Stepping-Stone for Mia novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Highlandtown

The first crabs of the season came from Louisiana.

Tim's mother complained about the price the entire time she was dumping them on the table.

"Sixty dollars a dozen. Sixty! For Louisiana crabs! Your father would roll over."

"Dad would've paid eighty," said Tim's younger sister.

The table was in the backyard under a string of bulbs, covered in brown paper.

Everybody had a wooden mallet and a roll of paper towels.

My stitches had come out that week.

I had a pink line down my forearm and the full use of both hands for the first time in nineteen days.

I had no idea how to eat a crab.

I said so, and the entire table went silent.

"You're from Baltimore," Tim's older sister said. "You're a Harwood from Roland Park, and you've never picked a crab?"

"We had them at the club. Somebody else picked them."

"Oh, honey." She dragged her chair next to mine. "Give me your hands."

She taught me the apron and the back.

She showed me the devil's fingers, the lungs you don't eat, and flicked them into the grass.

"Now you crack the body down the middle. Like you mean it."

I cracked it.

"Look at that. Like a surgeon."

"I am a surgeon."

"Not this week, you're not. This week you're a crab picker." She handed me a mallet. "Claws. Go."

Across the table, Tim was watching me with a look on his face I didn't know what to do with.

His mother saw him watching.

So did his younger sister, who mouthed something at him that made him throw a crab shell at her head.

His niece, who was eleven and played shortstop, sat down on my other side.

"Uncle Tim says you got stabbed."

"Cut."

"By a guy whose wife died."

"Yes."

"Are you mad at him?"

I thought about Ronnie, crying with his cheek on the carpet.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Stepping-Stone for Mia from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.