Chapter 24: Ms. Fairbanks, Your Chair

"Ask me in a year," Samson told her.

"That's too long," Maisie said.

"Then ask me in eleven months."

She thought it over and held out her little finger, and he shook it.

A year later, on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I stood in my own kitchen, burning the rolls.

It was a yellow house with a sagging porch.

Samson had bought the house for a Sorrell price and a Fairbanks signature, and we had argued about it for a month.

I still worked three shifts a week on the pediatric floor, and nobody there called me anything but Lena.

The doorbell rang.

I wiped my hands on a dish towel and went down the hall.

Becca stood on the porch in a good wool coat with a pumpkin pie in a white box.

The box had a dent in one corner.

"I held it too tight in the car," she said.

"It's the same dent."

"I know. I thought you'd like that."

We stood there for a moment on either side of the door.

She had come to the house many times since the hearing, always on a weekend, always with Maisie.

She had never gone past the front hall, and she had never once asked to.

I held out my hand for the pie.

"Come in," I said. "You're early. Eleanor hasn't criticized the table yet."

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