What We Choose novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Thanksgiving

The Penhallow house smelled like turkey and furniture polish and the cinnamon candle Mrs. Penhallow lit every holiday.

I knew that candle. Last Thanksgiving I'd peeled forty potatoes next to it.

Colter parked across the street at five to two.

"I'll come in," he said.

"Not this one." I unbuckled. "This one's mine."

He looked at me for a second, then turned off the engine.

He got out to lean on the car where I could see him from the window.

Kenna was already on the sidewalk, in a black turtleneck and her combat boots.

"I wore my funeral clothes," she said. "Felt right."

Mrs. Penhallow opened the door before we knocked.

She was in burgundy, with her pearls, and she kissed the air beside my cheek.

"Dessa. And your friend. How nice. Everyone's at the table."

Everyone was.

The four aunts. The uncles. Both cousins. The pastor and his wife, at the corner by the sideboard.

Mr. Penhallow sat at the far end of the table and didn't look up from his plate.

Nash was standing by his chair in a blue blazer, freshly shaved, with his hair still wet at the back.

He looked at my head. He made himself keep looking.

I gave him that. He'd practiced.

There was a chair pulled out beside him, with a little bouquet of white roses on the plate.

I didn't sit in it.

I stood at the end of the table by the window, with my planner under my arm.

Kenna stood next to me with her arms crossed.

"Well," the pastor said, kindly, to nobody. "Shall we say grace?"

"In a minute," Nash said.

He picked up his water glass and tapped it with a knife.

The aunts went quiet. Two of them already had their phones out, held low in their laps.

Nash came around the table to me.

Then he got down on one knee on his mother's rug.

He had the box in his hand. The same velvet one from my dorm room.

He opened it.

His grandmother's ring. One carat. Somebody had cleaned the champagne off it.

"Dessa," he said. "I know I hurt you. I know I made mistakes. I was scared, and I was stupid, and I've spent every day since trying to figure out how to be a better man."

Mrs. Penhallow pressed a napkin to the corner of her eye.

"After your surgery, I want to take care of you. I want to stand up at the club in June and show everybody I meant it." He held the ring up higher. "Marry me. Let me do this right."

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