I'm Done Being the Family Joke novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Scrap

I answered Daisy's invitation on Wednesday, with Cal reading over my shoulder.

I'll be there, I typed. I'll say a few words.

She sent back a row of little hearts.

"She thinks she's winning," Cal said.

"Good."

Peg's room was the one with the east window, and I found her in it that afternoon, sitting on the bed with the cedar box shut on her knees.

I told her the whole of it.

I wasn't going to scream at a fifteen-year-old on a stage, and I wasn't going to play her video back.

I was going to stand at the microphone and ask Daisy one thing, in front of everyone who had watched me be the joke.

"And you want me there," Peg said.

"I want you in the front row."

"I'll be in everyone's way. I'm told I'm confused."

"Gran."

She turned the box over in her hands.

"I need to say something first," she said. "I was awake at the window when your father burned that coat. I could have walked across the yard in my slippers. I watched until it was ash, and then I went to bed."

"I know."

"Every Christmas I watched you apologize, and every Christmas I kept my mouth shut. I'm not asking you to say it's all right."

"It's not all right."

Her chin lifted.

"No."

"I'm not giving it to you yet," I said. "I might give it to you later. Right now I need you in the front row, in your good coat, with that box."

She was quiet a long moment.

"That I can do," Peg said.

I drove to the old rancher's place that evening and found him in his barn with a bucket of oats.

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