Chapter 24: A Year On

A year later Drake turned twenty-eight, and he took it badly.

"I'm old," he said at the head of the long table on the deck.

"You're a baby," said my mother, passing the potatoes.

"I'm twenty-eight."

"That's what I said."

Dean's crew had built the deck the winter before.

It ran the length of the lake house, with string lights over it.

There were seven of us at the table, and nobody had to squeeze.

Drake's father sat at the far end, carving a ham with great ceremony.

Gabe was at his elbow, pouring the wine, and Finley was cutting bread.

Dean had his arm over the back of my chair, as he did every night.

Nobody had ever asked him to move it.

My mother tapped her glass with a spoon.

"Oh no," said Dean. "Toast."

"Sit, Dean. This one's mine."

She stood.

She had put on the green dress.

She looked out over the five of us for a while before she spoke.

"Last year, at our dining room table," she said, "my husband toasted the boys and their sister."

"I remember," said Drake's father mildly, over the ham.

"I have thought about that toast for a year."

Dean choked on a roll.

"I'd like to correct it," she said. "To my daughter, and her four."

"They answer their mail, and pay their rent, and forgive each other before bed."

"And they have finally learned to close a vent."

The table fell apart.

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