Chapter 17: Fish Fry

The American Legion hall in Kellner smells like fryer oil, floor wax and a hundred years of wet wool.

On Friday at a quarter past six, every table in it was full.

Three hundred people sat under the paper poppies and the flag with their plates of perch and coleslaw.

When Maddie and I came through the door, the noise stopped.

It didn't drop.

It stopped.

I felt the room look at us, and I felt Maddie's hand find my sleeve.

"Perch first," she said under her breath. "If I'm doing this, I'm eating the perch."

"That's a plan."

At the head table beneath the flag sat Dee in her good pink suit, with the circle ranged on either side of her.

Brandon sat at her right in a navy blazer, looking like the groom on a cake.

Two place cards stood at the empty seats beside him.

One said HANNAH in Dee's loopy blue ink.

The other said MADDIE.

"We saved you a seat," Dee called, warm and clear, across forty feet of linoleum.

"Thank you," I said. "We have one."

I walked up the aisle, picked both place cards off the cloth, and put them in my cardigan pocket.

Brandon half rose.

"Han."

"These are good paper," I said. "I'll keep them."

Somebody at the next table laughed and turned it into a cough.

My mother sat on Dee's other side in her church coat, with her purse on her lap.

She had not taken the coat off.

Both of her hands were flat on the purse, and she did not look at me.

I walked back down the aisle to the table beside the pull-tab machine.

Sam was already there with three plates of perch.