The Pickup List and the Blizzard

In front of everybody

I would like to say I said something wise. I did not. I just put my other hand on her back and left it there.

After a while she sat up and wiped her face on her sleeve. Then she stood, and she turned around, and she saw that three other families were sitting at my kitchen table watching her.

I saw her see it. I saw her understand that there was no way out of the room that did not go through them.

She could have gone into the bathroom. She could have gathered up her kids and asked Norm to help her carry them to the car. Instead she walked into the kitchen and stood at the end of the table.

“Thank you,” she said. Her voice was not steady. “Mark. Jenny. Thank you for saying yes. I couldn’t get to my phone. I didn’t know until nine o’clock. I’ve been sitting at the road gate since ten.”

“Don’t thank us,” Jenny said quietly. “We didn’t do anything. We just said yes to her.”

Brittany turned around and looked at me. I had gotten up off the floor by then, one knee at a time, and I was standing in the doorway with my hand on the frame.

“Sherry,” she said, and stopped. She tried again. “I took you off the card.”

“I know you did,” I said.

“Mrs. Kemp told you.”

“She did.”

“And you never said a word.” She said it like it was the worst part. “Not to me. Not to Dustin. You just let me do it.”

“I figured you had a reason,” I said. “I didn’t know what it was. But I figured you had one.”

She sat down at my kitchen table then, in Norm’s chair, because it was the only one empty.

Norm got her a bowl of chili without asking, and set it in front of her, and she did not eat it, but she held on to it with both hands like it was a stove.