Chapter 10 - The Chair by the Window
Autumn came to Middle Tennessee in late October with a sudden, brilliant flash of amber and scarlet that turned the oak trees along Maple Street into towering torches against the blue sky.
It was Easter Sunday, one year later.
The morning air was forty-eight degrees, crisp and smelling of dry leaves and damp limestone.
I stood in my kitchen on Maple Street at seven o'clock in the morning, wearing my denim gardening apron, beating eight egg whites in a copper bowl with a wire whisk until they formed stiff, glossy peaks that held their shape when the whisk was lifted.
The three nine-inch cake pans were cooling on the wire racks by the window, their tops golden brown, their crumb light and fragrant with pure vanilla bean and coconut milk.
At ten o'clock, the front door opened.
Derek did not knock.
He did not need to knock; he had a key. A new key, cut on a nickel-plated blank, that had hung on his brass key ring since Thanksgiving.
He walked into the kitchen wearing a clean charcoal suit, a white dress shirt, and a dark blue silk tie. He carried a small bunch of yellow daffodils that he had bought at the market on his way from Gallatin Pike.
He looked different.
The soft, puffy fullness in his jaw had disappeared, replaced by the lean, defined lines of a thirty-three-year-old man who walked two miles every evening after work and cooked his own meals on a two-burner stove. His eyes were clear, steady, with none of that shifting, nervous anxiety that had haunted him during the Heron Creek years.
He had paid off the nineteen-thousand-dollar deficiency balance in February. He had two thousand dollars in an emergency savings account at the credit union, and his managing partner had informed him on Friday that his commercial litigation docket had generated three hundred and forty billable hours for the first quarter.
"Morning, Mom," he said, setting the daffodils in an empty milk bottle on the counter.
"Good morning, Derek. The tea is fresh."
He poured himself a mug, sat in his usual chair at the round laminate table, and watched me spread the boiled white icing across the top layer of the cake with an offset spatula.
"Smells like nineteen ninety-nine in here," he smiled.
"Nineteen ninety-nine was a good year," I said, sprinkling a thick, snowy layer of freshly grated coconut over the sides, letting the white flakes drift down onto the waxed paper like a gentle winter squall. "The roof didn't leak, and the library had a budget surplus."
"Mom," he said after a moment, his voice dropping into that quiet, thoughtful tone that had become his standard over the past year.
"Yes, Derek?"
"I ran into Cynthia Montgomery at the post office in Hendersonville on Thursday," he said.
My spatula paused for half a second, then resumed its circular motion. "Did you?"
"She was picking up certified mail," Derek said. "She told me that Brianna is living in an apartment behind the mall in Knoxville. She’s working as an assistant manager at an upscale shoe store on Kingston Pike. Robert had to sell the cabin cruiser in December to pay the legal bills from the LLC liquidation."
I finished smoothing the last corner of the coconut, picked up the waxed paper strips from beneath the cake, and laid them in the trash bin.
"Did she ask about you?" I asked.
"She asked if I had bought another house yet," Derek said.
"And what did you tell her?"
Derek looked around my kitchen—at the yellow Formica, the ceramic canister set, the hunter-green trim around the window, and the four simple wooden chairs that had survived forty years of births, deaths, graduations, and quiet breakfasts.
"I told her I had a very nice apartment on Gallatin Pike," Derek said, his voice firm, unhurried, and entirely free of shame. "And that I was having Easter dinner with my mother."
At one o'clock, we sat down to eat.
There were no twelve guests. There were no floral arches. There was no roasted leg of lamb served on borrowed porcelain.
There was a roasted chicken with rosemary and potatoes, a bowl of fresh green beans from my canned pantry stores, and a basket of warm biscuits that Arthur had always said were light enough to float out the window if you didn't butter them fast enough.
Derek sat on the north side of the table, facing the window that looked out over the silver maple.
I sat on the south side, in the chair that Arthur had occupied for thirty years.
Before we picked up our forks, Derek reached across the table, took both of my hands in his, and closed his eyes.
"Thank you, God, for this food," he said, his voice deep, gravelly, sounding so much like his father that my heart gave a small, sweet leap in my chest. "Thank you for this house. And thank you for the woman who built the table."
"Amen," I said.
He let go of my hands, picked up the carving knife, and cut a thick piece of white meat, laying it onto my plate with two hands.
Then he looked at the empty chair beside him—the chair that had sat against the wall on Easter Sunday a year ago, the chair that had been returned to its place beneath the light.
He reached out, pulled it two inches closer to the table, smoothed the back with his palm, and smiled.
"Happy Easter, Mom," he said.
May you like
"Happy Easter, Derek," I replied.
Outside, the Tennessee spring was quiet, the sky was wide and blue, and the chair stayed exactly where it belonged.
