He took a breath.
“I took something from this family. Not just the hay. I took the idea that I was part of it. For fifty years, I thought I was on the outside, looking in, and I took it out on the people inside. And Karen, ” His voice broke. “Karen gave me a way back. She didn’t have to. She’d have been right not to. And I want you all to know that I’ll spend whatever years I’ve got trying to deserve it.”Nobody spoke. A breeze moved through the cottonwoods.
Ada reached out from her lawn chair and put a hand on his arm.
“That’s enough, son,” she said softly. “You said it.”
I looked across the circle at Ben, who was watching his uncle with an expression I couldn’t read. Then, slowly, my son stood. He crossed the grass, and he held out his hand, and Dwayne looked at it for a long moment as if it were something precious.
