Part Four: The Job

Last spring, Lily turned fifteen. That fall, she told me she’d found a weekend job.

We were sitting at the kitchen table on a Sunday night in September. I was doing the bills with a calculator and a stack of envelopes. Lily was doing her geometry homework across from me. She set down her pencil.

“Mom,” she said. “I got a job.”

I looked up. “A job? Where?”

“The Junction,” she said. “The restaurant out on Highway 60, by the truck stop. Busing tables. Saturdays and Sundays.”

I knew the Junction. Everybody in Wright County knew the Junction. It’s a roadside diner with a red tin roof and a sign shaped like an arrow, the kind of place that’s been serving chicken-fried steak and pie to truckers and farmers since 1962. Sam used to stop there for breakfast after night shifts, two eggs over easy and biscuits and gravy.

“You’re only fifteen, sweetheart,” I said. “Why do you want to work already?”

Lily shrugged. She picked her pencil back up. “I just want to buy some things with my own money, Mom,” she said.

For months she’d been talking about a new phone. Hers was an old hand-me-down from Sam’s cousin, four years old, with a cracked screen that spidered out from the corner and a battery that died by noon. Every one of her friends had newer ones. I’d seen her at the bus stop trying to read texts through the cracks, tilting the screen in the light.

I’d been trying to save for a new one for her birthday. I’d gotten to sixty-two dollars before the truck needed new brakes.

So I figured she’d finally decided to save for it herself. I was proud of her, and a little ashamed, and I said yes.

Part Five: Saturdays

Every Saturday morning, Lily left the house at eight o’clock. Patricia, her manager, didn’t let anyone under sixteen work early mornings, so her shift started at eight-thirty and ran until four. I’d drive her the fifteen minutes out to Highway 60 in the bus barn’s spare pickup, which my supervisor let me borrow on weekends.

She’d wear her old sneakers with the soles coming loose, black jeans, a plain T-shirt, and her hair in a ponytail. She carried a small blue backpack she’d had since sixth grade.

Every Saturday afternoon, I’d pick her up at four-fifteen. She’d come out the side door of the diner exhausted, smelling like coffee and fried food and dish soap. Her hands would be red and chapped from the hot water. Some days she’d have a burn on her forearm from the coffee machine.

On Sunday afternoons, she’d come home even more tired, and she’d go straight to the couch. Sometimes she’d fall asleep there before dinner, still in her work clothes, with her backpack on the floor beside her.

“Lil,” I said one Sunday in October. “You’re working too hard. Let me help you find something easier. The library’s hiring shelvers. Or the pharmacy in town.”

She shook her head without opening her eyes. “I like it there, Mom,” she said. “Really.”

“But you’re exhausted.”

“It’s a good tired,” she said. Then she smiled a little with her eyes still closed. “Dad used to say that. After storms.”

She never talked about how much she was saving. She never showed me her paychecks. When I asked, she’d say, “Getting there,” and change the subject.

I didn’t push. I figured she wanted to surprise me with her new phone. I figured she’d come home one day in December with a shiny box and a big grin, and I’d act surprised.

That’s not what happened.