"What's the third thing? " he said. Hershel picked up a root beer and opened it and sat down at the kitchen counter like a man who had been coming into this kitchen for years instead of 4 days. The Nguyen family, he said, Linda Nguyen, the woman who cried when they left. Kesha Patterson tracked her down in Houston for the article. You see that part?
Daniel had not read the full article. He had read the summary Andrea had given him and had specifically avoided the parts that contained details about specific families because he knew those details would sit in him the way certain things sat in him heavily and for a long time. No, he said. Lyndon called Margaret Patterson this afternoon. Hershel said she read the article.
She said she cried when she read it and she said paused. He was choosing his words carefully. more carefully than he usually did, which told Daniel something about the weight of them. She said she wanted to come to the meeting Friday, if that was okay. The kitchen was quiet. Maya had stopped writing.
She was looking at Hershel with the focus attention of a child who has learned to understand adult conversations by listening to the pauses. She wants to come back, Daniel said. She wants to be heard, Hershel said. There's a difference. I think Daniel stood with his dish towel in his hands and thought about Linda Nguyen crying on the phone to Margaret Patterson about all the people posting me too on a Facebook group at midnight about the six families who had moved in and moved out of this street in 15 years that Hershel had mentioned once in passing and that Daniel had filed away because he filed everything away.
She's welcome, Daniel said. Anyone who wants to come is welcome. Hershel nodded. He drank his root beer. You know what you're building, right?
Hershel said. Friday night. You know what that is. I know what I'm trying for. Daniel said.
It's going to be messy. Hershel said. People who've been quiet a long time and people who've been wrong a long time and people who are both at once all in one backyard. He looked at Daniel. You ready for that?
I spent 23 years in rooms exactly like that. Daniel said just with worse furniture. Hershel laughed. Really laughed. The sudden real kind.
Maya grinned without looking up. Thursday moved fast and strange. Daniel's press statement had held the line with local outlets. The national outlets had respected Andrea's declined comment. But the internet had its own momentum.
And by Thursday morning, the Sycamore Drive story had become something larger than anyone street. A conversation about assumption and belonging and who gets to feel at home where playing out in comment sections and editorial pages and radio call-in shows across Texas and beyond. Daniel did not read the comment sections. He had Andrea read them and give him a summary which she did in the form of a daily three sentence briefing that she delivered with the clip precision of someone who had made peace with the impossibility of the task. Thursday's briefing.
60% supportive of your response. 20% angry at Victoria. 10% angry at you for not being angrier at Victoria. 10% various. One op-ed in the Dallas Morning News calling you a model of deescalation.
One op-ed in a conservative outlet calling the whole thing overblown. Three people on Twitter have strong opinions about your truck. What kind of opinions? He said. positive. She said they like that it's old.
He thought about Maya saying it's our truck. He thought about the bumper sticker on the back that he had not gotten around to reading himself since he'd had the truck for 12 years and knew what it said. It said, "Be the thing you're looking for. " Susan had put it there. He had never removed it. He had never intended to.
Thursday afternoon, he did something he had planned since Monday, but had needed the week to build toward. He drove out of the department at 3, picked up Maya, and instead of going home, drove across Oakridge, not to any specific destination, just through it, through the neighborhoods that Morris had identified as underserved, through the streets that had different zip codes and different economics, and the same sky above them as Sycamore Drive, and the same human beings living under it. Maya sat in the passenger seat and looked out the window and asked him questions the way she always did not the filtered diplomatic questions of children who had been told to be careful. But the direct, curious, slightly inconvenient questions of a child who had been raised in a house where questions were treated as the beginning of something rather than the end. Why does that park look different from ours?
She said. He looked at the park, less maintained, older equipment. One bench with a broken slat that had been broken for what looked like a while. Because this neighborhood has fewer resources, he said. Why?
Because of how cities spend money and how they decide who gets what. Who decides that? A lot of people, he said. Eventually, people like me. She looked at him.
Then you should fix that park. I'm working on it. He said, "How long will it take? " "Longer than it should, " he said honestly. She considered this with her characteristic serious thoroughness. "Okay, " she said.