“I’m not going to try to fix it with money,” she said. “That’s the wrong way around. I’m just asking you if you’ll let me start over. You don’t have to say yes tonight.”
Dylan looked at her for a long time. Then he reached into his hoodie pocket and took out the gift card, the empty one, and set it on the table between them.
“I used it on the pie,” he said. “For me and Mom. It was a good present. It came in handy.” Then, after a second, he said, “You can sit by me at Easter. If you want.”
Marilyn put her hand over her mouth, the way Gina had. She nodded.
She could not say anything for a while, and Patty, who had been pretending to wipe the counter the whole time, came over with a fresh cup and set it in front of her.
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“Coffee’s on the house,” Patty said. “Pie’s not. But I’d get the pecan.”
Marilyn laughed, a wet surprised laugh, and ordered a piece of pecan pie, and when it came she pushed the plate to the middle of the table and handed Dylan a fork, and the two of them ate it together, one bite each, back and forth, without saying anything.
I sat there and watched it, and I still had not touched the ring.
It sat by my cup on the Formica under the cafe lights, and every so often Brent looked at it and then looked away.
When the pie was gone, Brent cleared his throat. He did not look at me. He turned in the booth and looked at Dylan.
“Bud,” he said, “I did this backwards in August. I asked your mom, and I should’ve asked you first. You’re the man of that house. You’ve been the man of it a long time.”
Dylan sat very still.
“So I’m asking you now,” Brent said. “I love your mom. I’ll be good to her, and I’ll be good to you, and nobody is ever going to put you at a card table again as long as I’m living. Can I marry your mom?”
Dylan looked at me. I did not nod or shake my head. I just looked back at him. It was his to give.
“Yeah,” he said finally. His voice cracked a little on it, the way it still did that year. “Yeah. You can.” Then he said, “But I get to sit by you at the wedding supper. Not at the kids’ table.”
Brent laughed out loud, the first time all night. “Deal,” he said. “You’re in the wedding party, bud. You’re standing up there with me. I was going to ask you that, too.”
Then he picked up the ring off the table, and he did not hand it to me. He handed it to Dylan.
Dylan held it a second. Then he reached across the table and took my left hand, very carefully, the way he used to hold baby chicks at the county fair, and he slid the ring back onto my finger. It was still snug. It went on anyway.
Patty, at the register, started clapping, and one of the drivers at the counter, who had no idea what any of it was about, clapped too, because she was clapping. The family with the sleeping girl looked over and smiled.
I could not have said a word if you had paid me. I just held onto my son’s hand across that table, and Brent put his arm along the back of the booth behind Dylan, and Marilyn wiped her eyes with her napkin and said, “Well,” and then didn’t say anything else.