At My Daughter's Baby Shower, My Husband Gave My Place to My Best Friend novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Just the Chair

Tom Harlan came back on Thursday with a rocking chair in the bed of his truck.

I had slept in the barn for four nights by then.

I had put the clinic file in the metal cabinet with my mother's will and had not let it out of my sight for more than an hour.

"It's my wife's," he said, lifting the chair down by its arms. "The left arm has a crack, and the seat spindles are loose. I'd like it fixed so I can sit in it without hearing it creak."

"Is it your wife's?"

"It was. She passed four years ago."

"I'm sorry."

"I don't say it so people will be sorry," he said. "I say it so you know why I'm carrying a chair."

I looked at him.

He was not a talker.

Today his grey hair was freshly cut, and his canvas jacket had a fresh pocket sewn on one side, crooked, in dark thread.

I decided not to ask who had sewn it.

He set the rocker on my bench.

It was cherry, worn pale where hands had rubbed the arms for decades.

"Her mother's," he said. "My wife sat in it every evening, even at the end."

I ran my hand over the cracked arm.

"I can mend this," I said. "It won't look new, and it won't look broken. It will look like it was loved."

"That's what I want."

I took a spindle in my fingers and wiggled it.

It moved a whole quarter inch.

"Hold the rail here," I said, "so I can see where it gives."

He put his hand on the rail.

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