"It wasn't my turkey," she said. "Apparently. It didn't have my name on it."
"No. But you needed it." He turned to look at her, and in the gray snowlight his face was serious under the mustache. "What will you do?"
She had been asking herself that for the last forty minutes. "Mrs. Lindqvist next door raises chickens," she said. "If I knock on her door at seven tomorrow morning and cry, she might sell me two. I'll roast them and tell everyone it's a new tradition. Uncle Ambrose won't notice. He never notices anything after the second highball. Aunt Rosemary will notice, and she will never, ever let me forget it." She shrugged. "It's only food."
"It's not only food," he said. "Not on Thanksgiving."
She looked at him.
"My mother," he said, "used to set a place for my brother every year after he went to Vietnam. Even when there was no chance he'd be home. She'd put out the plate and the silverware and the cloth napkin, and everybody would just eat around it. It's not only food. It's who's at the table, and who isn't."
"Did he come home?" she asked, and then wished she hadn't.