Page 26 of Love Bound

"Well, at least put some lobster in it," says Laurel. "Give it a Maine flair."

"In your dreams." Straightening up, a bag of macaroni in his hands, Travis glances around. "Where's my little man?"

Laurel checks the wall clock. "I need to go get him. Wanna come?"

For a split second, I’m slap happy. All of us are together, and then I remember we aren’t. There are those who will forever be missed.

After they leave, Devon and I become dueling potato peelers, flinging skins into the sink when she brings it up one last time. "It's the right thing to do."

"Stop."

"You know I'm right."

"I'm sure Finn has someplace to go."

"He's been out there all afternoon." Devon drops her gaze to the window again. "He's got all that crap in the back of this truck and stuff everywhere. He's not going anywhere."

"Maybe he's driving tonight. Boston's not that far."

"Do you want me to ask him?" she asks.

"Do you need my permission?" I counter.

"Nope," she says cheerfully.

***

The table looks great, I have to admit. I had Travis and Devon bring up the leaves to the table that our father made and the maple expanse spread into the living room.

We also host Emily and Ralph Burke, a retired couple who live on the other side of the road, whose two adult children live in England, and Geo. Finn, who agreed to come, makes nine. Four on each side and Geo at the head. I find myself flustered Finn accepted, and oddly nervous.

Cory picked some Bittersweet and I made floating candles, while Laurel found a piece of woody vine to weave across the table as well. Emily brought over some colorful felted acorns with the real caps glued on, and I put them in three small bowls for added color.

I lit the wood stove for ambiance and by the time people started arriving around two, the place was warm, cozy, and smelled of turkey, green bean casserole, and apple pie.

Cutting quite a figure in the hallway, Travis stands, looking at the pictures on the wall.

I come up behind him, slipping an arm around his waist.

"I miss them," he says.

"I know. I do too."

The photo of our parents was when they’d first brought him home from Texas. They look so happy, holding him swaddled in a blue and pink receiving blanket while the rest of us clamor to see his little face.

"Chloe took this picture, didn’t she?" he asks, scanning the rest of the pictures. "I just suddenly got it. Why there's none of her."

"There's a picture of her over there." I wag a finger to the far end of the hall where there's a group photo of the family. Geo had his finger cropped out—he was the one with the camera—and we’re all sitting on the ledge of granite that had been there before the barn was built, the slab with the vein of rose quartz running through it. The one I always sit on. Travis was about seven, Laurel ten, Devon fourteen, me about seventeen, and Chloe, nineteen.

Mom and Dad were smiling, we were all dressed in white, the boys in big collar shirts, us girls in white shifts. It was corny as hell.

Two years later, they'd be dead.

"That proves nothing," he says. "We all have a print of that one."

"I don’t hate her," I say. "I'm just angry."

He corrects me. "Pissed." As he squeezes my arm, Travis whispers in my ear, "Let it go."