Chapter 24: The Aisle

"Yes," I said.

It carried across the lawn, and a hundred and fifty people cheered at once.

Laurence stayed on his knee a second longer.

Then he stood and kissed me on my mother's porch in front of the whole town.

I did not call it a violation.

"On my terms," I said against his mouth.

"Name them."

"Saturday. Four o'clock. On this lawn."

"Done."

"I invite everyone who came up those steps today."

"Done."

"And you paint the shutters."

"I thought I was holding the ladder."

"You're holding the ladder and the brush."

By Friday night the shed behind the house had given up all of my mother's paint.

There were nine cans on the shelf, in her handwriting, and one of them was blue.

I opened it on the porch rail with a screwdriver.

It was the exact shade of the shutters in every photograph I owned.

Laurence painted the eastern windows in his good trousers, and the sheriff painted the west ones, and he refused to take off his hat.

My father came at noon and stood at the bottom of the drive.

I looked down at him from the ladder.

"May I help?"

"Do you know how?"

"No."

"Then hold the can."

He held the can for the rest of the afternoon without speaking.

It was not forgiveness.

It was a man standing still while someone else did the work, and I let him, and neither of us pretended it was more.

On Saturday morning a letter came in the mailbox with a Grand Rapids postmark.

It was one line in Shelby's handwriting.

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