Somebody Else's Day

It was a short engagement because neither of them saw any reason for a long one and because Sister Beverly said she had done all the waiting she intended to do in this life.

That left about a week, which isn't much time, and there was a great deal to put inside of it.

Allison Jones had the binder open on the kitchen table most evenings with a pencil behind her ear, and her sisters had learned to walk around that end of the table the way you walk around a man on a ladder.

But it was different this time, and the difference was small, and it was everywhere.

She asked.

That was the whole of it.

Before every single thing went onto a page, Allison picked up the phone or walked down the street and asked.

And then she wrote down the answer she got instead of the one she had already drawn up.

She asked Sister Beverly about the flowers and was told twice that Sister Beverly did not care about flowers.

And so she went and asked a third time in a different way.

What do you want people to feel when they walk in? and got a very real answer, which was like they'd been invited to somebody's kitchen.

She asked Sister Dispinit about the building.

Tim's hall was free the 19th, and the floors were done, and Sister Dispinit said she put it on the calendar in ink.

She asked Brother Thompson whether he wanted any lights.

No, ma'am,

he said and grinned at her.

And that grin had a whole gear and a white binder and a front porch in it.

I believe we're all right on the lights.

It was Mom who worked out that Andy had not had a ball since the afternoon of the porch.

Nobody had noticed, which tells you something.

He hadn't cried about it.

He hadn't gone looking under the couch.

He had simply gone on being two years old without one, the way he had gone on being two years old with one, and it was the not asking that finally caught her attention.

So she came home from the store with a new red ball in the bag and set it on the floor in front of him and waited.

Andy looked at it for a long moment.