The Graduation Trap novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: A Table for Six

I chose Thursday, because nothing had ever happened to me on a Thursday.

My mother's table seated four.

Sullivan found the leaf in the cellar, wrapped in a bedsheet, and it took him an hour to remember how it fit.

"Six," he said, standing back from it. "You've set the table for six."

"Seven would have been rude to the chairs."

The neighbors came first, at a quarter to seven.

The woman with the lawn chair brought a casserole and the man in the bathrobe brought a bottle, and he wore a jacket over the bathrobe.

"It's a compromise," he said.

Sullivan's mother arrived with her clipboard and moved every place card.

I let her.

Cynthia came at seven exactly.

I watched her from the kitchen window as she stood on the walk with a grocery-store pie in both hands.

She looked at the lemon tree in the front sill.

She looked at the porch light, and the door, and the number 41.

Then she did something I had not seen her do in all the years I had known her.

She knocked.

I opened it.

"Joanna," she said. "I did not know what to bring."

"A pie is fine."

"I bought it. I didn't bake it. I wanted to be honest."

"It's a very honest pie," said Sullivan, behind me, and took it out of her hands.

She almost smiled.

She came in over the hall rug and stopped at the table.

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