Chapter 21: Her Terms

That night my mother put me on the long table in the dining room.

She lit no candles. She turned on one lamp.

My father sat at the far end, in a chair he had never sat in, with his hands flat in front of him.

His knuckles were blistered from the broom.

Bram leaned in the kitchen doorway. Nobody had asked him to leave.

"You wanted to talk," my mother said.

"I want you to tell me what you will do."

"No. I will tell you what I will do, and what I will not."

She set a folded sheet of paper on the table between them.

It was covered in her handwriting.

"I will not forgive you," she said. "You know that. It stays no. Don't ask me again."

"I understand."

"I will not sleep in our bed."

"No."

"I will not call you my husband in front of anyone."

"Paula..."

"And I will not let you speak at the river. You will stand there. You will not say a word."

My father nodded.

His lips moved without sound, and he nodded again.

"What will you do?" he asked.

"I will let you keep working at Plant 4. Under Dale. For nothing."

He did not argue.

"I will let you sit beside the boy's mother at the clinic. And every other mother, and every other boy. You will learn their names."

"I will."

"You will sign your forty-five percent into a fund."

"For whom?"

"Every worker the company ever cut. Not for me, and not for Bram."

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