Chapter 23: Supper

Lena's POV

On Sunday I set a table under the live oaks in my grandmother's yard, and our small family sat down.

I looked around at every face.

For two years I had sat at a table of thirty-one and never once been sure of anyone's name.

The table was three card tables pushed end to end with a bedsheet over them. The chairs didn't match.

My neighbor sat at the head, because she had decided to.

She had brought chicken and rice in the same dish as before.

"Tell me how he liked it," she said to me, loudly, in front of Quinn. "I never got a straight answer."

"It's good chicken," Quinn said.

"That's what he told her in the garden. I heard about it."

"From who?"

"From everyone," my neighbor said.

Quinn's crew had come in a pickup, four men in clean shirts with their hair wet from the hose.

They carried a case of beer, two coolers and a folding table nobody needed.

The oldest one shook my hand twice.

"We've been hearing about you for two months," he said. "The man talks about nothing else."

"I do not," Quinn said.

"He asked me what a baby eats."

"I was being practical."

"She's two months old. She eats milk," the crew man said, to a roar of laughter.

My boss came with his wife and a bag of tiny toothbrushes, which he called the baby's first gift from the practice.

He had called me the morning after the gala.

"Carraway Realty sold our building to a bank last week," he said. "The bank likes my rent. Your chair's waiting whenever you want it."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Picked the Wrong Wife to Sacrifice for His Sister from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.