For weeks, my daughter kept coming home with free ice cream from a man I’d never met. I thought he was simply being kind, until she repeated something he had said about me that she couldn’t possibly have known.
“Mom, the ice cream truck!”
Ellie shot toward the front door before I could put down the dish I was drying.
“Wait. You don’t have any money.”
She was already slipping on her sandals.
“I don’t need any.”
I stopped.
“What do you mean, you don’t need any?”
By the time I asked, my nine-year-old daughter was already outside.
Through the kitchen window, I watched her hurry toward the ice cream truck parked near the end of our street.
Something about it bothered me.
Because this wasn’t the first time.
For about two weeks, Ellie had been coming back inside with ice cream even though I knew she hadn’t taken any money with her.
