Chapter 6: Sunday Dinner

They were in the Fox Chapel kitchen by twenty to seven, and the house upstairs was silent.

Frank was cold to the touch and too tired to lift his head.

Nate wheeled him to the downstairs bathroom and got him washed and changed, the way he had every morning for three years.

Leah made eggs, soft, the way her father could still swallow them.

Frank ate every bite.

Then he looked at Nate and said a single word, slowly, as if he were lifting it.

"Late."

"I know," Nate said. "I'm sorry."

Frank tapped the table once, which meant no.

He didn't mean Nate was late.

He meant somebody else was.

Nobody came downstairs before they left at nine.

At six that evening Barbara opened the front door in a green dress and kissed Leah on both cheeks.

She took Nate's coat herself and hung it in the hall closet, where his coat had never been allowed to hang.

The dining room smelled of roast beef and candle wax.

Brett sat at the table already, with Leah's sister beside him and her phone propped against the salt.

Barbara led Nate to the head of the table and pulled out the chair.

It was Frank's chair.

Frank had sat in it every Sunday until his stroke, and since then nobody had.

Frank was parked at the side of the table, between the wall and the gravy.

"Sit, sit," Barbara said. "You're the guest of honor."

Nate didn't sit.

He went around the table, unlocked Frank's brake and wheeled him to the head.

He moved the chair out of the way and set Frank's place in front of him, and he locked the brake again.

Then he took the empty seat at the side, between the wall and the gravy.