Chapter 14: The Lake House

I picked up Garrison's paper and read the statement under the figure.

It said I had trapped a drunk man in a chapel to get ahead at his company.

"No," I said.

"Take a day," said Garrison, still smiling. "Your father has until the end of the month in any case."

He touched the brim of an imaginary hat to my father and walked out.

My father stood very still behind the counter.

"Kid," he said. "I don't want you signing that for me."

"I know, Dad."

"I mean it. I'd rather sell the building."

"You're not selling the building."

Declan stepped out from between the shelves, and my father looked at him.

"You came to carry soil," he said. "Now you look like you want to carry the whole store."

"I'd like to," said Declan.

"Don't," I told him. "Not yet."

That night Dorothea held dinner at the brick house in Bexley, and she invited everyone.

She put my father at her right hand in the good chair.

A man who kept a store open for thirty-one years deserved it, she said.

Bea sat across from him with her boots under the table and a roll in each hand.

"Mr. MacAuley," Bea said, "you taught me to solder when I was fourteen."

"You burned the bench."

"I burned one corner of the bench."

"She's a menace," my father told Dorothea fondly.

"Good," said Dorothea. "I only like menaces."

For an hour the table was loud and warm.

Dorothea told the story of the golf cart on the garage roof.

Declan said it was a hill.

Dorothea said it was a roof, and my father said he believed her.

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