Chapter 20: Brannigan Family

On Saturday I took Trudy to the diner for lunch, and Dalton came with the diaper bag.

His mother had asked us. She had asked on the phone, and her voice had been small.

"I want to do something right," she'd said. "I don't know what yet."

The Brannigan wall hung beside the register.

It ran from the pie case to the coat hooks, with fifty years of photographs in mismatched frames.

Each one had a little printed card underneath.

My wedding picture hangs there, and Dalton's father in his Army uniform.

Dalton's grandmother is there, holding the first pie ever sold.

I stopped in front of it with Trudy on my hip, because there was a new frame in the middle.

It was a studio portrait on thick cream paper.

A baby with sandy hair that stood up in the back sat on a white fur rug, laughing at someone off the edge.

His thumb was bent back against his fist.

The card underneath read, in gold script: Arlen Brannigan, our newest family member. Nine months.

I read it twice.

"Mom," Dalton said slowly. "Who hung this?"

Behind the counter, Dalton's mother set down the pie server.

She came around the counter and stood before the frame.

Her face closed, because she had been lied to again.

"A girl brought it in a gift bag this morning," she said. "She said Colette had dropped it off for the wall. It had a note."

"What did the note say?"

"It said, 'For the family.'"

The lunch crowd was thick that Saturday, because the story had gotten around, and half the town had come to see what we would do.

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