The Second Place Setting
The child had put out a plate for me before anyone asked whether I intended to stay.
Two large plates, one small. The large ones faced each other across the kitchen table. A spoon lay beside each, its bowl polished bright, and the smaller place had a folded cloth with a crooked yellow flower sewn into one corner. Through the open stove door came the steady orange light of a fire someone could afford to keep burning in October.
I stood on the mat, dripping on a row of neatly paired shoes.
“June, this is Stephanie,” Anthony said behind me.
The girl lifted her chin. She had a narrow face and a single braid fraying above her left ear. One sock had slipped down beneath her heel.
“Good afternoon, Guardian.”
Then, quickly, “I mean welcome. Welcome to your home.”
She watched Anthony instead of me.
He shifted my bag from one hand to the other. “June’s been helping get things ready.”
“I can see that.” I unfastened my wet jacket. “You can call me Steph.”
June put her palm over the flower.
Outside, somebody rang a bell twice. Anthony set down my bag, leaving a muddy crescent beside it on the boards, and reached for the door.
“Wait. Where’s Ben?”
“You’ll have to ask the director about Ben.”
“You said that at the gate.”
“I know. He’ll be able to tell you more.” His fingers stayed around the latch. He was about thirty, with rain darkening the shoulders of a canvas coat and a bicycle clip still fastened to one trouser leg. “Mr. Gaber’s in stores. They’re counting the winter shipment space.”
“Then I’ll go to stores.”
June pulled the small plate toward herself. It scraped the table loudly enough that we both turned.
Anthony lowered his voice. “Let me get you the latest on the spur first. You’ve had a long walk.”
That much was true. Six miles west of Alder Reach, half the spur road had slipped into the creek. I had crossed on foot above the washout, carrying my bag against my chest, while the driver waited on the far side to see whether I made it. When I raised my arm, he backed his truck around in three careful turns and left. Anthony had met me where the path joined the settlement road and promised someone would assess the bank in the morning.
I could leave the same way I had come. In daylight, with dry feet, it might even be pleasant.
“One night,” I said. “While you find out.”
He nodded as if we had settled something larger.
“Will you tell Gaber I’m here?”
“He knows.”
The latch clicked behind him.
June and I listened to his boots on the porch. When they had gone down the steps, she moved the small plate back into position and squared it to the edge of the table with two fingers.
“Do you want your shoes there?” she asked.
I glanced at the puddle forming under me. “I think they’ve chosen.”
She brought a rag from beneath the sink and handed it to me without smiling. I took off my boots and wiped the floor. There was a hole in my right sock, which I tucked under my foot before standing. At forty-four, after ten winters of making do, I still cared whether a child saw my toe.
“Where can I hang this?”
June pointed to a peg beside the back door. Another coat hung next to it, brown wool with a faded lining showing at the neck. It was an adult’s coat, narrower through the shoulders than mine. One cuff had been repaired with three different shades of thread, all in tiny, close stitches. Whoever had mended it had kept going long after the right thread ran out.
I lifted its sleeve clear of my dripping jacket.
“That stays,” June said.
“I was only keeping it dry.”
“It goes on that hook.”
“All right.”
She checked the sleeve when I stepped away, smoothing it down until the cuff lay against the pocket. Her hand stayed on the wool after the smoothing was done.
On the road I had passed houses with trees growing through their porch roofs. A grocery cart lay on its side in a ditch, its basket full of needles, the plastic handle bleached almost white. Here, a clean towel hung over the stove rail. There was a glazed bowl of apples on the counter. I could smell onions in a covered pot and, under the onions, cedar and laundry soap.
The grid had failed, the trucks had stopped coming, and people had spent years hauling what they could out of the places that emptied. Ten years later, I could usually tell how a settlement was doing by its door hinges. These had been oiled.
“Is there someone here with you?” I asked.
“Peter’s bringing the blankets.”
“How old are you, June?”
“Eight.”
She covered the flower again.
“I’m going to sit down for a minute. Is this chair all right?”
“That’s yours.”
I sat in it.
My hands began to ache as the heat reached them. I pulled Ben’s letter out of the inside pocket of my jacket and checked the folded edge for damp. The envelope had survived better than I had. My name was typed across the front: Stephanie Caddel. Few people bothered with the whole thing anymore. Ben never had.
He had been out of contact for six weeks. He sometimes went quiet when a lead took him beyond the radio routes, but he always left word through a driver or a kitchen that accepted messages. This time there had been nothing until the invitation, passed west through the freight stops. Come to Alder Reach. There were families whose records needed sorting. Gaber would arrange the work. Ben’s name waited at the bottom.
I had read it so often on the road that the folds had gone soft as cloth. Ben could no more walk away from an unfinished case than from an unfinished plate. Half the way here I had pictured him bent over one at somebody’s table, annoyed that I had worried.
June leaned far enough to see the envelope.
“Is that your paper?”
“It is.”
“Are you supposed to give it in?”
“Who told you that?”
She straightened. “I just asked.”
“Then no. I’m keeping it.”
I tucked it away. On the wall above the counter hung a small photograph behind glass: June on a bench, younger, with her knees sticking straight out from a summer dress. At the left edge of the picture, the varnished backing showed in a pale rectangle. The remaining print had been cut along a nearly straight line. A strip of white tape held it to the board. The tape was whiter than the print.
I glanced at June. She was turning the handle of a spoon so it pointed toward the stove.
The porch boards sounded again.
A man came in sideways carrying a mattress rolled around a bundle of sheets. He caught the door with his boot, saw me, and stopped.
“Oh,” he said.
I stood. “Stephanie.”
“Peter.”
He had gray at his temples and wood shavings caught in the cuff of his sweater. He shifted the mattress to offer his hand, found he had none to spare, and nodded toward the kitchen instead.
“Did Anthony explain?”
“Which part?”
He counted the places at the table, then looked back at me.
June opened the narrow door beside the stove. “In here.”
“Thank you.” He eased the mattress into the little room, bent it past the doorframe, and came back without it. “I thought there was another day.”
“Before what?”
“The placement.”
He took off his coat. There was no peg free. After a moment he folded it over his arm.
“June,” he said, “there’s a clean pillowcase in the bundle. Would you put it on for me?”
She stayed where she was.
“You can leave the door open,” he added.
She went into the room, dragging the pillow out from beneath the sheets. Peter stepped toward the front window. I followed far enough that we could speak without raising our voices, though the cottage gave us very little privacy. Across the lane, someone drew a curtain.
“What placement?” I asked.
“I was told someone was coming to share June’s care. Someone who had agreed.”
“I came to find a man named Ben Rand. I agreed to stay out of the rain.”
Peter rubbed at a patch of white paint on the heel of his hand. It stayed there.
“They said you understood.”
“Who said?”
“The office. When they sent me for bedding.”
“What did you agree to?”
“Helping here. Being responsible for June.” His gaze moved past me to the open door. “She knows me.”
“And you live here?”
“I’ve been sleeping on the bench. I’m putting the mattress in the spare room tonight. You can have the larger room.”
On the bench lay a folded blanket, a carpenter’s rule tucked along its edge. One end of the cushion sagged where he had been sleeping. A pillow lay at the end nearest the stairs.
“I’ll speak to Gaber,” I said.
Peter nodded. He seemed to be waiting for the rest, for the part in which I told him what would happen next. Once, I had carried a badge people could reasonably expect to mean something. Now I had a dry letter and one sound pair of boots.
“I’m staying tonight,” I said. “That’s all I can promise.”
From the spare room came a frustrated grunt. The pillow had jammed halfway into its case. Peter moved to help, but June pulled it away from him, wrestled the far corner into place, and slapped it twice with both hands.
“There.”
“Thank you,” he said.
She carried it to the mattress herself.
While he washed at the sink, I found bowls in the cupboard. June corrected me: the plates were for the bread, and the bowls were on the shelf above. She counted them before letting me take them down. The pot held barley and onions, with pieces of carrot softened almost to sweetness. Peter brought out bread wrapped in a cloth.
I had questions for both of them. June watched every exchange, lifting her spoon only after we lifted ours. I put the questions aside long enough to eat.
The heat made my wet hair curl against my neck. My feet had stopped hurting. Rain worked at the roof, and none of it came through. There was enough food left in the pot for another ladle, and Peter passed it when I asked, and for a minute I let myself eat like a woman who would be in the same chair tomorrow.
Only when June bent over her bowl did he tell me about the morning.
“There’s a household interview,” he said. “They put us down for it.”
I set my spoon beside the plate she had chosen for me.
“What time?”
