And I thought that whatever happened to five old women’s pride that morning mattered a whole lot less than whether a boy who’d just lost his wife and his child had a hot plate of food and a kind face in front of him by noon.
Eunice still had her key to the church.
Nobody had ever asked for it back. That tells you something about how little thought had gone into taking our kitchen in the first place.
By ten o’clock, the five of us were standing in that basement kitchen in our church clothes with our sleeves pushed up.
And it was like no time had passed at all.
And it was also like no amount of time could ever give back what had been taken.
Both things true in the same breath.
“Ham and noodles,” Wanda said, already pulling the big roasters down off the high shelf. “We’ve still got canned ham in the chest freezer upstairs, don’t we? Or did Tamra clear that out too?”
