Chapter 6: The Sewing Room

"My sister," I said. "Her name is Callie Coker."

Price said it after me, slowly, the way you'd try a word in another language.

"Callie."

I watched his face and waited.

Nothing came into it.

"I'd remember," he said. "Wouldn't I? If I'd loved somebody enough to marry her."

"You'd think so."

I folded the note along its old crease and gave it back to him.

"Keep it," I said. "She'd want you to keep it."

He put it behind his license and looked up at the tower window again before he went inside.

Thursday night I went to my parents' for supper.

Daddy had left me four messages, and the last one sounded like he'd been crying.

He met me at the door and hugged me until Mom said the cornbread was getting cold.

My father was fifty-seven and had carried mail in Bell Shoals for thirty years.

He fixed everything in that house with a butter knife, including, once, the dryer.

He'd set three places.

I didn't say anything about it, and that seemed to scare him more than if I had.

"Sugar, the doctor can see you Monday," he said over the butter beans. "Just to talk."

"I'm not sick, Daddy."

"I know you're not."

He reached over and squeezed my good hand. "But you're scared, and I can't fix it with a butter knife."

Mom ate without looking up.

She'd been quiet all through supper, even for her.

"I'm going to shoot the Rountree wedding," I said.

Mom's fork stopped halfway to her mouth.

"Well, that's good money," Daddy said, relieved.

"Bridal portraits tomorrow, up at the house," I said.

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