I'm Done Being the Family Joke novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: You Light It

On Sunday I knocked on Peg's door at ten, and she let me in and shut it behind me.

Her kitchen smelled of coffee and lavender soap.

"Sit," she said.

I sat at the table with my hands flat on the oilcloth.

She stood at the stove for so long with her back to me that I thought she had forgotten I was there.

"Gran. What did you want to ask me?"

"I wanted to tell you something." She turned around. "And I can't."

"Can't?"

"Not yet." Her thin hands were knotted together. "Your father has a new piece of metal in his heart that hasn't had a week to settle. If I say what I mean to say, I might be putting him in the ground."

"What is it?"

"It's about the night of the fire."

My mouth went dry.

"I won't say it twice," she said. "I'll say it once, to the people it belongs to. You, and the Ockenden boy. When Russ is on his feet, and not before."

"Cal? Why Cal?"

"Because he's owed it, too."

I stared at her.

"Gran, I left that heater on."

Peg's face did something complicated, and then went still.

"Don't say that to me, Della," she said, very gently. "Not today. I can't bear it today."

She would not say anything else.

She sent me home with a loaf of banana bread, and I sat in the truck with it in my lap until my hands stopped shaking.

The Elk Fork New Year's dance has been held in the Grange hall for sixty years.

There are paper streamers on the ceiling and a band from Casper, and a long table of pies.

I wore the black dress again, with a wool shawl over my shoulders until I was inside.

Cal drove.

"You don't have to come," I had told him.

"I know." He had looked at me over the truck door. "Do you want me to stay home?"

"No."

"Then I'm coming."

When I took off the shawl at the coat rack, the room did what the feed store had done.

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