"What is it, boy?" he asked, his voice gruff, but not unkind.
Michael looked up at his grandfather, his eyes wide. "What-what's going to happen now, Grandpa?"
Amos Hall slipped an arm around his grandson, and started walking him toward the house. "Life goes on," he said, and then in a tone meant to be reassuring, "We'll just take it one step at a time, all right?"
But Michael frowned. "I guess so," he said at last. "But I wish dad were here."
"So do I," Amos Hall replied, but the gentleness had gone out of his voice. "So do I."
Janet awoke to the setting sun, and for the first time since she had been married, did not reach out to touch her husband. The funeral, then, had accomplished that much. Never again, she was sure, would she awaken and reach out for Mark. He was truly gone, and she was truly on her own now.
She sat up and began tentatively to get out of bed. The nausea was gone, and the flushed feeling with it, so she put her feet into a pair of slippers and went into the bathroom, where she splashed her face with cold water. Then she went back to her bedroom, took off the clothes she had been sleeping in, and put on a robe. At the top of the stairs, she listened for a moment.
There was a murmuring of voices from the kitchen but only silence from the living room. Running a hand through her hair, she started down the stairs.
The family was gathered around the kitchen table, and as she came upon them she stopped, startled. It was as if they belonged together, the elderly couple at either end of the table, and Michael, so obviously theirs, between them. It must, Janet realized, have been what the family looked like twenty years ago, except that instead of Michael between them, it would have been Mark. And Laura.
Almost abstractly, she noted that there was no place set for her at the table.
Michael saw her first.
"Mom! Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. I was just tired, and it was so hot-well, I'm afraid your old mother had what they call a fainting spell."
"Are you sure you should be up, dear?" Anna Hall asked, her voice anxious. "Why don't you go back up, and I'll fix a plate for you. It's just leftovers from the reception, but we're making do with it. Or I could fix you some soup. There's nothing like good homemade-"
"I'm fine, Anna," Janet insisted. "If I could just sit down, I'll-"
"Get your mother a chair, Michael."
As his grandfather spoke, Michael got up from the table, ducked around his mother, and disappeared into the dining room. A moment later he was back, bearing one of Anna's needlepoint-seated lyre-back "Sunday" chairs.
"Now why can't I ever get action like that at home?" Janet asked as she settled herself at the table. "It would have taken me ages just to get his attention, and then there would have been a chorus of 'Aw, Moms,'-"
"Aw, Mom…"
"See what I mean?"
Amos glared at her. "Children do what's expected of them," he stated, his tone indicating that there was no room for discussion.
"Or perhaps it's just novelty," Anna hesitantly suggested. Amos turned, about to speak, but she ignored him, wheeling her chair away from the table. A moment later she handed Michael some silverware and nodded toward Janet. "Set your mother a place." She shifted her attention back to Janet. "It's a known fact that children behave better in other people's houses than they do in their own. As for expectations," she added, turning to her husband, "what about Mark? We expected Mark to stay in Prairie Bend forever, and you certainly made that expectation clear to him. So much for that theory."
An odd look came into Amos's eyes, one that could have been either hurt or anger. In the tense silence that followed, Janet reached out to squeeze the old man's hand. "I hadn't known Mark was supposed to come home after college," she said. "What would a sociologist have done here?"
Though she'd directed the question at her father-in-law, it was Anna who answered.
"At first, after he… left," she said in a near whisper, choosing her words cautiously, "we didn't even know he'd gone to college. We didn't know where he'd gone. All we knew was that he wasn't here. But we thought he'd come back." She shrugged helplessly, avoiding Amos's silent stare. "By then, we just didn't know him anymore. And you don't need a degree to run a farm. I guess he was never interested in farming. Not this farm, and not his own farm, either."
Janet's fork stopped halfway between her plate and her mouth, and she stared at Anna. "His farm? What are you talking about? Mark never had a farm."
"Of course he had a farm," Anna replied, her expression clearly indicating her conviction that Janet must be suffering a momentary lapse of memory. Then, as Janet's demeanor failed to clear, her eyes shifted to her husband, then back to Janet. "You don't mean to tell me he never told you about the farm, do you?"
Janet, feeling a sudden panic, turned to Michael for support. Was the same thing that had happened when she'd heard about Mark's sister about to happen again? "Did daddy ever say anything to you about a farm? About owning a farm, I mean?"
Michael shook his head.
"But that's not possible," Amos interjected. "You must have known. The taxes, the estate-"
"The estate?" Janet asked. What on earth was he talking about? Slowly she put down her fork, then looked from Amos to Anna. At last her eyes came to rest on Michael. "I think perhaps it's time you went up to your room."
"Aw, Mom…"
"Do as your mother says," Amos snapped, and after a moment of hesitation, Michael got up and left the table. Only when his footsteps had stopped echoing in the stairwell did Janet speak again. When she did, her voice was quavering.
"Now what is all this about?" she asked. "I thought you meant that Mark owned a farm a long time ago, before I met him. But when you mentioned taxes, and the estate-"
"He's always owned a farm," Amos said. "It was a wedding present, just as half of Laura and Buck's farm was a wedding present to them. Buck's parents gave them the other half. They don't live on it, but they still own it and take the responsibility for it. And if Mark had married a local girl-"
But Janet had stopped listening. "A wedding present," she whispered. "But you sent us silverware-"
"Well, of course there was that, too," Anna replied.
"But that was all there was," Janet insisted, her voice growing shrill in spite of herself. "If there'd been anything else, Mark would have told me. Wouldn't he? Wouldn't he?"
Amos reached out and took her hand. "You really don't know anything about it, do you?"
Mutely, Janet shook her head.
"It's forty acres," Amos said. "It was deeded to Mark on your wedding day, and he's owned it ever since. I know, because I was afraid he might try to sell it, so I've kept track. I always hoped he'd come and live on it someday, but I guess I always knew that wouldn't happen. Not ever, not the way he felt. But he did pay the taxes on it. As far as I know, he never tried to sell it."
"But what's happened to it?" Janet asked. "And why haven't I ever heard of it before?"
"I don't know why you've never heard of it," Amos replied. "But it's still there. It's yours now."
For a long moment, Janet stared at her husband's parents, her mind churning. When at last she spoke, it was without thinking.
"He hated you very much, didn't he? All of you."
Amos Hall's eyes flashed with anger, but Anna only stared ahead, looking into space.
"Yes, I suppose he did," Amos finally said, the anger in his eyes disappearing as quickly as it had come. "But he's dead, now. All that's behind us, isn't it?"