Jeff came up the porch steps behind me with his duffel bag.
He wouldn’t look at me.
He looked at the porch floor. The one Dale rebuilt in 2017. He looked at the new storm door. The porch light.
“Place looks good, Tam,” he said. To the floor.
“Twenty years,” I said. “It better.”
Mom called at four o’clock.
I was standing at the kitchen counter with both hands in a bowl of hamburger, making sloppy joes for seven.
“Tammy.” She didn’t even say hello. “Jeff says he’s moving into your upstairs.”
“He moved in about noon,” I said. “Kenzie’s already picked out a curtain.”
“What on earth are you doing?”
“I’m giving my brother a place to live,” I said. “That’s what you asked me for. Isn’t it?”
There was a silence on the line so long I thought the call had dropped.
“That’s not what I asked,” Mom said.
“It’s my answer,” I said. “Come out for Sunday dinner tomorrow. You and Dad both. After church. I’m making a roast.”
She hung up without saying goodbye.
My mother has never once in her entire life hung up the phone without saying goodbye. Not once. Not even when she was mad at the cable company.
I washed the hamburger off my hands.
Then I stood at the kitchen sink for a long time, looking out the window at the cedars bending in the wind.
Supper that night was the loudest meal that kitchen had seen in years.
Seven of us. Crammed around a table built for six. Hannah and Kenzie shared the bench on one side.
Brody ate three sloppy joes and asked, very quietly, if there was a fourth.
Dale slid his own across the table without a word.
Brody looked at him like he’d just been handed a twenty-dollar bill.
Hannah was sitting right next to Kenzie.
And halfway through supper, without saying anything at all, Hannah reached over and gently pulled Kenzie’s hair back out of her face. And she started to braid it.
Kenzie went completely still.
She had a sloppy joe in both hands. She didn’t move a muscle. She barely breathed.
“Did your mom used to do this?” Hannah asked her softly.
Kenzie shook her head.
“Daddy tries,” she said. “He’s not very good at it.”
“I’m not very good at it,” Jeff said from across the table. He tried to smile.
“I’ll teach you,” Hannah told Kenzie. “Then you can do it yourself. And then you can do mine.”
I had to get up and go get more napkins from the pantry so nobody would see my face.
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
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