I look at her a second longer than is comfortable. I think about trying to ask again. Birdie stares back. We’re having an entire disagreement just with our eyes, neither one of us willing to give in and look away.

I finally cave. “We’ll manage dinner,” I tell her, downing the last swig of orange juice and grabbing a cold breakfast burrito.

“You okay?” Elijah asks me.

“Never better. We need to get moving,” I say, squeezing Birdie’s shoulder. “Have a good day, Birdie. Love you.”

“Aren’t you going to heat that up?” Birdie follows us toward the front door in her bathrobe.

“No time!” I tell her, heaving my bag over my shoulder. It whacks me in the ribs, and I wince.

“Love you both!” she calls as we shuffle down the driveway.

Elijah waits until we turn onto Main Street before he asks, “What’s the empty storefront next to Ron Redd’s?”

I chew on the inside of my lip. Years ago, when I was little, Birdie and my father bought the space on Main Street next to Ron Redd’s Rapid Repair. It had been a pawn shop that went out of business before they bought it. The plan was to turn it into a youth center or an after-school program for middle and high school kids. Sports, homework help, music, and maybe dance classes; my dad had all kinds of plans. We spent a couple of weekends there painting the walls and doing some cleanup. It’s one of those clear-as-day memories I have of my father: him handing me a spongy paintbrush while he climbed up the ladder, his favorite music blaring through a portable stereo. I probably got more paint on the floor and on my clothes than on the wall, but I remember that I felt very important. What we were doing felt important.

I wish I could remember his words to me while we painted and cleaned. After he passed away, Birdie struggled with what to do with the space. Just this past spring, she mentioned selling it, but I may have had a reaction to that news that Birdie wasn’t expecting.

Maybe.

“You can’t!” I remember yelling at her. The first time I had ever yelled at her.

“Julian, we can’t just keep it empty,” she said, holding her arms open and trying to give me a hug.

I stepped away from her. “That was Daddy’s place. You told me he wanted to turn this town around, give back to the community.”

“Of course he did, but things have changed, and I don’t have the means to run a place like your father dreamed about all by myself.”

“If you sell it, someone’s just going to turn it into another junk shop or a nail salon or something. It was Daddy’s,” I said, all the fight draining out of me.