Chapter 32: The Table

The long table in the new kitchen had been built for twelve, and on Sunday mornings it held five.

Lachlan had found it in a salvage yard in Brooklyn.

It was old pine, scarred with a hundred years of knives, and he had refused to let anyone sand it.

"It has history," he said.

"It has a hole in it," I said.

"The hole is history."

I sat at the head of it with a mug of coffee and the Sunday papers.

Nobody had told me to take that chair.

On the first morning, Lachlan had carried the table in and set it down.

He had pulled that chair out for me and gone to sit at the side.

Rory sat to my right on two cushions, with jam on his chin and a pencil behind his ear.

Lachlan stood at the stove with his back to us, burning pancakes on purpose.

"Dad, that one's black."

"It's a feature."

"It's a bug," Rory said, and looked pleased with himself.

Ansel's voice came out of the phone propped against the sugar bowl.

"I can hear that you're all happy," he said.

"It's very annoying. I'm in a cold gallery in Chicago eating a dry bagel."

"You could move to New York," I said.

"And leave the best little gallery in the Midwest? I'd be bankrupt in a month."

"You're not bankrupt there."

"I'm exceptionally solvent there," Ansel said.

"It's because I have a business partner who sells paintings to people who sit down in front of them and cry."

"That's me."

"That's you. Rory, are you eating your eggs?"

"No."

"Good man. Don't."

I laughed so hard I had to put down my mug.

There was a knock at the kitchen door.

Lachlan's mother stood on the step in a camel coat that was not gray, with a covered dish in both hands.

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