“Well. You never did answer.”
PART 5 — FINAL
I didn’t say yes that day.
I want to be clear about that, because people assume.
I said, “Ask me again at Christmas.”
Gene smiled like a man who’d been told a job would take three more weeks and had already budgeted for six.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Then we ate pie on the ramp.
Nineteen people, sitting on the rails and the garage floor and the tailgate of Dale’s truck, in the cold, with paper plates.
Brenda cut.
Emma ate the filling and left the crust.
Jack fell asleep in the pastor’s wife’s lap.
And Gene showed me the rest of the house.
A bedroom off the kitchen with a wide door and no step.
A bathroom with grab bars at the height of my hand, not his.
A window seat where Margaret’s rocker used to be.
“I didn’t throw it out,” he said. “It’s in the shed.”
