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coffee together while their father sat by the window in his Morris chair reading about the world situation. There were five years between them, and Teddy and Grace, and he had never shown much interest in her beyond tousling her hair now and then. It wasn’t her fault that she was the one to have been at home when everything happened. He seemed embarrassed, this man who began to remind her more of her brother as she looked at him. It was hard for her to look away from him, though she knew he would have liked her to. He held his cup in both hands, but it trembled anyway. He spilled coffee down his sleeve and winced with irritation, and she thought how kind her father was to give him time to recover himself. She said, “You couldn’t be more welcome here, Jack. You can’t know what it means to him to have you here.”
    He said, “It’s good of you to say that, Glory.”
    “It’s just the truth.”
    There now. Her thought was that she might be able to worry a little less if an edge crept into her voice or if she lost patience for a minute.
    He said, “Thanks for the coffee. I’ll go shave.”
    H E HAD TAKEN HIS BAG UPSTAIRS, AND HE CAME BACK down with his jaw polished and his hair combed and smelling of her father’s Old Spice. He was still buttoning his cuffs. He nodded at the towel. “Is it Tuesday?”
    “No,” she said, “that towel is a little fast. It’s still Monday.”
    He reddened, but he laughed. And from the other room the newspaper crumpled and then they heard the cane and the hard, formal shoes that took a good shine and would not wear out in this world. Their father appeared, a roguish look in his eye, as there always was when he felt at the top of his form.
    “Yes, children, lunchtime, I believe. Glory has been so busy getting things ready. She said you hated cream pie, but I was certainI remembered you had a special fondness for it, and she made it on my say-so, despite her reservations.”
    “It’s pretty leathery by now,” she said.
    “You see, she’s trying to prejudice you against it! You’d think we’d made a wager of some kind!”
    Jack said, “I like cream pie.” He glanced at her.
    “It’s for supper, in any case,” she said, and she thought he looked relieved. “Jack’s probably too tired to be hungry. He spent last night on the bus. We should give him a sandwich and let him go rest.”
    “I’m fine,” he said.
    His father looked at him. “You’re pale. Yes, I see that.”
    “I’m all right. I’m always pale.”
    “Well, you ought to sit down anyway. Glory won’t mind waiting on us this one time, will you, dear.”
    She said, “This one time, no.”
    “She works me half to death around here. I don’t know what she’d do without me.”
    Jack smiled obligingly, and rested his brow on his hand when his father settled into the grace. “There is so much to be grateful for, words are poor things”—and the old man fell into what might have been a kind of slumber. Then he said, “Amen,” and mustered himself, roguish again, and patted Jack’s hand. “Yes,” he said, “yes.”
    G LORY TOOK J ACK UPSTAIRS TO THE ROOM SHE HAD PRE pared for him, Luke and Teddy’s room they still called it. He said, “That was kind of you,” when she told him she had not put him in the room he had had growing up. It was the same kindness her father had showed her. When, half an hour later, she came upstairs with some towels for him, Jack had already hung up his clothes and set a half dozen books on the dresser between the Abraham Lincoln bookends, having stacked the ten volumes ofKipling they had supported for two generations in the corner of the closet. He had taken a little picture out of his old room, a framed photograph of a river and trees, and set it on the dresser beside his books. Insofar as he was capable of such a thing, he appeared to have moved in.
    The room was empty, the door standing open, so she stepped into the room just to put the towels on the dresser, and she