Vaughn sat back on his heels.
“I told him no. I told him I wasn’t going to be the guy who brought that over here.”
“But you’re bringing it.”
“I’m telling you it was said. That’s different.”
He was right.
And I told him so.
He wiped his hands on his jeans.
Then he said the other thing, the one he’d been carrying up the steps under the chair.
“I’m in Norfolk the week you’re due. Chiller install at the shipyard. Ten days. I can’t move it. I tried.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know. I just told you.”
“I know it’s the kind of thing that happens.”
He rocked the chair once with his hand.
It squeaked.
“I’m sorry, Emmy.”
“Don’t be. You brought a chair.”
He hugged me at the door with oil still on his fingers.
After his van pulled off, I sat in the rocking chair by the window and listened to it squeak.
And I counted my people the way my mother counted her frames.
Yara.
Maybe Sunny at the door.
Vaughn in Norfolk.
And a porch light across the street that I still hadn’t knocked on.
At 38 weeks, Sunny and Yara came over and packed my hospital bag on the kitchen table like it was a military operation.
Sunny read from a list on her phone.
“Chargers.”
“Two.”
“Two. Robe.”
“In.”
“Socks with grips.”
“In.”
“Lip balm.”
“In.”
“Your own pillow. Because ours are terrible.”
“In.”
“Going-home outfit for you. Going-home outfit for her.”
Yara held up a yellow onesie the size of a dish towel and got quiet for a second.
Then folded it in.
My phone rang on the counter.
It was my mother.
And because my hands were full, I put her on speaker without thinking.
“Imagin. Come to dinner Sunday.”
The kitchen went still.
“Your father wants to see you before—”
“Before what?”
“Before things change.”
Yara shook her head at me slowly.
The way you shake your head at someone reaching for a hot pan.
Sunny didn’t move at all.
“We thought we’d do a nice normal dinner,” my mother said. “Just family. Raquel and Tobias and the baby. Nothing heavy.”
I looked at the gray bag on the table, half-zipped, and at the two women who had packed it.
And I looked at the phone.
And I thought about the porch light and the nail and 33 years.
And I wanted—I am not proud of this—one more Sunday where it might be different.
“I’ll come,” I said.
“Good. Six.”
She hung up.
Yara said:
“Imagin.”
And I said:
“I know.”
Sunny picked up the bag, zipped it the rest of the way, and said:
“Then the bag goes in the trunk. Not the closet. The trunk. Tonight. And it stays there.”
She wrote NOW on a piece of masking tape and stuck it to the inside of my trunk lid where I’d see it every time I opened it.
If you’ve ever packed the bag yourself, checked the list yourself, and then still drove to the one table that never had a seat for you, I’d like to hear about it in the comments.
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The knock on the door is coming.
I drove out to Midlotheian at five on Sunday with the bag in the trunk and the tape on the lid.
My dad was at the grill on the deck and lifted his tongs at me, which for him is a hug.
Inside, my mother had set the dining table for six with the good plates.
There were five wooden chairs around it.
And at the end, by the sideboard, one metal folding chair from the church closet with a seat cushion tied on.
“We put you on the end,” she said, “so you’d have room for your stomach.”
Tobias stood up from the chair nearest the kitchen.
“Take mine, Imagin. I’ll take the folding chair.”
“She’s fine, Tobias,” Raquel said, not looking up from cutting Sawyer’s roll into pieces. “It’s got a cushion.”
Tobias looked at me.
I looked at the folding chair.
Some fights are not worth the calories.
“It’s fine,” I said.
And sat.
The metal was cold through my dress, and the legs sank a little into the carpet so that I sat an inch lower than everyone else at the table.
Like a kid promoted from the children’s table, but not all the way.
As I sat, something low in my back drew tight and let go.
I looked at the clock over the sideboard.
Twelve minutes past six.
I had had a few of those over the past week, the practice kind.
I decided this was one of them and reached for the bread.
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