Chapter 24: Nell

My grandmother's table seats ten with the leaf in.

That Thanksgiving it was full, with the baby in a high chair at the corner.

I had put the leaf in myself, the night before, and I'd counted the chairs twice.

Everyone at it had come.

That was the only rule I'd made.

Jonas's mother sat at his left, a small woman with short gray hair.

She had spent the morning telling me where my gravy spoon belonged.

She'd said grace in four sentences and meant every one.

Jonas's younger brother, born the winter after that bus stop, was carving the turkey badly.

Delaney sat on my right, in from Michigan for the weekend.

Her yellow sweater no longer hung off her.

Her mother was next to her, in the wheelchair, with a napkin tucked under her chin.

She had her speech back, mostly, in short slow pieces, and she used them.

"More," she told the gravy boat.

The nurse from the operating room had come, too, with her husband and a pie.

I'd met her again in the grocery store in March.

She had said, "You're the one who signed your own consent," and cried in the cereal aisle.

The neighbor in the slippers sat at the far end in actual shoes.

She had brought a casserole I'd told her not to bring.

Garrett stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room with his coat on.

He had come every Saturday for a year.

He had missed two, and called the night before both times.

"I only came for the pie," he said. "One slice. I'll go."