Chapter 24: The Chair Beside Mine

On Thanksgiving morning, my mother was already yelling at the turkey.

"It is not done, and it is not going to be done by one o'clock, and I don't care what the little button says."

"Mom, the button is a thermometer."

"The button is a liar. Get the rolls."

I got the rolls.

The kitchen was warm and loud and smelled like sage and butter.

Ivy sat on the counter in a sweater with a reindeer on it, stealing olives from a dish and eating them one at a time.

She had come off a night shift three hours earlier and refused to nap.

"I'm too excited," she said. "Mrs. VanderVeen, I have a feeling about your stuffing."

"It's good stuffing."

"I know. I've been told. That's why I'm excited."

Tobias stood at the sink peeling potatoes in a flannel shirt, carefully.

He had arrived at nine, with two bottles of wine in his hands.

My mother had looked at them, and at him.

"Well," she said. "You can learn."

My phone buzzed on the windowsill.

It was a text from a number I still knew by heart.

Happy Thanksgiving. No reply needed. I'm at my parents'. Working at the bakery again, in the back. L.

I read it once.

I thought about the girl in the apron at six in the morning with her hands folded.

I didn't answer it, and I didn't delete it.

I put the phone face down on the sill, and the sun came through the window onto the back of it.

There was another card on the refrigerator, under a magnet shaped like a loon.

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