Margaret looked at him for a long moment.
“Help me put it in.”
They pulled the two halves apart. The runners resisted, then slid. Edward lowered the leaf while Margaret guided the corners, and the repaired wood settled into place.
There were things it did not fix.
Linda was still serving her sentence. The children still attended counseling and maintained contact with their mother through arrangements that did not involve entering Margaret’s home. Sophie sometimes needed permission to be angry with someone she also missed.
Margaret gave her that permission every time.
“You can love her,” she told her. “You don’t have to pretend what happened was right.”
Ben had stopped asking where Grandma would sleep.
Edward’s small apartment had proper beds for both children now, paid for from wages he earned and could account for. He had learned their cereal preferences himself.
Margaret’s home was hers again—not a place where nobody else belonged, but a place where belonging no longer entitled anyone to take.
They set lunch on the expanded table.
Carol took the wobbly chair and immediately complained about it. Gabriella passed her a folded square of cardboard for the short leg. Ben insisted the strawberries needed their own bowl.
Edward paused beside Margaret’s usual place.
“Here, Mom?”
She looked at the chair, at the sunlight across its worn wooden back.
“Yes.”
He held it steady while she sat, then took his own seat.
For a moment, everyone was quiet.
Margaret could hear the yard through the open window: a bird fussing in the gutter, leaves brushing brick, the ordinary noises of a house with nothing to hide.
Sophie slipped her hand beneath the table and found hers.
Margaret squeezed it, then reached for the bread.
Behind her, the back door stood open to the garden, and no one was being sent through it.
