He Told Me I Lost Our Baby, and Five Years Later I Met Him at His Door novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Sunday Table

The back room of the bar was full by noon, and the sign was gone from the door.

I had not been in that room since the first Sunday.

The long table was set for thirty, with the white cloth and the good plates, and the ginger ale at the head.

Cormac had not set the head chair.

He had pulled it away and set a plain chair at the foot, and told the manager that was where he would sit.

There were more than thirty.

They stood along the walls in their church coats, the women of the Wednesday circle and the men who owed the family their rent, and the old drinkers from the bar.

The priest was there, and the man from the towing yard, and the woman in the green dress who had lingered at my coat.

Padraig's wife sat near the kitchen door in her red coat with her hands wrapped around her bag.

I came in through the front door with my son on my hip.

He wore a clean blue jersey and his good shoes.

He had the brown dog by one ear and a paper bag of biscuits in his other fist, and he looked at the crowd with great interest.

"There's loads," he said into my neck.

"There are," I said.

"Are they here for my birthday?" he asked.

"No, love. It's a Sunday dinner."

"Oh." He considered it. "Can I have the crispy bit?"

"You can have all the crispy bits," I said.

I put him in the chair beside mine.

It was a high chair, a child's, and someone had tied a cushion to it.

I did not ask who.

Cormac stood at the far end by the window, in a dark suit, with his hands at his sides.

He looked at me, and then at the boy, and he did not move.

I had told him on the phone, on the Friday, what I wanted from him.

Nothing, I had said.

Stand at the end and say nothing until it's your turn.

Oonagh was already in her place.

She sat at the head, on his right, where she had always sat, in her navy cardigan with her pearls and the rosary wound through her fingers.

She had not been told she could not.

She looked at the boy and at me.

"Maureen," she said pleasantly. "You've brought the child."

"I have."

"Then we'll begin."

She rose.

She did it slowly, with one hand on the table, a small, upright woman in a room full of people who had known her for forty years.

"I'll say a few words," Oonagh said, in her good low voice, "before we eat."

A hush ran down the table.

I took Fintan's hand under the cloth.

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