The Summer I Left novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Table

I texted Dennis at noon: Tonight. Your kitchen. Both of you.

He wrote back in under a minute. Yes.

Eddie drove the rental to the house and parked at the curb.

"I'll be on the porch," he said. "If it goes bad, I'll knock over the plant stand. It's loud."

"Thanks."

"I've already measured it. It's a very loud plant stand."

I rang the bell of the house I'd grown up in.

Carol opened the door. She had changed her sweater twice, I could tell, because the first one was still folded on the hall chair.

"Come in," she said. "Please."

The dining table was set for three.

I had not sat at it since April.

Since April I had eaten on a kitchen stool with a plate on my knees, and I had told myself it was fine.

I pulled out the chair on the left, the one that used to be mine.

I sat.

Carol sat across from me. Dennis stayed in the doorway with his hand on the frame.

"Sit down," I said. "Both of you can hear this at the same table."

He sat.

For a moment I looked at the grain in the wood. There was a ring on it from a hot pan, from the Thanksgiving I was ten.

"I read the woman's letters last night," I said. "The three she left in the box. The third one says she mailed a fourth to you."

Carol's head turned.

"A fourth what?" she said.

Dennis put his hands flat on the table.

He did not speak, and I watched the color drain out of his face, and I knew.

"Dennis," Carol said.

"It came in March," he said. "The spring the boys turned seven."

"What came?"

"A letter. In a plain envelope, no return address. It was four pages, signed. It had a hospital number on it and the number of a wristband."

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