Chapter 6: Sunday Supper

Chet Ransom lived in a log house three miles down the road, with elk antlers over the door and a porch swing that had been mended with baling wire.

He met us on the steps in a pressed shirt and a turquoise bolo tie.

He was five foot eight and bowlegged, with a white mustache and eyes the same pale gray as his grandson's.

He looked at me for a long time.

"Well," he said. "She sent you after all."

"Granddad," Jace said.

"I'm talking to her."

He took both my hands in his dry, spotted ones.

"She had your picture on the fridge," Chet said. "Forty years I've known that woman, and she never put a picture on her fridge."

My throat closed.

"I didn't know that," I said.

"Well. Now you do. Come eat."

Supper was pot roast and boiled potatoes and green beans from a can, and it was the best meal I'd had in a year.

Chet told stories with his hearing aid turned off whenever Jace tried to correct him.

He told me about the winter Lottie drove a tractor through a blizzard to pull Jace's father out of a ditch.

He told me about the year she tried to teach him to waltz.

"She stepped on my feet four times," he said, "and I'd have let her do it forty more."

He looked at his plate.

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Jace reached across and squeezed his shoulder.

I realized it was the first time I'd seen the old man go quiet.

"Show her the photographs," Jace said gently.

Chet shuffled to a cabinet and came back with a leather album.

I turned the pages.

There was Jace at eight, skinny, gap-toothed, sitting on a spotted pony.

A tall woman with black hair, laughing, held the lead rope.

She had my chin, and my dimple, and my exact stubborn eyebrows.

I put my fingers on the picture.

"That's her," I whispered.

"That's her," said Chet.

I closed the album carefully and wiped my eyes with a napkin.

"Right," Chet said, clearing his throat. "I'm an old man, and I don't have a lot of time. So I'll say this plain."

"Granddad," Jace warned.

"I want great-grandbabies before I die."

Jace choked on his iced tea.

I turned the color of the tablecloth.

"Granddad."

"Dark hair, gray eyes, big hips like hers. I'm not particular."

"Chet," I said, and I could not stop laughing, "we've known each other six days."

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