Plowed by My Stepfather novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: Sunday Dinner
"I need to hear it from you, Gretchen," the sheriff said, "so I can write that I heard it."
"Am I on that farm of my own free will?" I said. "Yes."
"Is Mr. DeJong living there with your say-so?"
"He's living there because I asked him to."
He wrote it down on a pad, slowly, and nodded.
"Then that's my report," he said. "Somebody phoned in a vulnerable woman held against her wishes."
"Do you know who?"
"Number came through a prepaid phone." He tucked the pad away. "I'm not stupid, but I'm not a miracle worker either."
He looked at Dean.
"My wife's making the ham for Sunday dinner at your place. Birdie told her it's happening. I'd bring a pie if I were you, Dean, and stay out of her way."
By Sunday noon, I understood that Birdie had called everyone in the county.
There were folding tables end to end in the yard, eleven of them.
There were nineteen casseroles, and the old man in the John Deere cap had brought a washtub of coleslaw.
The church-kitchen woman took over my mother's kitchen without asking, and I let her.
Birdie stood on a hay bale with a clipboard.
"Seating," she announced. "Nobody sits next to anybody they've fought with over a fence line."
"That's everybody," said the old man.
"Then sit by the potatoes," she said, and he did.
Dean stood at the end of the table in a clean shirt, with a pie in his hands, and nobody had told him where to sit.
The old man pointed a fork at him.
"Dean. What are your intentions with this girl?"
The yard went quiet.
"Honorable," Dean said.
"Shame," said the church-kitchen woman from the doorway, and the whole yard roared.
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