Just Another Day

Morrie and Suzu Rydell are living with John Avery Whittaker, who insists that they write a letter to their father every week - Morrie types his, and Suzu seems to dictate hers behind her bedroom door. Through these letters, brother and sister tell the story of the same day in very different voices. Morrie says he is feeling more and more at home in Odyssey, while Suzu confesses that she is starting to feel unwelcome and disconnected.

On a Saturday morning, Whit sends the two of them to King's Hardware to pick up an order, promising that a second task will follow and hinting at a reward if they do the job well. He hands them money and asks for the change and the receipt back. At the store they meet the proprietor, Jay Fossil Rumpus, a gloriously odd man who mangles their names, calls the nuts and bolts "pecans and lightning flashes," and makes them answer a riddle before handing over the packages. He sends them off to Pastor Knox at Odyssey Community Church with the parting advice, "A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money." Suzu finds him annoying; Morrie likes him.

Pastor Knox, Whit's brother-in-law, explains their real job: assembling a plastic playhouse with a slide for the preschoolers, attached to posts in the far corner of the churchyard. He warns them not to try the slide until he has checked it, then hurries inside to teach a Bible study. When rain begins to sprinkle, Suzu refuses to work in it, but Morrie hauls the materials across the yard anyway. In his letter he marvels at something he has discovered in Odyssey: helping people just to help them, expecting nothing back, actually makes him happy - and the harder the job, the happier he gets. Suzu admits he is not the same Morrie he used to be.

During a break, Morrie checks the receipt and realizes Mr. Rumpus gave him fifteen cents too much change. Suzu thinks returning such a tiny amount is ridiculous, but Morrie, remembering the story of Abraham Lincoln walking miles to return six cents, insists it belongs to Mr. Rumpus and keeping it would be dishonest. Suzu waves him off with a jab: "Go do your little errand, Morrieham Lincoln." She stays behind with only a few bolts left to tighten. But when Pastor Knox brings out lemonade and oatmeal raisin cookies, she eats and drinks every bit, gets a terrible stomachache, lies down, and falls asleep without finishing the job.

At the store, Mr. Rumpus is comically outraged to be accused of giving too much change - then genuinely touched when Morrie hands the fifteen cents back and calls it simply the right thing to do. He declares Morrie an honest young man and gives him two small boxes, one for himself and one for Suzu, to be opened at home. Back at the church, Morrie wakes Suzu to a frightening sight: neighborhood kids are climbing all over the unfinished playhouse, and the loose slide is pulling away. They shoo the children off, but one little girl is trapped inside the tilting playhouse behind a jammed door. Pastor Knox and Suzu push the structure upright while Morrie climbs in and helps her out, and moments after everyone is clear, the whole playhouse crashes down. Morrie takes the blame, saying he should have checked that everything was done right before leaving, and Suzu, promising this time to do it right, helps him rebuild it from the ground up - with every nut and bolt tight.

At home, the boxes turn out to hold Whit's reward: half of a hinge for each of them, which together show a painted cardinal. Whit explains that "cardinal" comes from the Latin word for hinge, and that the day's tasks let them practice the cardinal virtues - prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance (though Suzu's temperance slipped a bit with the cookies). These are the virtues all the others hinge on, and the missing center pin, painted with a heart, stands for God's love, without which the virtues can't work as they should. He tops it off with pizza and ice cream. Morrie finds the gift corny but likes it; Suzu privately tells Morrie to keep both halves, and Morrie suspects she missed the point entirely.

Morrie closes his letter with love, wishing his busy father would write back. But Suzu's closing words reveal something else entirely: she has not been dictating a letter at all. She has been talking with a mysterious woman named Mrs. Meido, someone from her childhood whom she never blamed for whatever happened in the past. Suzu says it would be even better to see her in person, and Mrs. Meido answers with the story's chilling final promise: "Be patient. I'll see you soon."