They Booked Four Seats Without Me, So I Booked One to California novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Table Bread

The family returns with stale croissants in a doggy bag and her sister destroys the first clothes Hanne ever bought for herself. Hanne stops fighting, and her father says her transfer needs his signature and he will not give it.

They came home on Wednesday night, four days after they left.

I was at the kitchen table with my boot on a chair, eating dry cereal.

Erik walked in first with a paper bag and tossed it across the table at me.

"Don't ever say we never think of you," he said. "That's from a three-star restaurant."

I opened it.

There were two croissants inside, hard and dry, with flour rubbed off on the paper.

They were at least three days old.

I had seen that restaurant on Linnea's account every night for four days.

She had posted lobster, a plate of foie gras, and ice cream in a glass bowl with gold leaf on top.

In one picture Erik's plate of foie gras sat pushed to the edge of the table with two bites gone.

These croissants were the bread basket.

Somebody had shoved them into the corner of a takeout bag, and Erik had carried them twelve hundred miles to give them to me.

"Thanks," I said. "But I don't need them."

I pushed the bag back across the table.

Erik's face went red.

"I carried those home for you, and you're saying you don't need them?"

Dad came in from the garage with his coat still on.

He looked at the bag, then at me, and his jaw set.

"Don't be so ungrateful, Hanne. Do you know what that meal cost? You should thank your brother."

He picked up the bag and put it down in front of me again, hard.

Erik stood behind him with a small, satisfied smile.

It was always like this.

Erik's one forgotten plate of foie gras was worth a dozen croissants, and Dad would still only ask how much I was wasting.

I picked up the bag.

"Fine," I said. "I'll eat them."

That was when Linnea came down the attic ladder, screaming.

She had a long navy coat in both arms.

It was the coat I had ordered the day after the hospital, with the money from my tin.

It had come that afternoon in a box, and I had hidden it in my trunk.

It fit.

It was the first thing I had ever owned that was cut for my own shoulders.

"Mom!" Linnea yelled. "Did you make Hanne a coat? You said I was the only one you sewed for!"

She shoved me with both hands.

I fell against the table leg and went down on the floor, and my palm scraped along the tile until it bled.

Mom came in behind her.

She looked at me on the floor and at the blood on my hand.

Then she looked away and put an arm around Linnea.

"Sweetheart, all my time goes to you," she said. "How would I have time to make a coat for your sister?"

Linnea sniffed and wiped her nose.

Then she looked at the coat, and her face brightened.

"Then I can have the wool. My dolls need winter outfits. Mom, cut it up for me."

"No," I said.

I got to my knees and grabbed the hem.

Linnea pulled the other way.

"I bought it with my own money. You can't do this."

I had wanted one thing.

I had wanted to arrive in California in a coat that fit.

Not one with the sleeves rolled up twice, and not one with the shoulders hanging off me.

While we pulled, Mom stepped between us.

She took the sewing scissors from the drawer by the stove.

She cut straight down the middle of the coat.

The wool opened with a short, dry sound.

The only new thing I had ever owned lay in two halves on the kitchen floor.

Mom looked down at me.

"This is what you get for fighting with your sister, Hanne," she said.

"You shouldn't be so ill-mannered."

I looked at the pieces of navy wool.

Then I looked at the three faces above me.

I was too tired to cry.

I stood up on my good foot, with the bag of old croissants in my bleeding hand.

"Fine," I said. "I won't fight her for anything anymore."

Linnea gathered the wool with a happy sound.

Mom wiped her hands on a dish towel.

Dad stayed where he was, with his coat still on.

"We should talk about something else," he said.

He took his phone out of his pocket and set it on the table with the screen toward me.

It was my email from the college.

"The transfer application came to my inbox as well, because of your financial aid," Dad said.

"They need a parent's income form signed. Mine."

He put the phone back in his pocket.

"I'm not signing it."

Nobody moved.

I looked at Mom, because she was a hospital executive, and she knew what that form meant.

She picked up her purse and walked out of the kitchen.

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