"I'm listening."
"You're staring while listening. There's a difference." She handed him a plate with turkey and stuffing that had traveled poorly but with good intentions. "Eat something. And don't you dare invent a reason to leave early. Dale and I drove forty minutes for this, and I will not watch you retreat to that ranch like a turtle into a shell."
"I danced," Walt said.
"I saw. Keep dancing."
He ate. The turkey tasted like every church-basement turkey he had ever known—dry, earnest, redeemed by gravy. Mrs. Henshaw appeared with a slice of pumpkin pie balanced on a napkin and an expression of triumph.