And she held it out. The same way she had at the Walmart.
“Ma’am,” she said. “Is this yours?”
Vanessa took the ring.
She put it back on her finger.
She pulled Ellie into her arms and cried into her messy hair. Ellie let her. Ellie patted her back the way I pat Ellie’s back when she has bad dreams.
“There, there,” Ellie said. “You got your treasure back.”
Danny had the surgery in December.
The fund paid for it. I signed the papers myself, in David Reyes’s office in Kansas City. Vanessa argued with me for three weeks. I didn’t budge.
“My daughter’s name is on that money,” I told her. “Her name is going on this check.”
David wrote it out. Thirty-eight thousand dollars. Payable to Children’s Mercy Hospital.
On the memo line, I made him write: For Danny. From Lisa and Tom.
