Chapter 10 - The Sunday Table
Six months later, on a brilliant, warm Sunday in late April, Easter returned to Cheatham County.
The dogwoods along Sycamore Street had burst into clouds of snowy white and pale pink blossoms. The grass in my front yard was deep green, thick and clean from three weeks of gentle spring rains, and the beds along my stone foundation were filled with yellow daffodils and purple irises that Arthur had planted thirty years ago.
Inside my kitchen, the oven was on.
The rich, savory aroma of a slow-roasted leg of lamb with garlic, rosemary, and small red potatoes filled every corner of the house. On the sideboard in the dining room, sitting on Arthur’s mother’s cut-glass pedestal stand, was a fresh coconut cake.
It was four layers high, covered in fluffy seven-minute frosting, and coated in fresh, snowy flakes of sweet coconut that I had grated by hand on Saturday afternoon.
At 1:15 PM, the front screen door clicked open.
“Mom?”
“In the kitchen, Derek,” I called out.
He walked through the hallway carrying two cardboard flats of red geraniums from the greenhouse on the bypass.
Derek looked magnificent. He was twenty pounds lighter than he had been the previous spring. His skin was tan from working on his truck and his small yard, his hair was cut short and neat, and he wore a clean, pressed blue oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms.
Beside him walked Sarah Jenkins.
Sarah was thirty, a seventh-grade mathematics teacher at the middle school where I had worked before my retirement. She had dark hair pulled back into a simple, functional braid, clear gray eyes, and a laugh that sounded like water splashing over clean creek gravel. She drove a six-year-old Subaru with a dent on the tailgate, owned a modest two-bedroom bungalow near the city park, and spent her Saturday mornings volunteering at the county animal shelter.
Derek had met her four months ago when he helped the middle-school STEM club build wooden bridge models for the regional science fair. When he first mentioned her to me over Sunday coffee in February, he hadn't mentioned her clothes, her family’s connections, or what neighborhood she lived in. He had simply said: “Mom, she knows how to use an orbital sander, and she doesn't order things she can’t pay for in cash.”
“Happy Easter, Mrs. Wakefield,” Sarah smiled, setting a small ceramic bowl of fresh strawberry preserves on the kitchen counter. “I brought some jam my grandmother put up in Portland last summer. Thought it might go nice with your biscuits.”
“Happy Easter, Sarah,” I said, stepping forward and kissing her warm cheek. “The biscuits are just about to come out. Go on into the dining room.”
Derek set the geraniums on the utility room floor, washed his hands at the sink with the lemon soap, and dried them on a clean linen towel.
He walked over to me, wrapped both arms around my shoulders, and pulled me tight against his chest, kissing the top of my silver hair.
“Smells like home, Mom,” he whispered into my temple.
“It is home, son,” I replied, patting his cheek. “Take the carving knife in. The roast is rested.”
We walked into the dining room together.
The mahogany table—the one Arthur and I had bought second-hand from an estate sale in 1986 and refinished with three coats of tung oil—was set with my grandmother’s blue-and-white ironstone china. The silver was polished, the linen napkins were pressed, and through the double windows, the afternoon sun illuminated the dust motes dancing in the quiet air.
There were four chairs at the table.
One at the head, where Arthur had sat for twenty-eight years. One at the foot, where I sat. And two along the sides, facing each other.
Derek walked to the side of the table.
He did not hesitate. He did not look at his phone. He walked to the chair at the foot of the table—the heavy oak chair with the carved spindles that I had used since the day we moved into this house.
He pulled it out smoothly, holding the frame steady with both hands, and turned his dark eyes toward me with a smile that reached all the way back to his boyhood.
“Your seat, Mom,” Derek said softly.
I walked to the table, smoothed the skirt of my lavender dress, and sat down.
Derek pushed the chair in gently, resting his hands on my shoulders for two seconds with a steady, protective weight that asked for nothing and offered everything.
Sarah sat down across from him, unfolding her napkin across her lap with an easy, unperformed grace. Derek took his seat at the side, picked up the bone-handled carving knife his father had sharpened every November for thirty years, and sliced into the roast lamb.
“Would you say the blessing, Mom?” Derek asked, looking up at me.
I looked at my son. I looked at the young woman sitting beside him whose hands were clean and capable. I looked through the kitchen door at the coconut cake sitting on its glass pedestal, untouched, whole, and sweet.
I folded my hands over my plate, bowed my head, and closed my eyes.
“Lord,” I said, my voice steady, clear, and ringing through the warm rooms of my home like a silver bell. “We thank you for this table. We thank you for the bread that was earned with honest labor, for the strength that endures when the storms come down, and for the wisdom to know that true love does not take from the foundation, but builds upon the rock. Bless this food, bless this house, and keep our feet upon the path that does not falter. Amen.”
“Amen,” Derek and Sarah said together.
Outside, the bells of Grace Baptist Church began to ring across the valley, their deep iron voices carrying over the river, over the new green fields, and over the roofs of the town.
May you like
I picked up my fork, looked at my family, and began my dinner.
I was sixty-four years old. My house was paid for. My ledger was clean. And I was sitting precisely where I belonged.