My Brother, My Wife, and Their Son novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Table

I read my father's letter four times that night, and then I did not read it again.

Three weeks later I set a table for four in the gray house.

It was a Sunday, and I made a pot roast, because it was the only dinner I knew how to make for a crowd.

Margery sat at the head of the table.

I had put her there myself, in the chair with the arms, and she had looked at it for a while before she sat.

Maisie sat on her right and swung her boots.

Mom had flown in alone that morning and sat at the far end, in a gray cardigan, with her hands in her lap.

Dad had not come, and nobody had asked him to.

She had said hello to Maisie at the door.

Maisie had looked at her and said, "Hello," in the careful voice she used for people she was still deciding about.

Now Margery lifted the lid off the roast and served Mom first.

She gave her a small slice and a spoon of potatoes, and she set the plate down in front of her without a word.

Mom looked at the plate.

She did not pick up her fork.

"I'd like to read something before we eat," I said.

I took the folded page out of my shirt pocket and unfolded it.

My father's handwriting was small and square, and it pressed hard through the paper.

"Cedric," I read. "I signed Margery Doane's name myself. I stamped it myself, on the eleventh of November, at my kitchen table, while she was in the hospital with a broken back."

Mom's hands had gone still.

"Your mother had lost two babies before you. You were in our apartment, and your mother could not walk. I decided that was enough. Nobody forced me, and nobody helped."

I turned the page over.

"I moved us to Ohio so Margery would not find us. I never told Colby, and I told your mother only what she asked to hear."

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