Chapter 6: Beans

Joyce's text came at seven the next morning, and Kent read it to me in my kitchen with his coffee going cold.

"Sunday dinner at two. Bring Carrie. Bring the boy. We are all adults."

"I'm not bringing Eli," I said.

"I wouldn't let you."

"I'm going, though."

He looked up. "Why?"

"Because she took my picture last night and she's going to want to show me."

He winced. "Carrie, I'm so sorry about..."

"Don't be sorry in front of her," I said. "Be loud."

The Irwin house on Chestnut Street had a wraparound porch, a flagpole, and a dining room with a table for twelve.

Joyce sat at the head of it in her church cardigan.

Kent's father sat at the foot, a gray-faced man with big hands who nodded to me once and said nothing.

Two women who had to be Joyce's sisters flanked the roast, both of them fanning themselves with the same church bulletin.

Joyce had laid my place setting herself.

Beside the plate lay one glossy photograph.

It showed a pickup truck under a dead streetlight, with two shapes in the cab and the windows fogged white.

"I thought you'd want a copy," she said.

"I do," I said. "My boyfriend of one night is going to want that framed."

One of the aunts coughed into her hand.

Joyce didn't blink.

"Is this how you raise a child, dear? In a vehicle at midnight, with a man who was engaged on Friday?"

"He's not engaged anymore. You'd know that if you hadn't parked outside my house to find out."

"That's enough, Mother," Kent said.

"I'm only asking what the judge will ask."