Monday.
Shop till four, same as any Monday — quiet enough by two that I got through Aunty Deng's cousin's whole tea order without anyone else waiting behind her.
Home not long after. Kettle barely on before my daughter was at the table, HSC folder shut for once, actually looking up when I came in.
Asked her outright, what we're actually giving the tutor.
She started listing it off like she'd already worked it out somewhere in her head. Sunscreen. The roll-on too. Both from the Saturday order.
Had to remind her the Saturday order hasn't even landed yet. Checked the tracking again while she watched over my shoulder — still sitting at some depot, no estimate better than "this week."
She went quiet at that, properly deflated, like she'd already pictured handing both over.
Told her that's fine, we just wait, then, and get it to him whenever it lands — Thursday if we're lucky, the one after if we're not. He's not going anywhere.
She accepted it slower than I expected, for someone usually keen to have things settled and done with. Kept coming back to it while I was doing the dishes — asking whether we could wrap his separately, in something other than the little zip-lock bags the girls' ones went out in. Didn't want it looking like a leftover from someone else's order, she said.
Told her I'd sort out something better once it actually landed. She went quiet a second, then said, carefully, that it just felt different, giving one to a teacher. Didn't explain further than that.
Asked, careful, whether there was some particular reason we were suddenly this thoughtful about a maths tutor.
Went red at that. Properly red, halfway up her ears, which I haven't seen since she was about twelve. Said it wasn't like that. Said it exactly the way you say something that is, in fact, a little bit like that.
Didn't push it further. Didn't need to.
Thought about it properly once she'd gone back upstairs. His family's meant to be comfortable, from the little that gets said — still at home with his own parents, a house somewhere near the golf course. The kind of tutor who never once mentions his own life the whole hour and a half, not to a student, whatever else he might have going on. Wouldn't know the first thing about him either way, and neither would she, really.
Wrote it on the fridge anyway, in among the shopping list. "Tutor — sunscreen + roll-on, wrap properly, once it lands." Nothing more than that for now. Anything bigger can wait for after the HSC, once the two of them aren't sitting across a maths textbook from each other twice a week and there's less riding on getting it right.
Went back to the dishes. She went back to her folder. Neither of us said another word about it.
No idea yet whether the parcel makes it before Thursday, or the one after. Would find out whichever way the courier decides to play it.