The Silence Between Us: A Vow to Return novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: The Dinner Harold Owed
The dining room in Lake Forest seated twelve, and on Sunday night it was set for six.
Margaret stood at the head of the table in navy silk, with her hand on the back of a chair.
She had moved Harold's chair.
It wasn't at the head anymore.
It was halfway down the left side, with a cushion on it and a blanket folded over the arm.
"Sit, Harold," she said.
He came in slowly on Nathan's arm, thin in a gray cardigan, with a cane he plainly hated.
He saw the chair, and the head of the table, and the empty one at his right.
"Margaret."
"The head is empty," she said. "Nobody sits at it tonight."
He sat where she told him.
I sat on the other side with Nathan beside me, and Kendra took the chair across from me, in the gray sweater, with her hands in her lap.
Margaret sat last.
She did not take the chair at Harold's right hand.
She walked past it, around the corner of the table, and sat at the far end between Kendra and me, and put her napkin on her knee.
Harold watched her do it.
"That's not where you sit," he said.
"It is tonight."
The housekeeper brought soup and left without a sound.
Nobody touched it.
Harold laid both hands on the cloth.
The two fingers tapped once, then lay still.
"I have something to say," he said. "I'd like to say it before anyone speaks."
"Then say it," Margaret said.
He looked at Kendra first.
"Your mother was twenty-three when she came to work for me," Harold said. "She was the best bookkeeper I ever hired, and she was kind, and I was a coward."
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