"Sixty-nine," Cal said. "He's in Cleveland now. Sells insurance. He's got three kids and he calls me on Sunday nights to complain about the Browns." He smiled a little. "She still sets an extra place. She says now it's for whoever needs it."
Nora was quiet. The snow was coming down so thick now that the streetlight at the corner was only a soft gold smudge.
"Thank you for the ride," she said.
"Thank you for the fight." He reached across her — she held her breath — and pushed open her door, which stuck, he explained, in the cold. "Mrs. Pruitt wasn't kidding. If the relatives fall through. If you need a place. Mill Street, the brick building with the big red doors. You can't miss it. Dinner's at two."
"The relatives won't fall through. They never do. They came the year of the blizzard in sixty-six. They came the year my mother was in the hospital. Uncle Pete would drive through a forest fire for my Aunt Rosemary's gravy."
"Well," Cal said. "Bring pie anyway. In case."
She got out with her sad bag of groceries and her jar of bread-and-butter pickles, and she went up the walk through the new snow, and at the door she turned, the way you aren't supposed to, the way she'd told herself on the walk up that she wouldn't. The truck was still there at the curb. He was waiting until she was inside. One step below. Close enough to catch.