Chapter 22: Thanksgiving

My mother's kitchen in Scranton was eleven feet wide, and Geoffrey had been standing in it for four minutes.

He held a dish towel in both hands.

She stood at the sink with her back to him, scrubbing a roasting pan that was already clean.

I leaned in the doorway with a glass of cider and did not help.

"Mrs. Linden," Geoffrey said. "Before dinner, I need to tell you something."

"Mm-hm."

"Your daughter wasn't dating my cousin by accident. He picked her for a bet."

The scrubbing stopped.

"I was part of the bet," Geoffrey said. "I said the sentence that started it, and I knew about it for a month before I told her."

My mother turned around very slowly with her hands dripping.

She was five foot two and fifty-one years old.

She looked at him the way she looked at men who came to fix the furnace.

"Say all of it," she said. "In order."

He said all of it, in order, and he left out nothing.

He did not look at me once.

He did not soften a single part, not even the word "Fine."

When he finished, the kitchen was quiet except for the water.

My mother dried her hands on her apron.

"You could have kept your mouth shut," she said. "She'd never have known you were a part of it."

"She would have known. I'd have known."

"That isn't what I asked."

"No, ma'am. I could have."

"But you didn't."

"No."

She studied him a long moment.

"Miranda told me you were a professor," she said. "She didn't say you were an honest one."

"I'm still working on it."

"Good answer," my mother said. "Hold the gravy boat."

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