He was asking not only Denny but all of them, sending a wild, scattered gaze around the table. Denny said, “Dad. Amanda’s Hugh knows way more about computers than I do.”
But Amanda’s Hugh said, “Who, me?” And Red just kept staring into one face and then another. Finally Nora, who was seated next to him, set a hand on top of his. “We will take care of all that, I promise, Father Whitshank,” she said.
Red peered at her for a moment, and then he relaxed. No one pointed out that Nora didn’t even have her own e-mail address.
“Well, this is just great,” Jeannie told Denny. She stripped off her oven mitts and slammed them down next to her plate. “You waltz on out whenever you like; everything stops for Lord Denny. Everyone’s just thankful you stayed as long as you did; everyone’s falling all over themselves because it’s such a rare and exalted privilege when you honor us with your presence.”
“The prodigal son,” Nora said contentedly, and she smiled across the table at Petey. “Isn’t it?” she asked him.
But Petey had his mind on the hurricane. He said, “What if you get picked up in the air, Uncle Denny, like the mean neighbor lady in The Wizard of Oz? Do you think that might could happen?”
“You never know,” Denny said, and he chose a roll from the bread basket and gave it a jaunty upward toss before setting it on his plate.
Sunday dawned cloudy and ominous, which was no surprise. Even without a direct hit, the hurricane was bound to spread a swath of wind and rain and electrical glitches throughout the city. Before things could get any worse, therefore, Jeannie and Amanda dropped off their husbands to help with the heavy lifting, and then Amanda collected the three little boys and the dog and took them back to her house so they would be out from underfoot. Jeannie’s assignment was to drive Red to his apartment, along with a small load of kitchen items, and start settling him in. No point making him witness the final dismantling of the house, was everybody’s reasoning. But he kept dragging his heels. Ordinarily a man who hated to impose, he had peevishly refused Nora’s offer of cold cereal for breakfast and requested eggs, although the eggs were packed in a cooler by then and the skillet was in the bottom of a carton. “Dad—” Stem had begun, but Nora had said, “That’s all right. I can fix him eggs in a jiffy.”
Then Red took so long to eat them that he was still at it when Jeannie arrived. She had to wait, barely hiding her impatience, while he slowly and methodically forked up tiny mouthfuls, chewing in a contemplative way as he watched Stem and the two Hughs pass back and forth through the dining room with boxes for Jeannie’s car. “She’s always telling me she should have known what kind of person I was when she found out I didn’t recycle,” Amanda’s Hugh was telling Stem, “but how about what I should have seen, from the note she wrote to complain about it?”
Jeannie jingled her car keys and said, “Dad? Shall we hit the road?”
“Last night I dreamed the house burned down,” he told her.
“What, this house?”
“I could see all the beams and uprights that hadn’t been exposed since when my father built the place.”
“Oh, well …” Jeannie said, and she made a sad little secret face at Nora, who was rewrapping the skillet in newspaper. “That’s understandable, really,” she said. Then she asked, “Did Denny get off okay?”
“No,” Red said, “I think he’s still in bed.”
“In bed!”
Nora said, “I knocked on his door a while ago and he said he was getting up, but maybe he went back to sleep.”
“He was the one who couldn’t wait to leave!”
“Calm yourselves,” Denny said. “I’m up.”
He was standing in the doorway, already wearing his jacket, with a canvas duffel bag hanging from each shoulder and a third, much larger bag at his feet. “Morning, all,” he told them.
Jeannie said, “Well, finally!”
“I see we’ve beaten the rain, so far.”
“Only through pure blind luck,” she said. “I thought you were in such a hurry!”
“I overslept.”
“Have you missed your train?”
“Nah, I’ve still got time.” He looked over at his father, who was single-mindedly pursuing a stray bit of egg white with his fork. “How’re you feeling, Dad?” he asked.
“I’m okay.”
“Excited about your new place?”
“No.”
“There’s coffee,” Nora told Denny.
“That’s all right. I’ll get some at the station.” He waited a beat. “Should I call a cab?” he asked. “Or what?”
He was looking at Jeannie, but Nora was the one who answered. “I can take you,” she told him.
“Seems like you’ve got your hands full.”
He looked again at Jeannie. She flung back her ponytail with an angry snap and said, “Well, I can’t do it. My car’s packed to the gills.”
“It’s no trouble,” Nora said.
“Ready, Dad?” Jeannie asked.