38. Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Eight
CALEB
Maeve’s veranda has eleven chairs tonight. I count them because that’s what I do. Counted exits for years. Chairs are better.
Three mismatched dining chairs from the kitchen.
The two wooden rockers that were here when Maeve and Jack moved into the cottage.
The bench Ethan built last summer, that lists slightly to the left.
A camping chair someone dragged from the barn.
The rest are folding chairs, metal, the ones we use for festival setup.
Eleven chairs and not enough table, so Maeve has put a plywood board across two sawhorses and thrown a cloth over it.
The food keeps coming. Maeve does this. A crisis finishes, a wound heals, a brother comes home, and Maeve feeds people.
Roast chicken tonight. Cornbread. Green beans from Mabel June’s garden, the one Amy still tends even though her grandmother died a while ago now.
A pie from the Briar Rose sits on the porch rail, waiting to be devoured.
Luke is telling a story about a gig in Knoxville where the bass amp blew and Ben had to sing his bass line into the mic for the rest of the set. Ben disputes the details. Luke ignores him. Amy laughs into her coffee and tops up Regan’s cup without asking.
Noah is peeling an apple for Mason with a pocketknife, and Mason is watching the peel come off in one long ribbon and counting under his breath.
He loses count at eleven, starts over. Grace is on Josie’s lap, fisting a piece of cornbread in each hand, getting crumbs in Josie’s hair.
Josie doesn’t notice. Ethan notices. He picks the crumbs out one at a time while Josie talks to Jack about the trekking yard fences, and neither of them acknowledges what he’s doing.
Regan is sitting between Amy and Maeve. She’s got a plate Maeve loaded before she could protest and a cup Amy filled before she could refuse.
Her jacket is on the back of her chair, her sleeves are pushed up, and she’s leaning forward, elbows on the table, listening to Luke’s story with her chin in her hand.
She belongs here.
Not because she changed. Not because she learned the rhythms of this family, or practiced the banter, or figured out the inside jokes.
Because she walked in, sat down, and they opened the circle the way they always do.
The way they did for Josie. The way they did for Amy.
The way they did for Quinn. A plate. A cup.
A chair that might be a camping chair from the barn.
Come in. Sit down. You’re one of us now.
Mason finishes his apple and wipes his mouth on his sleeve and says, “Regan, does Duchess need another shot?”
Regan looks at him. “Not for three months.”
“Three months,” Mason repeats. He’s working it out. “Is that before Christmas or after Christmas?”
“After.”
“Okay good. Because Duchess doesn’t like shots and Christmas is already stressful for her.”
Quinn glances at Regan over Mason’s head. The corner of her mouth moves.
“Why is Christmas stressful for Duchess?” Regan asks.
“Because of the tree,” Mason says. “She climbed it last year and got stuck, and Dad had to get him down, and Dad said a word.”
“Which word?” Luke asks from across the table.
“I’m not allowed to say it,” Mason says, with the wide-eyed look of a child who has been told this more than once.
“Good answer,” Noah says.
The table laughs. Mason looks pleased. Grace waves a fist of cornbread in solidarity.
I watch all of it from the end of the table, beer in my hand, Bear at my feet.
There was a time when a scene like this would have me mapping the exits.
Back door, twelve steps. Front path, six steps to the yard.
Workshop, forty seconds at a jog. Truck, keys in the ignition, gone before anyone noticed.
I used to sit at these dinners with my back to the wall and my pulse ticking, counting the routes out, because any room with this many people in it was a room I needed to be able to leave.
I don’t count the exits tonight.
I count the chairs. Eleven. All full.
Regan catches me looking. She’s across the table and two seats down, and the October light is coming through the porch slats in gold bars across her face.
She tilts her head and smiles. It’s a private smile, the one I’ve been seeing in the Airstream in the mornings when she wakes up and I’m already watching her.
I look away before Luke catches it and turns it into a bit. Too late. Luke catches everything.
“Caleb,” Luke says. “You want more chicken, or are you full on staring?”
“I’ll take the chicken,” I say.
“Smooth,” Amy says.
“Leave him alone,” Maeve says, passing the dish.
“I’m complimenting him,” Luke says. “That’s the most expression I’ve seen on his face in years.”
“That’s his neutral face,” Ben says. “You should see what happens when he’s happy. One of his eyebrows moves.”
“Both eyebrows,” I say. “On a good day.”
Regan is trying not to laugh. She’s losing.
The food circulates and plates get refilled. Grace wakes from a half-doze on Josie’s shoulder, spots Regan’s necklace, and reaches for it with both hands.
“Grace, no,” Josie says. “That’s not yours.”
Grace doesn’t care. She lunges. Regan catches her mid-lunge and settles her on her lap without interrupting her conversation with Maeve about the Henderson mares’ vaccination schedule. Grace grabs the necklace. Regan lets her. Josie mouths sorry from across the table, but Regan shakes her head.
Ethan watches the whole exchange and then looks at me. His face doesn’t change, but something passes between us that I don’t need a word for. He takes a sip of his beer.
Grace gets bored with the necklace and falls asleep again, right there on Regan’s chest, cornbread still in her fist. Regan’s hand comes up to hold her steady, automatic, like she’s been doing it for years.
Jack leans back in his chair and stretches his legs out. One of his boots nudges Bear, who lifts his head, assesses the situation, and goes back to sleep.
“Good dog,” Jack says.
“Better than good,” I say. “He didn’t bite you.”
“High praise.”
“For Bear, yeah.”
Mason asks if he can give Bear a piece of chicken. Noah says no. Mason asks Quinn. Quinn says that’s your dad’s call, and Mason sighs, defeated.
“You can give him a green bean,” Noah says.
“He doesn’t like green beans.”
“Nobody likes green beans,” Luke says.
“I grew those beans,” Amy says.
“And they’re beautiful beans,” Luke says, without missing a beat. “Just not, you know. Likeable.”
Amy throws a bean at him. He catches it. Eats it. Winks at her.
The sun drops behind the ridge, and the light goes from gold to purple. Maeve brings out the pie and cuts it without ceremony, handing slices down the table on mismatched plates. Josie takes Ethan’s slice so he can keep holding Grace. Jack pours more coffee.
Ben catches my eye from the other end of the table.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. He held the pieces of me together for a decade and never once told me I was handling it badly, even when I was.
He raises his beer and I raise mine back.
That’s it. That’s all we need. Two bottles lifted in the porch light and ten years of everything between them.
After a moment he looks away, back toward the table, and his face settles into the expression he wears most nights.
The organizer. The steady one. Happy for everyone and asking nothing for himself.
He picks up his plate and Maeve’s and carries them inside without being asked, and I watch him go through the screen door with a thought I haven’t had before.
His turn is coming. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Bear shifts at my feet and settles his chin on my boot.
His eyes are half-closed and his breathing is deep and even, the slow rhythm of a dog who has decided the world is safe.
Three months ago he wouldn’t have lain down in a crowd like this.
Six months ago he would have been under the table, pressed against my legs, one ear swiveled toward the door. Now he sleeps.
The veranda goes quiet for a moment. It’s a comfortable quiet. Plates scraped clean, coffee going cold, the October dark settling in around us. Somewhere past the ridge a coyote starts up and another answers. Mason leans against Quinn’s arm. Jack’s hand rests on the back of Maeve’s chair.
Luke picks up the guitar he left leaning against the porch rail.
He plays something slow, finger picked, one of Noah’s songs.
Noah hums along. Ben taps the beat on his thigh.
My hands are still. For the first time in months, I don’t need the drums to work anything out of my body. The rhythm is already right.
Regan looks at me across the table. She doesn’t smile this time. She just looks. Steady. Sure. The same look she gave me in the clearing when she raised her hand.
I’m here. I know you’re here too. I’m not going anywhere.
The veranda smells like roast chicken and October and coffee. Eleven chairs. All full. A dog at my feet who trusts me. A woman across the table who chose me. A family that never let me go, even when I was doing everything I could to make them.
The silence isn’t empty.
It’s the fullest sound I’ve ever heard.