Small Acts
For Exercise

For Exercise

August 25, 2026 · Part 10 of 10 · 2 min

Warren let her pull him up onto the porch steps, the whole street still gathering below — Yolanda coming out in her robe, hand pressed over her mouth; Micah standing frozen at the edge of the driveway, twenty-dollar bill probably still in some drawer upstairs; a dozen neighbors he'd have sworn, three weeks ago, barely knew his name.

Junie planted herself in front of him, serious in the particular way only a seven-year-old delivering important news can be serious.

"I didn't just draw you because of the project," she said. "I drew you because I already knew. About the job. Micah told me two nights ago. I made him. I said I wasn't a baby and I could keep a secret same as him."

Warren looked past her at Micah, who shrugged, guilty and unrepentant at once.

"She kept bugging me," Micah said. "I figured she should know the truth instead of a story."

"So I did the drawing on purpose," Junie said, "so if anybody ever found out for real, they'd know you weren't a dad who lost his job. You were a dad who walked us two miles every single day instead of complaining about it. That's what I wanted people to know first."

Warren didn't trust himself to answer that either, so he pulled both his kids in against him on the porch steps, and Yolanda crossed the lawn and folded herself into it too, and for a moment the four of them just stood there while half of Cedar Hollow watched from the sidewalk, most of them pretending very hard to be checking their phones.

Denby cleared his throat eventually. "Shop opens Monday, Locke. Try not to be late."

"I won't drive," Warren said, and it came out almost like a joke, except he meant it. "Two miles each way. Good for the heart."

That got a laugh out of the whole street, the first easy laugh Warren had heard aimed at him instead of around him in a month.

They still walked to school the next morning — Junie counting mailboxes, Micah a half-step ahead now instead of ten paces back, Warren carrying both backpacks out of habit more than need. The car sat in the driveway the whole day, keys in the bowl by the door, because some mornings, he'd decided, a family should get to choose the long way home for no reason except that they liked it.

It really was good exercise. It just wasn't only that anymore, and it never really had been — it had always been a father doing the only thing he had left to give his children when everything else ran out: showing up, every morning, on foot, for exercise, and for them.

The end You've finished For Exercise.

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