Page 71

Bo thinks about this for a moment. Then he steps in and wraps both arms around my neck, fast and tight, the all-in way he hugged me at church.

“I’m glad you’re not a doctor,” he says into my shoulder. “Doctors just want to fix me. You like me for who I am.”

I hug him back. I’ve never hugged a child.

When I look up, the doorway isn’t empty.

Luke is standing there, dish towel forgotten in one hand, watching the two of us on the floor. He came to check on us, I assume. But whatever he expected to find, this wasn’t it, I can tell by the look on his face.

“Dinner’s ready,” he says. His voice comes out a little rough.

Bo is up and gone before the sentence finishes.

Luke holds a hand down to help me off the floor.

I take it.

He pulls me up easy, and then we’re standing closer than the room requires, and neither of us moves for the door. He doesn’t let go of my hand. He’s looking at me like he’s hunting for words and not finding them, which I understand, because I find words for people all day and I don’t have any right now either.

Whatever just happened on that floor, he saw it. And he knows I know he saw it.

“Thank you,” he says finally. It comes out low, and it isn’t about the dessert.

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“I know.” He still hasn’t let go. “Doing it anyway.”

We leave the rest unsaid. There’s a whole conversation neither of us is ready for, and it just hangs there between us.

Then he tips his head toward the hall, and the moment folds itself away, and we walk to dinner. Not an awkward step in it. The opposite. Like something got settled without a word, and now we’re going to go eat and pretend our hands don’t remember.

Dinner is loud.

Not bad-loud. Full-loud. Dottie made meat loaf and the four of us crowd around a table built for four but behaving like it seats twelve.

Before anyone eats, Dottie holds out both hands, and it takes me a second to understand we’re praying. Bo grabs mine like it’s nothing. Luke takes the other.

Her prayer is short and unfussy. She thanks God for the food, for Luke being home, for Bo’s good week, and then, without slowing down, “and thank You for Olivia, who we’re all very glad is here.”

I open my eyes. Nobody else does.

I’m not used to being in the prayer.

Then it’s chaos again. Bo narrates. Dottie corrects. Luke referees. Someone’s elbow is always near someone’s glass. The rolls are gone before I’ve even started on the main course. Bo tells a story about a kid at school with no discernible ending and everyone reacts anyway. Dottie asks me three questions before I’ve finished answering the first.

It should be too much.

It isn’t.

I grew up at a quieter table.

My parents are good people. Still are. They have the kind of jobs that come with business cards, and a house in Houston with a dining room we used for holidays and important announcements. My sister lives in California now and does something equally impressive that I couldn’t explain if you paid me. We were fine. We are fine. Dinner was at six, conversation was pleasant, everyone cleared their own plate.

Nothing was wrong with it. That’s the strange part. There’s no wound here to dig up, no story that made me who I am. My childhood was fine. Thorough. By the book.

But I spent a lot of it at other people’s tables. Loud ones. Ones where somebody’s mom hollered up the stairs and somebody’s dog begged and nobody used real plates. I’d sit in the middle of that noise and think, I’d like this someday.

I am, I notice, sitting in the middle of it now.