My Father Gave the King His Youngest Daughter, and My Sister Chose Which One novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Chair at the Head
The Sunday lamb was at the Iriondo house on the Bench, at the same long table, under the same chandelier, on the same white cloth.
I had asked for it.
I told the cousins to come, and the crew, and the outfit heads, and I told Garazi to bring the bread.
The dining room smelled of garlic and roasted pepper.
It no longer smelled of fear.
I stood at the sideboard with a coffeepot in my hand, in the green dress, with a thin gold ring on my finger.
A black felt hat lay on the cloth at the head of the table.
I had put it there myself.
Ximun had come in behind me and not known where to set it down, so I had taken it out of his hands.
"You sit there," I had said.
"Why?" he had said.
"Because I'm telling you to."
He sat.
He sat at the head of my father's table with his hat on the cloth, and nobody said a word about it.
The man with the gray mustache sat halfway down in a clean white shirt, with his wife.
The drivers sat with their families.
The old man who owned half a county had brought four grandchildren and a pie.
Garazi sat on Ximun's right with her rosary around her wrist and a plate of lamb she did not touch.
My middle sister's voice came out of a phone propped against the pepper bowl.
She was on her night shift in Spokane, in a hospital hallway, with a monitor beeping behind her.
"Can you hear me?" she said.
"I can see the whole table.
"Is that a hat?"
"It's his hat," I said.
"Amaia, you look so well."
"I'm very well," I said.
"Eat something."
"I'm on break," she said.
"I'll eat in a minute."
There were two empty chairs.
One was my father's, at the foot of the table.
I had not set a place for him.
He was eating in a boarding house on the Block that Ximun's cousins had found, on a small monthly sum I had set myself.
A boy brought him his dinner, and nobody told him what to say.
I had not forgiven him, and I did not expect to.
He had sent me a letter in his own hand, and I had put it in a drawer unopened.
The other empty chair was Idoia's.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of My Father Gave the King His Youngest Daughter, and My Sister Chose Which One are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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