I knew what joke he would use when he didn’t know what else to say.
But I had never heard about this.
“Sixteen?” I asked.
Mrs. Patel nodded.
“That’s how many I knew about.”
“Why did you keep a list?”
She laughed.
“Because your husband was ridiculous.”
That sounded more familiar.
“Every few months, he would come in and ask, ‘How many Fridays are we at?’ Apparently helping wasn’t enough. He needed a scoreboard.”
Lily almost smiled.
“He wasn’t competing with anyone,” Mrs. Patel added.
“No,” I whispered. “He would’ve competed with himself.”
“Exactly.”
I looked down at the card again.
Sixteen names.
Then I noticed something on the back.
Different handwriting.
Newer ink.
Numbers one through seventeen.
I looked at Lily.
She went very still.
“You wrote these?”
“Yeah.”
“Seventeen people?”
She nodded.
“This summer.”
I looked at Michael’s sixteen names on the front.
