Chapter 12: Hello, Dad

I set the table for six on Sunday, with my grandmother's good plates.

Bernice had come at noon to help, and she carried in a roast and two pies.

"Whose plate is that?" she said, and nodded at the sixth place.

"Hers," I said, and set the envelope with the photograph face down at the head of the table, where my husband always sat.

Bernice looked at it and said nothing.

Luke came at four and stood in the doorway of the dining room with his hands behind his back.

He had cut his hair, his shoulders set with grim resolve.

"Where's Dad?"

"Washing up in the barn. He'll be in at five."

"And Shelby?"

"At six. She said six."

Teddy was on the porch swing with his crayons and his sore hand tucked against his chest.

He had been drawing all afternoon.

I had stopped to look at the page twice, and each time I found a different snake.

At twenty to five I heard a car on the gravel.

I knew it before I turned.

A small white car pulled up behind Luke's, and Shelby got out with a white bakery box held in both hands.

She had come an hour and twenty minutes early.

I was in the kitchen with oven mitts on my hands, and she was already crossing the yard.

I went to the screen door and stopped.

Shelby had set the box down on the porch rail.

She was crouched in front of the swing, with her scrub-blue cardigan folded over her arm, so that her face was level with Teddy's.

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