He came for dinner every Sunday. He always sat next to me.
He’d ask me what I was reading. He’d actually listen to the answer. When I was nine, he taught me how to balance a checkbook with a pencil and a ledger he’d brought just for me.
“Numbers don’t lie, Emmy,” he said. “People lie. Numbers just sit there and wait for somebody smart enough to read them.”
“Am I smart enough?”
He tapped the end of my nose with the pencil. “You’re the smartest one at this table. Don’t tell your sisters.”
Mom heard that. She was carrying the gravy boat in from the kitchen. She stopped in the doorway, and her face did something I didn’t understand at the time. It closed up, like a door.
“Dad,” she said. “Don’t fill her head.”
“I’m not filling it, Maggie. It’s already full.”
