggestion – ask you what you thought about possibilities. And so I am asking you."

Darlia picked up a fallen branch and snapped it in two. It wasn't a huge branch, but it wasn't a twig either, and though I'd known for years she was strong that casual crack brought it home to me in a way that nothing else had. This girl, when she grew up, would be as strong as some men ... perhaps as strong as most men. "Do you really want to get your license, Mommy?" she asked.

"I don't know, honey. That is what I'm attempting to determine. I hope to know with certainty by the end of the year, but right now I'm exploring the idea, with a view to finding out."

Darlia tossed away one half of the broken branch, and frowned at the other. "You already spend a lot of time at the mission, and doing books for churches, and at the anti-'bortion place, and other things I don't know what they are. And you're working at Daddy's office too." Darlia's gotten better with polysyllables, after a talk I had with her earlier in the year, but she seems to simply like chopping the A off of "abortion."

"That's right. And if you would rather I not put more time into activities away from home, I will give that serious consideration. I cannot, Darlia, allow you to dictate the course of my life, but you're my daughter and I love you, and I will never ignore you or your wishes."

"I know." Darlia looked at me. "Daddy, is it always this hard doing adult stuff?"

"How do you mean hard?" I asked her.

"Well, I gotta think about what I want, but I gotta think about Mommy too. I don't want her to hurt me, but I don't want to hurt her."

I nodded. "Yeah, sometimes that's what it means to be an adult. You're growin' up, 'Lia, an' you're havin' to face this stuff more."

She looked back at Cecelia. I knew she was only 11, and her figure – if you can even use that word for children – showed her youth, but in her face there was the woman she would someday become. She's got a square face, not the slight roundness that's almost the only thing my Indian father gave me nor Cecelia's narrow bony features, but a definitely unique face that's hers alone. Her nose is broad and flat, the only thing African about her features, her eyes are black like Cecelia's and very direct, her forehead is square and high, and that day she'd just brushed her hair straight back off that forehead so that it fell over her ears and down her back in a brownish blonde wave. And she looked at Cecelia as an adult might, an adult who was considering a serious problem. I knew then that even if I'd never loved Darlia before, and I'd loved since I knew Cecelia was pregnant, I most surely loved her now.