That was almost a year ago now.
Kaylee turned seventeen last month. We had the party at the house. Just family this time. Joanne. Frank and Carol. A couple of girls from the softball team.
I bought a strawberry cake from the grocery store. She made me light the candles twice because the first time I counted wrong.
Before she blew them out, she looked down the table at everybody. At her grandparents. At her aunt. At me.
“Last year,” she said, “I wished for somebody to hear me.”
She smiled.
“This year, I just want everybody to keep listening.”
Then she blew out all seventeen candles in one breath.
The trust is still at First National. $322,000 now. Harlan Pruett sends me a statement every quarter, and Kaylee and I sit at the kitchen table and read it together, line by line. She wants to study nursing at Texas Tech, like her mother almost did before she switched to teaching. The trust will cover all four years and then some.
“Mom planned for this,” Kaylee said, tapping the balance with her finger. “Didn’t she.”
“She planned for everything,” I said. “Except me being stupid.”
“You weren’t stupid, Dad.” She put her hand over mine. “You were tired. And you came home.”
The parent unit sits on my nightstand now, beside my alarm clock and my wedding picture with Amy.
Some nights, I turn it on.
Mostly I just hear her moving around. Turning pages. Laughing at something on her phone. Once, I heard her practicing a speech for English class four times in a row, and I almost knocked on her door to tell her the third one was best.
But most nights, right before she falls asleep, I hear her humming.
It’s the same song her mother used to hum when she rocked her in that pale yellow room. An old Patsy Cline song Amy loved. I never once told Kaylee about it. She was too little to remember.
But somehow, she knows it.
I lie there in the dark and listen, with the volume turned all the way up.
That’s enough.
That’s more than enough.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.