Chapter 24: Burnt, But Mine

Jo's POV

The first Sunday in December, we ate dinner in a kitchen with a hole where the wine fridge used to be.

It was the same white kitchen on Linden Court, with the island long enough to park a truck behind.

The young couple who owned it had set up a card table in the middle of the room, because their dining table hadn't come yet.

Their baby slept in a car seat on the island, wearing a tiny knitted hat.

Caleb stood on a step stool with a tape measure in his teeth and a pencil behind his ear.

"Thirty inches," he said around the tape. "They want the new fridge on the left wall."

"Is that on the invoice?"

"It's on the invoice. Every line of it."

"Good."

"I priced it twice."

I laughed.

I had come straight from the bakery with flour on my forearms and three pies in a box.

My mother had said everyone was eating here, and nobody argues with my mother.

"This is a good house," the husband told my father, who had arrived with a toolbox he didn't need.

"It's a good house," Dad agreed. "My brother never deserved it."

"We heard."

"I hope you heard the version where I come out well."

"We heard the version with the notebook."

Dad looked pleased and embarrassed at once.

Mom came in behind him with a foil-covered pan, wearing a clean coat over her scrubs.

She was just off a night shift. Her eyes were tired and bright.

"I brought lasagna," she said. "Nobody touch the rolls."

"What rolls?" said Grandma.

She came through the front door last, on Dad's arm, wearing her second-best pearls and carrying a covered basket.

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