Next Time Away novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: Fourteen Places
On Christmas Eve, Soren's mother set her long table for fourteen, and none of the fourteen places was mine.
I knew because I walked in without knocking.
The front door was unlocked, which was how her house always was on Christmas Eve, and the whole family was already seated.
Candles, a ham, a green tablecloth, Soren at the head with Dagny on his right and Elsie on his left.
The sweaters were gone.
They were all in red now.
Nobody had saved me a chair.
I stood in the doorway in my long coat with one hand on my belly and the other in my pocket.
The room went quiet one cousin at a time.
"Tove," Soren's mother said, rising. "You're supposed to be resting. You look tired, dear."
"I'm resting on my feet tonight," I said. "This will only take a minute."
I walked to the middle of the table and took out the paper from my pocket.
It was the picture from my scan, folded in thirds.
I unfolded it and laid it on the green cloth between the ham and the potatoes.
A small gray profile, a nose, a fist against a cheek.
"That's your grandchild," I said to Soren's mother. "That's Elsie's cousin."
Fourteen faces looked at it.
"On Tuesday I went to a high-risk scan alone," I said. "My husband told me he had an emergency at work."
Soren put his fork down.
"At the same hour he stood in my living room in a matching sweater and had his picture taken with Dagny. Dagny posted it for everyone to see. Some of you liked it."
An aunt at the far end of the table looked down at her plate.
"Then I went home, and I found out they had taken the baby's nursery and given it to Elsie. They put my baby's crib in the garage, under a tarp, under a box of boots."
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