Stepping-Stone for Mia novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Sunday

June was heavier than I expected.

She was warm and damp from the heat, and she smelled like baby powder and the inside of a car.

She looked up at me with Kelly's round face and frowned.

Then she grabbed a fistful of my hair.

"She remembers you," Kelly's mother said.

"She was five weeks old."

"She remembers your hair."

Ronnie came down the steps and stood next to us.

He didn't take June back.

He just stood there in his tight suit, looking at his daughter in my arms, and wiped his face with the back of his wrist.

"Sunday," Tim's mother announced behind us, to the whole courthouse. "Crabs. My yard. All of you. I'm not asking."

That Sunday, her backyard was full.

The brown paper covered two tables pushed end to end.

The crabs were from the Chesapeake now, heavy and full, and she complained about the price anyway.

"Seventy-two dollars a dozen. In August! In Maryland!"

"Ma, you bought four dozen," said Tim's younger sister.

"Because we have company!"

We did.

The night shift came, all four, still teasing the youngest about the pancake order.

Ronnie came in a clean T-shirt with June strapped to his chest in a carrier.

Kelly's mother brought potato salad and a folding chair.

Tim's niece made Ronnie play catch with her in the alley. She informed him that he threw like an HVAC guy.

"I am an HVAC guy," he said.

"That's why."

Tim's older sister sat next to me and watched me pick a crab without help.

I did the apron, the back, the devil's fingers, all of it.

I cracked the body down the middle.

She didn't say anything. She just reached over and put an extra claw on my pile.

At the end of the table, the night nurse was telling Tim's mother about the board.

"Tuesday or Wednesday," she said. "Nobody'll tell us. We've got two thousand and six signatures."

"And the brother?"

"Still in his office. The hospital says it's waiting on the State's Attorney."

Tim's mother made a noise I'd only ever heard from her at umpires.

Around eight, the bulbs came on over the yard.

June fell asleep on Ronnie's chest in the middle of a sentence about the Orioles.

Tim stood up and held out his hand to me.

"Walk with me."

We went out the side gate and down the alley, away from the noise.

The rowhouses glowed on both sides. Somebody's radio had the game on.

Tim stopped under a streetlight two doors from his own house.

"Philadelphia called you this week," he said.

"The director left a message. I haven't called back."

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