The Apron at the Pantry Table
She carried it up the stairs and out the side door into the cold. I followed her, and Leon followed me, and I heard chairs scrape behind us as people stood up to watch.
Josh was in the truck with the heater running and all three kids squashed into the back seat of the cab. He saw Dena coming across the lot with that box, and he got out fast to take it from her.
She would not let him.
“I’ve got it,” she said. “Open the back.”
He let the tailgate down. She set the box on it, with Maisie’s drawing still face up on the turkey. Then she went to the back door of the cab and opened it.
Maisie was in her booster in her pink coat. She looked at Aunt Dena, then at the box, then at her own drawing on top of it.
“Is it our turn?” Maisie asked.
Dena got down on one knee in the gravel. Dena, who is forty-seven and has bad knees from years on that concrete floor. She got right down so her face was level with Maisie’s.
“It’s your turn, sweetheart,” she said. “It should have been your turn last week. That was my mistake, not yours. I’m sorry.”
Maisie studied her. Five-year-olds look at you like they can read the whole inside of your head.
“That’s okay,” Maisie said. “Did the other families get my pictures?”
“Every one of them,” Dena said. “A hundred and twelve families last week, and more today. I’m going to need a lot more pictures.”
Maisie nodded, satisfied. “Okay. I’ll make more.”
Dena put both arms around her, booster seat and pink coat and all, and held on.
I looked back at the church. There were people on the side steps with their coats open in the cold. Brenda Ott. Travis Hoffman. Pastor Mike with his hands in his pockets. Leon at the bottom of the steps with his seed cap back on.
Not one of them was looking at the box on our tailgate the way Dena had been afraid they would. They were all looking at her.
When Dena stood up, she brushed the gravel off her knee and turned to me. Her face was red from crying and from the wind.
“Amber,” she said. “I was wrong, and I was wrong in a way that hurt your kids, and I don’t know how to make that right.”
I had been waiting two weeks for that sentence. I had thought about what I would say. Something about how she should have known better. Something about the skillet scrapings.
None of it came out. What came out was the thing that was true.
“You already did,” I said. “Back there. In front of everybody.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It is for me.” I took her hand. It was ice cold. “You held me when I was baptized, Dena. You taught me to drive a stick shift. I’m not giving that up over one bad Saturday.”
She squeezed my hand so hard it hurt.
Josh came around the truck and put his arm around her shoulders.
“Thanks for the turkey, Dena,” he said. “I’m going to pay it back. Not to you. To the table.”