What We Choose novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Sunday Dinner

Nash

My mother set the table for fourteen and put Dessa's place card next to mine.

She'd had them printed for the engagement party in May. She still had a box of them.

"She'll sit there," Mom said, "and you'll hold her hand during grace, and your aunts will take pictures."

"Mom."

"You're going to marry that girl after her surgery." She lined up a fork with her finger. "In June, at the club, like we planned. The deposit's paid. People will say what a man you were, to stand by her."

"She's not going to marry me."

"She has no family, Nash. She has no money now that her account's empty."

I didn't tell her Dessa had emptied it herself.

"She'll come back for the quilt," Mom said. "And then she'll stay for dinner, because she has manners. And then she'll remember who sat with her."

I hadn't sat with Dessa once.

Colter Gannon had. My mother's friend had filmed him in the background of her post, holding a ginger ale.

The video had nine thousand views. Half the comments asked who the big guy was.

My father came in from the porch and looked at the place cards.

"Leave the girl alone."

"Don't start."

So he didn't.

He never did.

The quilt was over the back of the living room couch, folded so the good side showed.

Blue and yellow squares. Dessa's mother made it the year before she died, Dessa told me once, in hospice, square by square.

I used to think it was ugly.

At five fifteen the whole family was at the table. My aunts and uncles. Two cousins. The pastor and his wife.

At five twenty the doorbell rang.

I got there first.

Dessa was on the porch in a green sweater, with her hair loose. She'd lost more weight. Her face had gone sharp.

She looked better than she had in months.

That made me angry, and I didn't know why.

Behind her stood the bartender friend, with her arms crossed.

And behind both of them, at the bottom of my parents' steps, leaning on a black SUV, was Colter.

"You brought my boss to my mother's house."

"He drove," Dessa said. "Kenna's car is in the shop."

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