Chapter 23: Eighty Candles

By two on Sunday, the lane held nineteen cars, and Grandma Ardis stood at the front door with her cane.

"Coats on the bed," she said, again and again. "Casseroles in the kitchen. Apologies in the front room, before the turkey."

They came up the steps one household at a time.

My father's brother was gray now, and heavier than I remembered.

He took off his cap in the doorway and could not seem to put it back on.

"Keeley," he said. "I don't know what to say."

"Say hello."

"Hello."

"That's good," I said. "You can do the rest in the front room."

He gave a short, ashamed laugh, and then he put his arms around me, hard, and I let him.

It went like that for an hour.

An aunt cried on my shoulder.

Another aunt held my face and said she had never believed it, and her sister loudly contradicted her from the hall.

A cousin I'd played with on that dock at nine stood in the doorway with a baby on her hip.

"He told me you'd said I was stupid," she said.

"I never said that."

"I know. I'd like to hit him with a canoe paddle."

"Get in line," Nolan said from behind me.

The whole hallway laughed.

Something that had been tight in my chest for six years let go a little.

Alana came last.

She stood on the porch in a dark blue dress with a casserole dish held in front of her in both hands.

Nobody had spoken to her.

I had watched them see her through the window, and I had watched the room go quiet.

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