Easter
Easter came late that year, in the middle of April. The snow was mostly gone off the fields and lying in dirty drifts along the north side of the shelterbelts. The ditches were full of meltwater, and the geese were coming back.
We always do Easter at the farm. It is the one day all year we are all at Mom’s table, the four of us and whoever we have brought along. That year Steve came, and Rob’s wife and their two boys, and Dean drove over from Fargo by himself because his wife was working a shift.
I came out early on Saturday to help Mom get ready. We made the kuchen together, peach and prune, the way her mother made it, with the custard poured over the fruit and the crust pinched up at the edges. Mom rolled the dough. I did the custard. We did not talk about Pam.
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On Sunday the boys were out shooting baskets at the old hoop on the machine shed before the ham was even in. Rob and Dean were at the kitchen table with their coffee, doing what brothers do, which is talk about the weather and the price of cattle and avoid looking at the door.
Mom sat in her chair by the window. Not the recliner. Her own chair, the straight-backed one at the end of the table. She had on her Easter blouse with the lace collar and a little cardigan over it, and no coat, and no hat.
I was at the stove basting the ham. I kept looking at the clock.
Pam and Mark were the last ones in. I heard the back door, and I heard Mark say something to the boys outside, and then the door opened and there was my sister.
She looked thinner. That was the first thing I noticed, before anything else. Her face had a tightness in it I did not remember.
Mark came in behind her. He moved carefully, the way a man moves when his back is still healing, and he nodded at Rob and Dean and took the chair nearest the door.
Pam was not empty-handed. She had a box under one arm, a plain brown cardboard box, and in her other hand a manila envelope, thick, with a rubber band around it.
She did not say hello. She walked to the kitchen table and set the box down in the middle of it, right beside the butter dish, and set the envelope on top of it.
The kitchen went quiet. Even the boys, out at the hoop, seemed to go quiet.
Rob put his cup down.
Pam looked at Mom. Then she looked at me, standing at the stove with the baster in my hand. Then she took a breath.