Forgiving Jackson by Alicia Hunter Pace

Author:Alicia Hunter Pace [Pace, Alicia Hunter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440581946
Amazon: B00MR5ZQ1E
Barnesnoble: B00MR5ZQ1E
Goodreads: 22875420
Publisher: F & W Media Inc
Published: 2014-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

From where he sat at the head, Jackson surveyed the people gathered around the big dining table. He’d never gotten used to sitting in this spot, though Aunt Amelia had moved him here the first time they’d eaten in this room after burying half the family. They had always taken most of their meals in the family wing around a big round table, but on Sundays and holidays, they ate in the original formal dining room.

“You can,” she’d said to him that Sunday when he’d told her he couldn’t sit in his father’s chair. “You have to. Just like I have to go sit at the foot of the table. If we don’t act like a family, pretty soon we won’t be.”

So he’d put his twelve-year-old self in a chair that wasn’t his then and wasn’t his to this day. Tonight, the chair at the foot of the table that would have belonged to the hostess of the house if there had been one, had been moved to make room for two highchairs. Gwen and Abby sat across from each other beside their babies, spooning some kind of nasty slop into Carter’s and Phillip’s mouths. He remembered another hand bringing a silver baby spoon to another mouth and he looked away.

“Who needs more iced tea?” Emory asked from where she sat directly to his right. He’d pulled out the chair and put her there himself. She started to rise.

“Keep your seat, Emory.” Sammy jumped up from his plateful of fried chicken, stewed squash, creamed corn, and sliced tomatoes. “I’ll get it.” He headed to the sideboard where the full tea pitchers sat.

Sammy made the rounds, pouring the same way Amelia had taught Jackson and his brothers, with a cloth napkin at the ready in case there was a drip.

“This is a mighty fine meal, Gwen.” Jackson spoke the same words his father had always uttered a few minutes into a meal, though Jackson would never sound as cultured, as educated.

“Thank you, Jackson,” she said. “It’s your reward for singing today.” She spooned more green goo into Carter’s mouth and then took a bite of her own food. How did she do that?

“If I’d have known I’d get a meal like this, surrounded by all these beautiful women, I’d have sung sooner.” He acknowledged Gwen, Abby, Christian, Neyland, and Ginger by briefly meeting their eyes. Then he let his eyes settle into Emory’s for a longer look.

“The table is really beautiful tonight,” Neyland said.

Was it? Yeah. He supposed so. There was a highway of green stuff paving its way down the middle with some flowers thrown in this way and that. There were so many old dishes and glasses in this house from so many generations of Beauford brides that he couldn’t have kept up with them, even if he’d been interested. The dishes tonight had a lot of gold on them—which meant they couldn’t go in the dishwasher. He knew all about that from his dishwashing days.

“What’s with having everything all fancied up?” Dirk was cutting up bites of chicken for Julie.

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