She frowned.
“Then why did she take it?”
That was the question.
Not whether Ella had misunderstood a joke.
Not whether my wife had intended a lesson.
Why had an adult accepted money from a child who believed she was buying affection?
“When did it start?”
Ella counted on her fingers.
Then stopped.
“Before the school concert.”
Six weeks earlier.
I remembered the concert.
I had sat in the second row.
She looked toward me when the music began, lifted one hand, then put it down again.
Afterward, I hugged her beside the coat hooks.
She had seemed distracted.
I thought she was tired.
Now I asked:
“Did you think you had to pay for that hug too?”
Ella looked surprised.
“Yes.”
“Even though I came to you?”
“She said I used the time.”
I looked at Nadine.
She shook her head once.
Not in denial.
In disbelief.
Ella lifted a coin.
“I didn’t have five that day.”
“What happened?”
“She said I could owe.”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak.
My daughter put the coin down.
“I didn’t want to owe.”
I moved my hand beside hers.
“You don’t.”
“But she wrote it.”
“Then what she wrote was wrong.”
Ella studied me.
“Can grown-ups write something wrong?”
“Yes.”
“Even about rules?”
“Yes.”
She looked toward the hall again.
There was so much she had been trying to work out alone.
Nadine had learned about the money minutes before dinner.
I made sure of that later.
At the time, I needed only to know she had brought the concern directly to me.
