Chapter 13: The Toast

Dinner was at seven, and my mother set the dining room table with the good plates.

She had never done that for an ordinary Sunday in her life.

There were seven of us, and the chairs were crowded.

Drake sat diagonally across from me, past the roast and the green beans.

Dean sat beside him, scrubbed pink, wearing a collared shirt someone had lent him.

Before the meat was carved, Drake's father stood up and tapped his water glass with a butter knife.

"I'd like to say something," he said.

Dean froze with a roll halfway to his mouth.

"When Callie's mother and I got married, I worried the house would feel like two families stapled together."

He smiled at my mother, and she smiled back, a little tightly.

"Five years on, it feels like one. It's good to see it full again. So here's to the boys, and to their sister."

Nobody moved.

The word sat on the table between the potatoes and the gravy boat.

Dean made a small, strangled noise and drank half his water.

Finley patted him twice on the back, very politely.

Gabe stared at his plate and turned the color of the cranberry sauce.

"To family," my mother said, and raised her glass, and she looked straight at me.

Drake lifted his glass too.

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