Chapter 24: The Back Row

"Who?" I said.

Eli let go of the microphone, and Becca caught it before it hit the floor.

He pulled a folded bingo card out of his back pocket and held it up with both hands.

On the back, in green crayon, it said COME TO MY GAME. SIT IN THE BACK. ELI.

The squiggle at the bottom was in pencil.

"I asked Grandpa to mail it," he said. "He had a stamp."

I turned my head.

Kent's father stood by the coffee urn in his church boots, studying the ceiling tiles.

"Boy asked me for a stamp," he said. "I don't say no to a stamp."

"Did she answer?"

"She called me Tuesday," he said. "She asked what time."

The room had gone so still I could hear the grill outside.

A hundred and forty people were watching me.

Some of them had watched me walk down this aisle ten months before with a green card in my hand.

I looked at Kent.

He didn't say anything, and he didn't tell me what to do.

"It's his list," I said. "He earned it. He sat with me."

Eli puffed his whole chest out with importance.

"Can I have a pancake now?"

"After the inning."

The Bandits played on the field behind the Lodge, where the bleachers had six rows and a rusted rail.

Forty children in green shirts ran in circles around the dugout, and the coach with the gray beard blew a whistle that nobody obeyed.

Eli stood in the on-deck circle in his oversized helmet, doing the stretches he had made up.

I did not sit down.

I stood at the bottom of the bleachers with my ring on and Kent at my elbow.

Rhonda stood on my other side with a thermos.

At ten past ten, a small gray sedan pulled into the Lodge lot.

Joyce's sister got out of the driver's side and held the door.

Joyce stepped out of the passenger seat in a navy cardigan, flat shoes and no corsage.

Her curls were pinned back plainly, and she carried a purse in both hands in front of her.