He Called My Brain Injury a Hunger Strike, So I Forgot Him novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Long Table
The boatyard table was forty feet long, and Erik had built it from the planks of a barge nobody wanted.
It stood on the gravel behind the shop, under strings of lights, with the Willamette going gold below it.
By five o'clock it held a roast chicken, two pans of potatoes, a salad, three pies, and a lively crowd.
Erik's mother sat at the head of it, a small woman with his grey eyes and a cardigan the color of oatmeal.
She had hugged me at the gate for a long time and said, "You're the one who stopped him from working himself into the ground."
"I didn't do anything."
"You made him bring a guest to the dinner," she said. "That's something."
His father sat at the other end and passed the potatoes without speaking, which Erik said was how he said hello.
An aunt, two cousins, a man who fixed outboard motors, and a neighbor's dog completed the table.
Nobody asked me anything I couldn't answer.
They asked whether I liked dill.
They asked if the scar behind my ear still itched.
They asked whether I'd come back the second Sunday, because there was a second Sunday every month.
I filled my plate.
I ate the chicken and the potatoes and the salad, and a slice of the apple pie, and then half of a slice of the pear one, because his mother put it in front of me.
My stomach said nothing at all.
That was the surprise.
It had been three weeks since the surgery.
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