The Boss Said My Father Drowned His Brother, So He Took Me to Stand in the Water novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: Sunday Supper
I did not hear what Joel said on the porch.
Stellan took him out onto the step and pulled the door shut.
I sat on the stair in my mother's robe with my arms round my knees and watched two shapes through the glass.
It took a quarter of an hour.
At the end of it Stellan came in alone and stood in the hall with snow melting off his shoulders.
"He wants to say it at the table," he said.
"All of it?"
"Every word, in front of forty." He looked at me. "He says he'll not say it twice, and he'll not say it anywhere she can't hear."
"Pirjo."
"She's been a mother to him since he was nineteen," Stellan said. "He's afraid he won't get through it if he stops."
I stood up.
"Is he lying?"
"I looked at him the way you look at them," Stellan said. "I couldn't tell. But he has sat in my truck three years with the heater off, and I think he's been cold on purpose."
On Sunday the long table seated forty, and every chair was full.
I came on my own feet.
I wore my one black dress, with my hair in its braid and my mother's gold cross at my throat.
I walked in from the porch at four in the afternoon with my head up and my father's last card in my pocket.
The bluff house smelled of rye bread and juniper and woodsmoke.
Church women came and went with steaming dishes.
At the head of the table, in the tall oak chair with the carved arms, sat Pirjo Kivela in her black cardigan with the silver bird at her throat.
She was smiling.
She saw me in the door and held out her hand across the room, and the whole table turned.
"Kulta," she said. "There you are. I've kept the chair beside Stellan's."
I did not take her hand.
I walked the length of the room to the foot of the table and stood behind the chair on Stellan's right.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Boss Said My Father Drowned His Brother, So He Took Me to Stand in the Water are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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