Daisy Tucker and Mr. NYC novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Barn

On the second Saturday of April, the grass came up green in my mother's pasture, and the barn doors stood wide open to it.

My father had swept the barn floor four times.

He had hung white lights from the rafters and set out sixty folding chairs.

He had put hay bales along the walls with quilts on them for latecomers.

The night crew had come on a rented bus, thirty-one of them in their good clothes.

Now they sat in rows and stared at the horses.

A horse stared back.

The chairwoman sat on a hay bale in a navy dress and her pearls, with a pillow under her.

Amos sat in the front in his wheelchair, in his green cardigan, holding a handkerchief he did not need yet.

Rhoda stood beside the arch of branches in a lavender suit, chewing a mint.

She had said, "I'm not wearing a dress, kid. I'm wearing a suit that looks like a dress."

Rhodes waited under the branches in a dark suit, a white shirt and a pair of brown boots with a lot of use in them.

They were the hired man's boots.

My father had given them to him.

"Keep 'em," he'd said. "They fit you now."

I waited at the back of the barn in my mother's dress.

I had taken it in at the waist myself, and let it down at the hem for my boots.

My father stood next to me with his hat in his hand.

It was shaking.

"You look like her," he said.

"Daddy."

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