What We Choose novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Christmas

Nobody on that plaza said a word to Mrs. Penhallow.

Mr. Penhallow came through the crowd from the back, where I hadn't even seen him standing.

He took his wife by the elbow.

She tried to pull free. He didn't let her.

He walked her off the plaza, past the cocoa table, past the crew, past the dark tree, and he didn't look at Nash once.

Nash stood alone in his new suit.

Then somebody's kid found the switch, and twenty feet of spruce lit up white over his head, and everybody clapped for the tree.

On Christmas Eve, Colter's top floor was full of people and had only four chairs.

His crew came at five.

The foreman and his wife came, and two framers, and a plumber who'd worked for him since the first house.

The youngest guy on the crew brought his mother, because she'd never seen the boss's place.

They brought beer and a ham and a tray of cookies with green sprinkles.

Kenna came at five thirty with a pot of gravy she'd made from scratch.

It was gray.

"It's supposed to be that color," she said.

"It is not supposed to be that color," the foreman's wife said, and took the pot away from her, and fixed it with flour and a fork while Kenna watched like a student.

I sat on the counter under the teapot wallpaper with a ginger ale.

Nobody asked about my head.

The plumber told a story about Colter falling through a porch roof in Southie, and the foreman said, "Which time?"

The youngest framer's mother asked me what I did for work, and I told her.

"Oh, good," she said. "Somebody in this house can count."

Colter carved the ham.

Every time he passed the counter he touched me. My knee. My wrist. The back of my neck.

He didn't seem to know he was doing it.

Everybody else did.

"Okay," Kenna said, after the ham, standing on a chair. "Presents. I'm first, because mine's the best."

It was a coffee mug that said CHEMO CHAMPION across the front.

On the back it said IT'S NOT THE LIGHTING.

I laughed so hard I had to put it down.

"How did you even know about that?"

"He tells me things," Kenna said, pointing at Colter. "We text. He's a very boring texter. I'm teaching him."

My present for Colter was a pair of fuzzy socks with cartoon hot dogs on them, men's size thirteen.

The crew lost their minds.

He put them on right there over his wool socks and walked around the kitchen in them.

The youngest framer took a picture he swore he'd frame on the job site.

Then Colter went into the bedroom and came back with something under a dish towel.

He set it on the counter beside me.

I knew the shape before he took the towel off.

My mother's sewing box.

The walnut had been oiled until it glowed. The cracked hinge was gone, and two new brass ones held the lid straight.

Inside, the lid had a new cedar lining, and every spool and needle was back where she'd kept it.

"Kenna let me in," he said. "Two weeks ago. I brought it back the same day. You didn't notice."

"I noticed it smelled nice," Kenna said.

I lifted the lid. It didn't stick. It hadn't opened that smoothly since I was a kid.

On the inside of the lid, in the cedar, he'd burned four small letters.

M.Q. for my mother. D.Q. under it.

I put my hand flat over the letters.

The kitchen had gone quiet.

The foreman's wife said, "Okay, everybody, coats," and herded the whole crew to the door like a sheepdog.

Kenna hugged me last.

"Do not cry on the box," she whispered. "He just oiled it."

Then she was gone too, down the outside stairs, singing.

The kitchen was a mess. Paper plates. The ham bone. The fixed gravy.

Colter started picking up plates.

"Leave them," I said.

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