I stood behind a serving table, smiling in my blue dress.
Beside me was Arthur.
Young.
Thin.
Looking at me as though I’d hung every star in the sky.
Emily came into the room.
“Grandma?”
I couldn’t speak.
She sat beside me and read the letter.
When she finished, she began crying too.
“Grandpa never told me that story.”
“He never told me he remembered it that way.”
Emily turned the brass plate over.
There were words engraved on its surface.
There’s always one more chair.
She looked toward our old dining table.
“Grandma, I think this belongs underneath.”
We knelt together on the floor.
The table had been built by Arthur’s hands more than forty years earlier.
Its surface was scratched from homework, birthday parties, Christmas dinners, and the ordinary accidents of family life.
Underneath, near one corner, we found two tiny holes.
Exactly the right distance apart for the brass plate.
Arthur must have made it years earlier, planning to attach it someday.
Emily fetched a screwdriver from the kitchen drawer.
We fastened the plate beneath the table.
Then she sat back on her heels.
“I have an idea.”
I looked at her.
“What kind of idea?”
“The kind Grandpa would have liked.”
