Chapter 48: One More Chair, Set

Poppy walked the whole length of the kitchen and crashed into her brother's knees.

Cal dropped his spoon.

"Did you see that?" he said. "Lacey. Did you see that?"

"I saw."

"She walked. On her own. Four whole steps."

"Five," I said. "I counted."

Poppy slapped his leg with both hands and said, clearly, "Cal."

He went silent, with his mouth open.

Then he picked her up and held her against his chest and shouted for his father.

Byron came down the stairs two at a time, with shaving soap on his jaw.

That was the tenth of December.

By Christmas she could cross the room without a hand.

She did it all day, in every direction, shouting names.

On Christmas Day the farmhouse smelled of ham and cloves and butter.

Tara was nine days into her job at the farm store.

She had already told the whole staff that the register stuck.

"I'm fixing it Monday," she said, setting a pan of rolls on the sideboard.

"You're a cashier," said Byron.

"I'm a cashier who fixes things."

The silver-haired woman had brought a pie and a bottle of something expensive.

She sat at the foot of the table, in the chair she had claimed in November.

She told Cal he had grown, and he said she had told him that last week.

"It's still true," she said.

Byron kept going in and out of the front door.

"What are you doing?" I said, the third time.

"Nothing."

"You've been in the barn since noon."

"Sit down, Lacey."

I sat.

I counted the chairs, because I always did.

There were six at the long oak table, and a seventh against the wall.

Poppy's high chair stood on the end.

The stool from the barn was gone.

At two o'clock Byron came in with snow on his boots.

He was dragging something wrapped in the blue blanket from Poppy's first week.

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