Chapter 40: One More Chair

On Sunday I put a roast chicken with apples on the old oak table and counted the chairs.

There were six, and a high chair, and a stool Byron had carried in from the barn.

"It's the best I can do on short notice," he said.

"It's fine," I said.

I heard it come out of my mouth and wished I could take it back.

Tara and Cal came up the gravel at five in her sister's borrowed car.

She had a store-bought apple pie in a plastic dome, and she held it out in front of her with both hands.

"I don't come to a table empty-handed," she said at the door.

"Nobody wants you to," I said. "Put it by the window."

Cal had his good jacket on again, and he stopped in the kitchen doorway and looked at the table.

"There's a lot of chairs," he said.

"We have a lot of people," said Byron. "Eventually."

Poppy banged her spoon on the high chair tray and shouted at Cal, who grinned in spite of himself.

Then came the fight about where to sit.

It started with Tara, who stood by the wall with her purse still on her arm and said she would eat at the counter.

"It's a counter," said Cal. "It has stools. You'll eat on a stool by yourself."

"I like stools."

"Mom."

"I'm not sitting at his father's table like I was invited."

"You were invited," I said.

"By you."

"The table is mine too. My name's on the deed."

"You can take that up with the county," said Tara, but her mouth twitched.

Byron pulled out the chair at his right hand.

"Tara," he said. "Please."

She looked at the chair for a long time.

Then she sat on the edge of it with her purse in her lap.

Cal took the seat beside her.

I put Poppy's high chair across from him, so she could stare at her brother while she ate.

That left the foot of the table, by the stove, where I always sat.

I took my plate there.

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