He Told Me I Lost Our Baby, and Five Years Later I Met Him at His Door novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Thanksgiving

The first floor of the house on Savin Hill Avenue was a different place by Thanksgiving.

The walls were bare plaster, scrubbed and sealed, and the yellow linoleum was gone.

Under it we had found the old pine boards of the original kitchen, with the dark rings where a stove had stood a hundred years ago.

Nobody had put anything over them.

A table stood in the middle, a plain long one of new ash that Padraig had made in his garage in Quincy, with benches down the sides and two armchairs at the ends.

It sat ten.

I counted the places three times, because I could not believe it was only ten.

"It's small," Fintan said, from the bench.

He had been put to work laying out forks, and had taken it very seriously, one per plate, in a ruler line.

"It's the right size," I said.

"It's tiny. The other one had loads."

"The other one had thirty people who didn't like each other."

"I like everybody here," said Fintan. "Except the aunt."

"Fintan."

"Not the aunt. I mean the aunt's hat." He put a fork down very carefully. "It's got a bird."

My aunt from Worcester stood in the doorway in her good coat and her hat with the feather, and heard every word.

She had driven in that morning in a car that smelled of cat, with a pie in each hand.

She was seventy-one years old, and she had not been inside this house since my wedding.

She looked at the room.

She looked at the boy, and at me, and at the long scarred table, and her chin shook.

"It's a very fine hat," she told him. "It cost eleven dollars in a shop in Worcester. The bird's real."

"Is it dead?"

"It's very dead."

"Brilliant," said Fintan, with deep respect.

I put the pie on the counter and went to her, and she put both arms around me, hat and all.

She smelled of lavender and old coats.

"You look well," she said into my shoulder, fierce and wet. "You look like your mother."

"So do you," I said.

"Don't be daft. I look like a boiled owl."

"You look like a woman who's been waiting at a gate for five years," I said.

"I was," said my aunt, and let me go, and wiped her eyes on her glove. "I saw him, you know. In the green car. He sat outside the house every month. I never once told you."

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