Chapter 18: The Families

My mother opened the diner door and held it with one hip.

"Inside," she said. "Both of you."

She handed Drew a clean dish towel and me another, and she did not say one word about what she had seen.

Drew dried his face and stood very still by the coat hooks.

"Mrs. Haverty," he said.

"Mr. Colburn, I'll talk to you on Sunday."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Go home before your father sends the grader out for you."

He went, and he looked back at me once from the truck.

My mother waited until the taillights were gone.

Then she took the notice of claim off the counter, held it over the wastebasket, and put it back on the counter.

"Not yet," she said. "Tomorrow, I want you to write down every family on that page."

On Sunday after church, the Dry Creek Diner was shut to everyone but nine families.

My mother had put out every table she owned, and she had baked eleven pies.

Nobody asked who the other two were for.

The parents sat stiff in their church clothes, and their kids sat beside them with their eyes on the tablecloths.

Brent was there with his mother, who had a tissue balled in her fist.

Tegan was there too, in her wheelchair at the head table, with her father standing behind her.

Drew sat by the register, alone, as my mother had told him to.

At the door stood the dispatcher from the county line, a gray-haired woman I had only ever heard on the phone.

My mother had asked her to come.

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