When the plates were empty and the sun had slid past its peak, Dwayne cleared his throat.
“I have something to say.”
Everyone looked up.
“I’m not good at this,” he said. He turned his hat in his hands. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to say it for a year. I don’t have the words Tom had. He didn’t have many, either. But he had the right ones.”
He took a breath.
“I took something from this family. Not just the hay. I took the idea that I was part of it. For fifty years, I thought I was on the outside, looking in, and I took it out on the people inside. And Karen, ” His voice broke. “Karen gave me a way back. She didn’t have to. She’d have been right not to. And I want you all to know that I’ll spend whatever years I’ve got trying to deserve it.”
