Ruin Me, Daddy novel · Chapter 23 of 32

Chapter 23: Thanksgiving

I didn't make her beg.

Thanksgiving morning I drove out with a pecan pie on the passenger seat and Marlee holding it steady with both hands.

"It's sliding," she said.

"It's not sliding. The car pulls left."

"So you admit it."

The farmhouse chimney was going. Somebody had swept the porch.

Forrest opened the front door before I knocked, in a dish towel and his blue flannel, with flour on one forearm.

"You came," he said.

"Lettie threatened me."

"She threatened me too." He took the pie out of Marlee's hands like it was a baby. "Kitchen's that way. I need somebody who can read my wife's handwriting."

The recipe card was taped to the cabinet above the stove.

Cornbread dressing, in faded blue ink, with a grease spot over the sage.

"Two cups or three?" he asked.

I leaned in close to read it. He leaned in too.

"Three," I said. "She crossed out the two."

"She always did that."

His shoulder was against mine. Neither of us moved it.

Marlee stood in the doorway eating a raw cranberry out of the bag.

"I'm going to go help Lettie," she said loudly. "Somewhere else. Far away."

The kitchen got very quiet after she left.

The oven ticked. The turkey smelled like butter and pepper.

"You've got flour on you," I said.

"Where?"

I took his wrist and turned his arm over and brushed it off with my thumb, slowly, from his elbow down.

He stood very still and let me.

"Jessa," he said, low.

"I'm helping."

"You're not helping."

I laughed and let go. My face was hot, and it wasn't the oven.

By two the table was full.

Lettie at the head, in a sweater with a turkey on it she swore was ironic.

The bottling supervisor and his wife. The gift-shop woman, with a green bean casserole.

And the diner woman from the counter, in her quilted vest.

She ate Thanksgiving alone at the diner every year, so I'd asked her myself.

She sat next to Marlee and asked her what a sound engineer did, and Marlee told her for twenty minutes.

"So you make the breathing louder," the old woman said.

"Basically."

"God bless you, child."

Forrest carved. He didn't sit until everyone had a plate.

He sat next to me. Lettie had done place cards again.

Lettie stood with her glass.

"I'm thankful for my granddaddy's potato face," she said. "And for four hundred people who didn't look at my nephew. And for this one." She pointed at me. "Who talks too nice to be from the South End."

"I'm thankful for Lucky Charms," Marlee said.

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