Chapter 24: Sunday Table

Two men in gray coveralls carried Martha Draper's dining table up my front steps at noon on Sunday.

It was long and dark and older than I was, with eight chairs.

"Mind the door frame," Martha said, from the stoop. "It's the only table I have that has never heard a lie."

"Mother," Nolan said.

"I'm only saying."

They set it down in the middle of my kitchen, where my old table used to be.

The old one had gone to the curb on Friday.

Sonya and I had carried it out between us, and a man in a pickup truck had stopped to ask if it was free.

"It's free," Sonya told him. "It has a lot of history."

He took it anyway.

Now Martha walked a slow circle around the new table, running one finger along its edge.

"Good," she said. "You'll want a runner. Something green."

"I have a runner," Sonya said. "It's from a hospital fundraiser. It says Nurses Do It Around the Clock."

"Then we'll want a different runner."

I had to go and stand in the pantry for a minute so that nobody would see me laughing.

The check had cleared on Friday, too.

I had walked into the bank myself, in my purple scrubs.

I handed the teller a cashier's check for a hundred and eighty-four thousand dollars.

The sticky note was still stuck to the corner.

I had kept the note.

It was in the drawer with the recipe cards.

The gold ring sat in a saucer on the windowsill, in the sun, and it was only a ring.

Sonya had asked if I wanted to sell it.

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