My Not-Yet Mate and the Thirty-Day Trial novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Harvest Supper

The harvest supper fell on Saturday, day twenty-five, and the Grange hall smelled like roast squash and woodsmoke.

Long tables ran down the middle under strings of orange lights.

I wore a cream blouse and a brown corduroy skirt, and Joss wore a clean pressed shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.

His hand rested on my knee under the table.

I had been aware of that hand for an hour.

Emmett Varney stood at the head table and said grace in four sentences, the way he always does.

When the amens ended, a chair scraped at the table by the coffee urn.

Keeley Orrell stood up in a white dress, with her ponytail high and a folded napkin in her hand.

"Emmett," she said. "May I say a word about the Thirty?"

The hall went still.

Emmett looked at her for a moment.

"Briefly."

"Of course."

She turned to face the room, and her voice was warm and carried well.

"Tomorrow is day twenty-six."

Forks went down on plates all along the tables.

"Most of you were in this room five years ago."

"Some of you were in the Keeper's kitchen."

She smiled around the hall.

"I don't blame anyone for being curious. I'm curious myself."

Beside me, Joss went rigid.

I laid my hand over the one on my knee.

"I only want to say," Keeley went on, "that if tomorrow goes the way it went for me, nobody needs to be embarrassed."

"Dr. Dunnaway is very nice. I'd hate for her to be alone in a kitchen at six in the morning."

She looked at Joss.

"You know where I'll be. I always forgave you. I still do."

A murmur ran across the hall.

She had put it very well.

She had taken the worst thing he ever did and dressed it up as kindness.

The pity she offered was meant to be seen.

I stood up.

I had not planned to.

My chair went back on the floorboards with a bang.

"Keeley."

"Dr. Dunnaway."

"He told me himself, Keeley. Before you stood up."

I looked at the faces.

Many of them were people whose animals I had delivered, and whose hands I had held at funerals.

"You are not the only one in this room who gets to be angry about it."

"You deserved to hear it sooner," I said. "But what he told you was true."

Keeley's face went very white.

"Sit down," someone said, low, near the back.

It was not Dena.

Dena said, loudly, "Yes, please do."

Joss stood.

He rose slowly, as he does everything, and set his napkin on the table.

He did not look at me.

He looked down the length of the hall at Keeley, and he said it in the voice he uses to give the crew their orders.

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