Chapter 24: Porch Light

I turned thirty on a Sunday in March, on my father's porch.

The snow had gone from the lawn.

The swing hung at the left end, with a new coat of paint on its chains.

I had asked for no party, and I got one anyway.

Marge had put a long table across the front of the house, made of two doors laid on sawhorses.

The forklift driver had carried it up the steps himself and told everyone about it.

Thirty-one people from the old packing floor stood on the porch and the lawn with paper plates.

Each of them had signed a share agreement on the first of the month.

Each of them had a hard hat on a hook in a warehouse of our own.

Porch Light Goods had its first order in the spring, and it was Callow's.

Mitch stood beside me at the rail in a plain gray sweater.

His coffee had gone cold in his hand.

"You've been staring at that chair for ten minutes," he said.

"I'm not staring."

"It's the one at the end."

It was empty.

I had set it there that morning.

I did not know if anyone would use it.

Louisa came up the steps in a green dress, with her arms full of paper bags.

"Mom just pulled up," she said. "She's been sitting at the curb for ten minutes with the lemon cake."

"Is she coming in?"

"I think she's working up to it."

"She doesn't have to."

"I told her that," Louisa said. "She said she'd like to."

She kissed my cheek.

Louisa paid her own rent now, on a one-bedroom with a bad window, and she had never looked happier.

She went to find a plate.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I took a quick look.

It was Trent, from a number I did not know: Happy birthday. I got a real lawyer.