Chapter 24: One Plate

"A full table," I had told Emmett on the landing. "With the door open."

That was all I wanted for New Year's.

On the last night of the year, I put the leaf in the table in 3B.

It was the first time in four years it had been out of the closet.

Emmett carried over his own chairs from across the landing, two at a time, and set them down with a thump.

"You have five chairs now," he said.

"I have five chairs."

"And a table that doesn't wobble."

"You fixed it."

"I shimmed it. It's not the same."

He leaned in and kissed me, quick and warm, on the corner of the mouth.

The oven timer rang.

I took out Grandma's green casserole dish, the one with the chip in the rim, and set it on the trivet.

Footsteps came up the stairs, heavy ones and light ones, and a voice that said, "Careful, Mom, it's slippery."

Tobias came in first, carrying a pie box in one arm and my grandmother's elbow with the other.

"I can walk, you know," Grandma said. "I've been walking since before you were born."

"I know, I know."

Behind them was Mom, in her good church cardigan, with a bag from the grocery store hanging from each wrist.

She stood in my doorway and looked in.

At the five chairs, and the five plates, and the candles, and the open door to 3A across the landing with a lamp on inside.

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