My dad has worn that riding vest for twenty-six years, and on Saturday a 7-year-old walked up behind him in my laundromat and cut the little round patch off its back.
Her mom’s boyfriend laughed and said, “Bill me, old man. She steals everything she touches.”
Dad didn’t laugh. He’d handed out that patch at her school in May.
Her hands shook so hard the scissors clicked twice on nothing before they bit.
They were the green-handled ones from the coloring table I keep by the dryers.
Dad was on the bench under the front window, folding his own towels, the way he does every Saturday because he says I fold them WRONG.
His back was to her.
My father’s back is a LOT of back.
There were twelve people in the place, and all twelve watched a little blonde thing in a pink hoodie saw at a grown biker’s vest.
A woman by the washers started to giggle.
Then the patch came loose, and the girl closed her fist on it.
I learned her name because the man at the folding table yelled it.
“Serenity. What the hell.”
He came over grinning, keys swinging off a clip on his belt loop, and took her by the wrist.
“Man, I’m sorry,” he said to my dad.
“She takes stuff. Anything that ain’t nailed down. Tell me what that thing runs and I’ll cover it.”
Noriko, who has washed her sheets in my number six every Saturday since before I bought this place, said, “Kids.”
Somebody by the change machine said, “Little pirate.”
People laughed.
You could feel the whole room let go of it.
Except Dad.
He swung his legs around on the bench and didn’t give the boyfriend so much as a glance.
He was staring at her fist.
I knew that patch better than he did.
I’d glued it back on in March with fabric glue from the dollar store, because he wouldn’t let me take the vest home long enough to sew it.
Two hands, one big and one small, in white thread on a dark blue circle.
In May his group spent a morning in the gym at the elementary school across the highway.
Sixty-three first and second graders on the floor.
He told them what he tells every school.
“If somebody at home ever scares you, you don’t have to say a word. You find one of us, and you show us this.”
He came home that afternoon and said half of them thought he was Santa.
Serenity opened her fist and held the patch out to him with both hands.
Not to me. Not to the room.
To HIM.
Her mouth was shut tight. Her chin was going.
The boyfriend’s laugh got smaller.
“Okay, we’re done,” he said. “Give the man his sticker back, Serenity.”
She didn’t move.
Dad got off the bench and down onto my tile floor.
Both knees.
He hasn’t done that since his surgery in 2023, and I heard both of them pop from across the room.
He was still taller than her.
“Who told you about this, sweetheart?” he said.
She checked the boyfriend’s face first.
Then my dad’s.
“The man in the gym,” she said. “He said show you.”
My father’s hands went down onto his thighs and stayed there, pressed hard, like he was holding something inside them.
The boyfriend gave her wrist a tug.
“She makes stuff up,” he said.
“Ask her mom. She LIES about everything. Last week she told her teacher the dog could talk.”
“Then let’s ask her mom,” Dad said.
“Can’t. She’s at work.”
Serenity’s head came up.
I walked to the front door and put my back against it.
I didn’t plan that. My feet did it.
The boyfriend saw me, and the grin came back with all its teeth.
“Lady, you want to move,” he said.
“What y’all are doing right now is called kidnapping. I got a whole room of witnesses.”
Noriko set her basket on the floor.
The man by the change machine took his earbuds out.
Dad stood up. It took him two tries and a hand on the bench.
“LET GO OF HER ARM,” he said.
It was the voice he used on me one time, when I was fifteen and tried to back his truck out of the garage with the door still down.
The boyfriend let go.
He put both palms up, still grinning, like we were all in on the same joke.
“Fine. Fine. Serenity, tell the nice biker where Mommy is.”
She pressed the patch flat against her hoodie with both hands.
“You told me she was sleeping,” she said.
“Serenity.”
“She’s been sleeping SINCE THURSDAY.”
The keys beside my till
“Where’s her mother?” I said.
His phone rang before he answered.
He pressed the screen, and a woman’s voice came out loud enough for the front bench.
“Trenton, I’m awake. Let me speak to her.”
Serenity moved toward the phone.
He put it against his ear.
“She’s fine. We’re doing laundry.”
“Put her on.”
He ended the call.
I picked the scissors up off the floor.
“Her mother is awake,” I said to Serenity. “We heard her.”
The girl nodded, but she kept the patch against her chest.
Trenton shoved his phone into his pocket.
“She’s recovering from surgery at her sister’s. She needs rest. Now you’ve got this one thinking something’s wrong.”
“At work or at her sister’s?” I said.
“She works from home sometimes.”
He supplied that answer with the confidence of a man adding a room onto a house he didn’t own.
Dad put his motorcycle keys beside my till.
“I’m staying,” he said.
I stepped clear of the door. Trenton could leave.
I wasn’t going to give him a locked doorway to talk about.
He didn’t leave.
“Call her back,” I said.
“Call her sister. Janis. Get somebody reasonable down here.”
He said the number while I wrote it on the back of a laundry slip.
I called from the shop phone.
Janis answered. I gave her my name, Margo, and told her where we were.
“Is Serenity hurt?”
“No. She’s asking for her mother.”
“I’m ten minutes away. Don’t let this become another bill.”
She hung up before I could ask what she meant.
Dad pulled his towels off the bench so Serenity could sit.
Trenton reached for his laundry basket, then stopped when she stayed beside Dad.
Another bill?
The yellow copy
The receipt pad beside my till had a coffee ring across its cover.
Dad put it there in March while I tried to glue his patch back on.
He kept turning to see what I was doing, which made the job about as easy as wallpapering a cow.
“Stand STILL.”
“You’re using too much.”
“Then take it off and let me sew it.”
“I’ve got somewhere to be.”
He was retired. Somewhere to be generally meant arguing about a carburetor in another retired man’s garage.
The edge of the patch lifted again.
“Why this one?” I said. “You’ve got fourteen things sewn on there.”
“Because a kid’s got to reach it.”
I pressed it flat.
“Then quit putting it where you sit on it.”
He pulled the receipt pad toward him while the glue dried.
I’d asked him to count the cash from the laundry he delivered for me that morning.
Our slips made three copies. White went to the customer.
Pink went around the bag. Yellow stayed in the book.
Dad put a piece of cardboard beneath the set before he wrote.
He’d run a repair shop before he retired.
Carbon paper, according to him, required the same respect as a loaded trailer.
“Press hard enough to read it later,” he said.
“I know how a receipt works.”
“Then why’s your last seven look like a coat hanger?”
I wanted him to stop checking my arithmetic.
I also wanted him to keep coming every Saturday.
Both things could fit inside one daughter.
He counted the money, signed the slip, and handed me the book.
The patch held.
At the door, he turned his back toward me.
“If it comes off, you sew it.”
“That’s what I offered.”
“Well, now it’s my idea.”
That Saturday in November, he sat beside Serenity with the same patch loose in her hands.
Trenton stood near my counter, looking at the receipt book.
“Her mother’s sister gets worked up,” he said.
“Let me do the talking when she gets here.”
I dropped the scissors into a drawer.
“What bill was she talking about?”
“Family business.”
“She said it to my business.”
He picked up the pen beside the pad, clicked it twice, then set it down.
“You collect your money. I handle things at home.”
Dad lifted his head.
“What money?”
Trenton took his phone out and stepped toward the windows.
Janis’s ten minutes
I followed him far enough to hear what he said.
“No, don’t bring her. She’s supposed to be resting.”
A pause.
“Because there’s no reason to drag her into it.”
He ended that call, too.
“Who was that?”
“Janis.”
“Good. Tell her to bring her sister’s number.”
“You can ask her yourself.”
Serenity climbed off the bench and came to me.
“Can Mommy hear your phone?”
“She can when we call her.”
“Can I say something?”
“Yes.”
Trenton put his basket down.
“She’s had two operations on that foot. She doesn’t need a child crying down the phone.”
Dad shifted across the bench.
“Sit here a minute, sweetheart.”
Serenity sat. He put one of his towels across the gap between them, and she started folding it.
Wrong, naturally. He didn’t say a word.
I asked Trenton to give me the mother’s number.
He gave me one. It rang without an answer.
“She probably put it down,” he said. “I told you she’s resting.”
I left a message with the shop number.
Then I tried my first fix, the one I could manage without understanding what had happened before my own front door.
“The patch costs nothing. There’s no damage charge. Let Serenity tell her mother that.”
He leaned his elbows on my counter.
“That’s decent of you. Put it in writing.”
I wrote it on a sheet from my order pad.
No charge for the patch or vest.
I signed my name.
He photographed it.
“There,” he said to Serenity. “See what happens when you settle down?”
Dad stood.
“She didn’t owe me anything before she settled down.”
Trenton lifted his phone toward him.
“Your daughter says it’s settled. Can we leave it alone?”
I reached for the paper. He slid it into his pocket.
My nice little fix now had legs and was walking around without me.
Noriko came over with her empty basket.
“The girl’s laundry can stay with mine,” she said.
“It’s our laundry,” Trenton said.
“Then you won’t have to carry it.”
Noriko could make an offer sound like a gate closing.
He left the basket.
I turned the sign on my front door to CLOSED.
Anyone already inside could finish.
I couldn’t take another customer while a man stood in my shop deciding who could speak to a little girl’s mother.
Three wash-and-fold orders were waiting for me in back.
I’d promised them that afternoon.
I called the customers, canceled, and returned their payments.
One hundred seventy-three dollars and fifty cents.
One customer said she’d find somewhere else.
I said I understood, which was a lie.
I understood everything except why I was explaining myself to anybody that morning.
Trenton heard enough.
“Bit dramatic, shutting the place.”
“So was kidnapping.”
He took an envelope from his jacket, checked inside it, and put it back.
“You going to charge me for all this, too?”
Before I could answer, Janis came through the door.
She went straight to Serenity, bent down, and held out her arms.
The girl went into them.
Then Janis looked at my father.
“You’ve got your money, Cornell. What else do you want?”
Four thousand dollars
Dad kept one hand on the bench.
“My what?”
“Don’t do that,” Janis said. “She sent every penny.”
Trenton moved toward her.
“I said I’d handle it.”
“You’ve handled enough. My sister’s crying at my house, and now the child is here crying.”
Serenity’s face was against Janis’s coat.
I pulled out the chair behind my counter.
“Sit her here. Call her mother.”
Janis looked from me to Dad.
“You’ve got a nerve.”
“Yes. Use it. Call.”
She took out her phone.
Trenton reached toward it.
“Let me explain first.”
Janis pulled her hand back.
“I heard your explanation in the car.”
Her sister answered on the second ring.
Janis put the phone on speaker and held it near Serenity.
“Baby?”
“Mommy?”
“I’m here.”
“Are you still sleeping?”
“No, honey. No.”
Serenity cried then. Dad turned toward the window and rubbed his mouth with the heel of his hand.
Her mother kept saying she was home at Aunt Janis’s, that she was awake, that Serenity could come sit beside her.
I didn’t interrupt.
Trenton tried.
Janis held up one finger.
For the first time that morning, he obeyed somebody.
After a minute, Noriko brought the coloring paper over.
Serenity sat with the phone beside her and drew while her mother talked.
I pulled another chair close.
“This is Margo. I own the laundromat.”
The woman stopped speaking.
Then she said, “I can’t send any more until next month.”
I wanted to reach through that phone and sit her in front of me.
“How much have you sent?”
“Four thousand two hundred eighty-six dollars and seventy cents.”
Nobody laughed at anything after that.
Dad sat down so hard his towels slipped onto the floor.
“For what?” I said.
“The things Serenity broke. The money she took.”
Trenton bent toward the phone.
“We said we weren’t doing this in front of her.”
Serenity’s pencil stopped.
Noriko moved her chair around the counter, farther from him, and asked her to show her the drawing.
Janis turned the speaker off and handed me the phone.
Her sister spoke against my ear.
“There was a door. Then a machine. He said your father was letting us make payments.”
“No,” I said.
“Please don’t change it now. I’ve got his receipt.”
A receipt.
My father’s name.
And enough money to empty a woman who was lying with her foot up at her sister’s house.
I asked her to read me the amounts.
Eleven hundred twenty dollars for a door.
Fifteen hundred forty for a coin mechanism.
Another fifteen hundred forty for a dryer.
Eighty-six dollars and seventy cents for laundry.
The laundry amount belonged in my shop.
The others sounded like somebody pricing a vacation.
“Who gave you those figures?”
“Trenton.”
“Did you speak to my father?”
“He said Cornell didn’t want to keep upsetting everybody.”
Dad could hear my half. His hands lay open on his knees.
Janis took the phone back.
“Get the envelope from your bag,” she said.
“The one you showed me. Find that receipt.”
Trenton stepped between her and the counter.
“This is getting stupid.”
Janis gave him a long look.
“Then it’ll be easy to straighten out.”
He turned to Dad instead.
“I can bring every payment date up on her phone. You want everybody here going through that?”
Dad said nothing.
I hated that silence. I hated that I needed him to fill it.
“Dad,” I said. “Did you take money from him?”
His face changed before he answered.
And Trenton smiled.
The name at the bottom
“I took laundry money,” Dad said.
“How much?”
“I don’t keep it in my head, Margo.”
I’d asked him in front of the same people who’d laughed at Serenity.
He reached toward the receipt book, then stopped.
Trenton spread his hands.
“There we go. Now we’re remembering.”
Dad looked at me.
“Get your book.”
I pulled it toward me, but Janis caught the cover.
“My sister’s finding her receipt. We’ll compare them.”
That was fair. I resented fair quite a bit just then.
Trenton came closer.
“You let him collect money. Now you’re acting like I’m some criminal because he didn’t tell you what came in.”
I wanted to put him out.
I wanted the girl with her mother, my father folding towels, and the last hour removed from my shop.
Instead, I kept the book under my hand.
“What date?”
Janis held her phone to her ear.
“She’s got the bills. The receipt’s in a different envelope.”
“Of course it is,” Trenton said.
“You know where she keeps it,” Janis said. “Tell her.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“Try the bag she brought Thursday.”
His knowledge of that bag landed harder than all his jokes.
Janis passed the instruction on.
Serenity pushed her drawing away.
“Can I go to Mommy now?”
“Yes,” Janis said. “We’re going.”
Trenton picked up the laundry basket.
“I’ll drive.”
“No,” I said.
He faced me.
“You don’t decide that.”
Janis looked toward the door. Her car was outside.
She had no need of his.
But she was still looking at Dad as though she wanted her sister’s money back from his pocket.
Trenton set the basket down again.
“Listen. She’s ill. She can’t work the way she usually does. I’m doing the laundry and driving the kid around, and somehow I’m the bad guy.”
Dad reached for his keys beside my till.
“How much does she need back?”
I put my hand over them.
“We don’t owe it.”
“She needs it.”
My father had spent two winters saving for the motorcycle outside.
He bought it used and talked about it as though he’d built the thing from ore.
He could sell it. He would.
Trenton’s eyes went to the keys.
“You could sort it out between yourselves. Give her something today. She’ll calm down.”
That was the offer he wanted.
My father paying money he hadn’t taken so a mother could stop crying.
And I’d helped him get there.
Janis’s phone made a sound.
She held the screen toward me.
The photograph showed one of my white receipts. Same printed heading.
Same red number in the corner.
My father’s signature ran across the bottom.
The amount was $4,286.70.
Dad leaned forward.
“I signed that.”
I let go of his keys.
Behind me, Serenity set the patch on my counter.
“I don’t want to get him in trouble,” she said.
Dad reached for it, but she moved back beside Janis.
He left his hand on the counter.
Trenton lifted the basket.
“Come on. We’ve done enough.”
The door opened behind him when a customer carried her laundry out.
He stood in the opening, waiting for Janis to follow.
On the phone, her sister said, “Please. Just bring my little girl.”
Dad picked up his vest from the bench.
I turned the receipt book around.
Receipt 1184
“Read the number,” I said.
Janis enlarged the photograph.
“Eleven eighty-four.”
I opened the book from the back.
Used yellow sheets stuck together where Dad pressed too hard.
Eleven ninety-one.
Eleven eighty-eight.
Trenton put the basket down by the door.
“We don’t need a performance.”
I found eleven eighty-four.
Eighty-six dollars and seventy cents.
Laundry. Paid in cash. Cornell.
The yellow copy had my father’s signature, too.
He’d pressed hard enough that I could feel it through the next page.
I laid Janis’s phone beside the book.
On the photograph, somebody had put a four, a comma, and a two before the eighty-six.
Dad bent over both.
“That’s his washing from last Saturday.”
Trenton came back toward us.
“Maybe he wrote it down wrong.”
“Same pen stroke,” I said. “Same signature. Same number.”
I lifted the yellow sheet so Janis could see the cardboard impression beneath it.
She brought the phone close to her face.
“Oh, Trenton.”
He reached for it. She turned away.
I took the shop phone and dialed the mother’s number again.
This time she answered because Janis told her who was calling.
I put her on speaker.
“Your receipt was changed,” I said.
“You owe us eighty-six seventy for laundry. That’s been paid. You never owed us anything else.”
A sound came through the phone that made Serenity leave her chair.
“Mommy?”
“I’m here, baby.”
“Did I make your foot worse?”
Trenton put his hand over the speaker.
I moved the phone out from under it.
Her mother said, “No. Who said that?”
Serenity looked at him.
Dad stood beside her without touching her.
The mother tried again.
“Baby, I’ve been asking to talk to you. Every day.”
Serenity held the edge of Dad’s vest.
“He told me you were sleeping.”
“He told me you wouldn’t come to the phone.”
Trenton took a step backward.
Janis went after him.
“You told her sister the child wouldn’t speak to her?”
“I said she was upset.”
“Because of the money?” the mother said through my phone.
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“Because you keep asking questions. I wasn’t taking her over there so you could question her about every last dollar.”
Dad picked the patch up off my counter.
Serenity reached for it.
This time, she held his hand with it.
His palms on my counter
Trenton pulled out the paper I’d written.
“No charge. That’s what you said. Now you’re dragging up months of stuff.”
I left my receipt book open.
He laid my paper beside it, as though the two pages might cancel each other out.
“You were happy enough to settle it ten minutes ago.”
“Where’s my money?” her mother said.
He stared at the phone.
“We live together. Money gets spent.”
“Where?”
“On things we need.”
“What door did she break?”
He looked at me.
I pointed toward the front.
“The same door I’ve had since I bought the place.”
“What coin machine?”
“None.”
“The dryer?”
“No dryer.”
He hit the counter with his palm. No one moved toward him.
“I kept this family running while you were laid up. You’re welcome, by the way. The car, the groceries, all the little things you never count.”
Her mother cried hard enough that she couldn’t answer.
He turned to Janis.
“You’re going to let some woman with a receipt book tell you about your own sister’s home?”
Janis took off her coat and put it around Serenity.
“I gave her nine hundred dollars toward that door.”
He swallowed.
“Then we’ll work that out.”
“No,” her sister said. “That comes back to me first. I’ll repay Janis.”
“I can’t pull four thousand dollars out of my pocket.”
Noriko pointed at his jacket.
“You checked an envelope twice.”
He faced her.
“That’s for parts.”
“For what?” Janis said.
“My motorcycle.”
The mother’s crying stopped long enough for her to speak.
“Sell it.”
He laughed once.
“Right. Sure. Sell my bike because everyone got upset at the laundromat.”
“Sell it and return my money.”
“You can’t make me sell it.”
“No. But you can’t live in my house.”
He started toward the phone.
“Don’t do this in front of these people.”
“You said Cornell would come take things if I didn’t pay. You said he’d send his friends.”
Dad took one step toward the counter.
Trenton moved back.
There was my father’s size, at last. He hadn’t needed it with Serenity.
He didn’t need to lay a finger on this man, either.
“You used my name?” Dad said.
“I was getting the money together. Things got mixed up.”
“You used my name.”
Janis moved beside Dad.
“You used mine, too,” she said.
“You told her I’d agreed not to bring Serenity over until she apologized.”
Serenity pressed into my father’s leg.
Her mother said, “Baby, you don’t owe me an apology.”
Trenton pointed at the phone.
“This is exactly what I said. You give her an audience and she gets whatever she wants.”
Janis stepped in front of him.
“She wanted her mother.”
He tried to speak around her.
“And everybody wants to pretend nobody else made a mistake. Your sister handed me the money. She didn’t ask Cornell. She didn’t come in here.”
“I should have,” the mother said.
That took away the next thing he’d been saving.
“I should have asked my daughter,” she said.
“I should have called Margo. I didn’t. Now I’m asking you for my money.”
Janis held out her hand.
“Her car key.”
“I need to get home.”
“I’ll give you a ride for your things after I take Serenity back.”
He unclipped the keys.
He pulled one off and dropped it into her palm.
“And the house key,” her sister said.
His mouth opened.
Janis waited.
He worked the second key off so hard the ring bent.
There was no applause. My laundromat wasn’t a television studio.
Somebody’s dryer stopped, and for a few seconds the buttons on somebody’s jeans made the only sound.
Dad crouched as far as his knees allowed.
“Can I have a hug before you go?”
Serenity put both arms around his neck.
He shut his eyes.
Trenton lifted his basket.
“This got blown way out of proportion.”
I handed Janis the yellow copy after photographing it beside the white one.
Then I took back the paper I’d written about the patch.
He kept looking at me.
“You happy with this roomful of people knowing our business?”
“You asked for witnesses.”
The envelope came back
Janis brought Serenity to her mother before she took Trenton anywhere.
She called me from her car afterward.
“They’re together.”
I sat on the front bench beside Dad.
He’d picked his towels up off the floor.
He was folding them again, though there wasn’t a customer left to judge his work.
“I asked if you took her money,” I said.
“You did.”
“I’m sorry.”
He matched two corners.
“You needed to check.”
“I could’ve asked you differently.”
“Yes.”
My father never padded a bill, including that one.
I put my head against his shoulder.
He kept folding with one hand until he gave up and put the towel across my lap.
On Tuesday, Janis called while Trenton was at her sister’s house collecting what was left of his clothes.
He’d sold the motorcycle for $3,600.00.
The buyer collected it from the driveway that morning.
The remaining $686.70 came from the envelope he’d been saving for parts.
Her sister counted the money with Janis beside her.
Four thousand two hundred eighty-six dollars and seventy cents.
Then she gave Janis back her nine hundred dollars.
Trenton left with his clothes.
His car key and house key stayed where he’d dropped them on Saturday.
There was no borrowed car waiting for him and no motorcycle to ride away on.
Janis drove him to the place he’d arranged to stay.
She didn’t tell me where. I didn’t ask.
The mother called me that evening.
“I want to pay what you lost closing.”
“No.”
“Janis said you returned people’s orders.”
“That’s my one hundred seventy-three fifty.”
“I can send it.”
“Keep your money.”
She cried again, and I stayed on the line.
Then she asked to speak to Dad.
I carried the phone to him.
He was checking a loose hinge on my supply cupboard because apparently a retired man couldn’t visit his daughter without bringing a screwdriver.
She apologized for believing he would threaten her.
He sat on an overturned bucket.
“How’s your girl?”
“She’s sleeping beside me.”
“Good.”
“She wants to know whether she can bring your patch back.”
Dad looked toward my counter, where I’d left a needle and thread.
“Tell her Saturday.”
The needle beside the towels
They came at ten.
Janis brought Serenity while her mother stayed home with her foot raised.
Her mother was on Janis’s phone before they reached my front door.
Serenity carried the patch inside a sandwich bag.
Noriko was loading number six. She put down her detergent and came over.
“I said something last week,” she said to Serenity. “I shouldn’t have.”
The girl leaned against Janis.
Noriko stayed where she was.
“I’m sorry.”
The man who’d called her a pirate was there, too.
He took his earbuds out without anybody asking.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
Serenity nodded and looked for Dad.
He sat on the bench with his towels beside him.
She took the patch out of the bag.
“I cut the edge.”
“I saw.”
“Can it go back?”
He lifted the vest.
“Margo says it can.”
I sat beside him with the needle threaded.
He’d surrendered the vest voluntarily, which deserved its own holiday.
Serenity stood in front of us.
“Do I have to pay?”
“No,” Dad said.
“For the scissors?”
“No.”
“The glue?”
I held up my dollar-store tube.
“That stuff owes ME money.”
She laughed.
Dad looked down at the vest in his lap.
He wiped his face with a towel and pretended he was checking the seam.
His daughter permitted the fraud.
Janis held the phone so her sister could hear us.
Serenity asked to hold the patch while I put the first stitches through.
I showed her where to keep her fingers.
Dad shifted closer.
“Don’t pull it crooked,” he said.
“You want to do it?”
“No.”
“Then supervise quietly.”
Serenity pressed the circle flat against the leather.
I put in four stitches, then let her lift her hands.
“Will it stay this time?” she said.
Dad reached across the vest and took her hand.
“I’m here Saturday.”
She put his towel back on his lap, and I kept sewing.
If this one stayed with you, send it to somebody who has always made room beside them.
For more family stories about standing by your kids through painful moments, read My Daughter Put Her School Parking Tag On My Workbench and My Son Crossed My Name Off His School Invitation. My Daughter Put Her Wig In My Lunch Bag is another moving story about showing up when a child is targeted.
