Wood muttered what sounded like, “I hope so,” under his breath as he pulled out a chair and sat in it. And after a moment, “Sure does seem strange, doesn’t it? Not having a houseful of kids around for the holidays? Doesn’t seem like-”

Lucy interrupted him with a swipe at his shoulder. “Edward Earl, take off your coat before you sit down at the table!”

“Yes’m.” He rose obediently, not trying to hide a grin.

“And hang it up, too-you know where it belongs.”

“Just like old times…” he grumbled good-naturedly as he carried his chore clothes across the hall to the service room.

“Old times…” Lucy muttered angrily, turning to the sink. It wasn’t that she was angry, really, just that she could feel a familiar heaviness creeping around her heart, thinking about the season…the quietness. She hated that heaviness; it made her feel old and scared, panicky and depressed, all at once. Old times. How I miss them… Mama, Daddy, Gwen. And the children. Where did the children go?

Not to be put off, Wood was saying as he reclaimed his chair at the table, “Speaking of ‘old times,’ I was thinking about how it used to be, you know? When we were kids.” His wife came back in just then, and he craned to look up at her and reached for her hand. “You should have been here, Chris.” And then he laughed. “I’m surprised you weren’t, actually. Mom had this habit of inviting people. Anybody who didn’t have anyplace else to go, Mom made ’em welcome here at our house. But even without the strays, we always had a crowd-remember, Luce? Aunts, uncles, cousins-whatever became of all those cousins, anyway? Does anybody ever see them anymore?”

“We mostly lost touch after Mama and Daddy died,” Lucy said without turning from the sink where she was washing green beans. “I get cards from some of them at Christmastime. You know, those letters everybody sends now that they’ve all got their own computers.”

“What I can’t figure out,” said Wood, lacing his fingers together behind his head and gazing around the kitchen, “is where we used to put everybody. This room-this house-sure seems a lot smaller that it did when we were kids.”

“Everything seems smaller than it did when we were kids,” Mike put in. He’d taken his usual place at the foot of the oval oak table and was indulging in a back-cracking stretch. “Something about perspective.” Everybody paused to look at him alertly in case he meant to go on, since it wasn’t Mike Lanagan’s way to do much talking at times like this. Mostly, Lucy’s husband liked to just watch and listen, like the reporter he’d been and still was, she knew, in his heart.

“What we did, was,” she said when it had become apparent Mike had said all he was going to for the time being, answering Wood’s question even though she knew he hadn’t really expected an answer, “we put all the leaves in this table and the grown-ups squeezed in right here in the kitchen. The kids got to eat in the parlor. Dad would bring in two sawhorses and put planks on them, and Mom would put the oilcloth tablecloth from the kitchen table over that. The good linen tablecloth went on this table, along with the good china.”

Lucy turned on the faucet to run water over the beans. “Us kids got to eat on plastic or paper plates, like a picnic. I’m surprised you don’t remember that, Earl. You always used to try to start food fights with your cousin Donnie- Donnie Hewitt, remember him? He could make milk come out of his nose, which is a talent I don’t imagine benefited him much later in life.”

Wood passed an embarrassed hand over his eyes. His wife was gazing at him in wonderment. “That was a long time ago. I guess we’ve grown up some since then.” There was a reminiscing silence, and then he added without any laughter at all, “I wonder sometimes, you know? About Mom and Dad-what they’d think if they could see the way we turned out.”

Lucy didn’t say anything, but became intent on chopping up bacon to go on the green beans. She was thinking about Wood-Earl-and how he’d been just in high school when their parents were killed in that car accident in the middle of a bad thunderstorm. Thinking about it, even though it had been so many years ago, made her throat tighten up.

It’s this season, she thought. She hoped she wasn’t turning into one of those people who hate the holidays just on general principles.

Wood went on, after clearing his throat in the loud way men do when they’re in danger of showing emotion. “They’d have to be surprised about old Rhett becoming president of the United States.” Everybody laughed at that.

Lucy surprised everyone, herself most of all, when she turned, swiped the back of her hand across her nose and said fiercely, “They’d have been just as proud of you, Earl, becoming a teacher. Just think of all the lives you’ve-” Embarrassed, she broke it off and jerked back to the sink.

There was a long pause, and then Wood said softly, “Know who I think they’d’ve been proudest of, Lucy? You.”

She made a sound like a startled horse. “Me!”

“Yeah, you. Keeping this place going all by yourself, after Rhett and I ran out on you. Think how many generations this farm has been in our family. All the way back to-”

“Great-great-I don’t know how many greats-Grandmother Lucinda Rosewood, my namesake.” Lucy picked it up, smiling around the ache inside her. “Who once foiled a Sioux raiding party when she set her barn and fields on fire, tied up her baby in her apron and climbed down the well and hid there-”

“While the fire burned all the way to the river!” everyone chimed in, laughing, on the refrain. It was an old Brown family story, well-loved and often told.

The laughter died and silence came. Wood broke it with a gruff, “You did-we all know it. It was you who kept it here for us all to come back to.”

“For a little while, anyway,” Lucy said. She plunked the kettle full of beans down on the stove and turned on the burner, making as much noise as she could to cover up the sounds of knowledge and sadness and inevitability in the room behind her. Just small rustling, shuffling sounds, because no one was about to say out loud what they all knew to be true, which was that, after Lucy, there wasn’t going to be anyone left to keep the farm going. At least, not anyone in this family. The best they could hope for, Lucy knew, was that someone would buy the place who’d want to live in the big white farmhouse and keep cows and sweet-smelling hay in the great old barn. But the fact was, more than likely the farm was going to end up being swallowed by some agribusiness giant with offices in a high-rise in Chicago or Dallas or Kansas City, and the house and barn and all the other corrals and outbuildings would stand empty and abandoned like so many places she’d been seeing lately. Until, one by one, they were torn down, blown apart by a high plains wind, or fell in on themselves from the sheer burden of their loneliness.

Desperate to banish the images and feeling guilty for the sadness she’d brought upon them all, Lucy turned from the stove with a determined smile. “Hey,” she said lightly, “who knows? Maybe one of the grandkids…”

Wood gave a hoot of laughter. “Grandkids? Whose? You guys having some we don’t know about?”

Mike gave a wry snort and spread his hands wide as if to say, Don’t look at me.

“Rhett’s got grandkids. Lauren’s two boys-”

“Who’re way out there in Arizona on an Indian reservation. And I doubt Ethan and his rock star are going to be in any hurry to start producing rugrats.” Wood was ticking them off on his fingers. “Ellie and her husband-and weren’t the secret agent twins off in Borneo, or someplace, nabbing orangutan poachers?”

Mike cleared his throat. “That was last year. They’re in Madagascar now.”

“Ellie and Quinn are still in the honeymoon stages,” Lucy said defensively. “So are Ethan and his Joanna, for that matter. There’s plenty of time. Nobody’s rushing anybody.” She had a secret horror of becoming one of those mothers who’re always hinting and nagging about grandchildren, as if their children’s sole purpose in life was to provide them with some.

“And then there’s our Caitlyn…” Wood said that on an exhalation, sitting back in his chair. He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know if Caty’ll ever get married, let alone have kids. She’s too busy saving the world.” Lucy thought that his eyes seemed sad, following his wife as she moved from place to place, quietly setting the table and that Chris seemed unusually pale, her face more than ever like a lovely porcelain mask.

“What’s Caty doing these days?” she asked, glancing at Mike to see if he’d noticed anything out of the ordinary; if anything was amiss, he’d see it, and they would talk about it later.

“Who knows?” And Wood added, with a rare flash of impatience, “If she shows up for Christmas, you can ask her. Maybe you can get more out of her than we’ve been able to.”

“Wood,” Chris admonished softly.

“I guess that just leaves Eric.” Wood was smiling, now, but too brightly. “You heard from him this year?”

Lucy shook her head. “It’s early yet. He’ll probably call.” She opened the oven door and reached for the potholders, but Mike was already there, taking them from her and lifting the heavy roasting pan onto the counter.

“He’ll call,” he said in a low voice, catching her eyes and holding them across the sizzling, crackling pan, through a fog of garlic and spices and oven-roasted beef. “He always does.”

Lucy held on to the quiet confidence in her husband’s eyes and drew strength from it, as she had so many times before. And she smiled her special smile, just for him, to let him know she appreciated it.

“So, there you have it,” Wood said, coming upright in his chair in hand-rubbing anticipation of dinner. “No pitter-patter of little feet any time soon. Personally, I’m in no hurry to become a grandparent. Hey-I don’t feel old enough to be a grandparent. I feel like I just got grown-up myself. Frankly, I’m enjoying spending time with my wife.” He reached for her hand as she slipped into the chair next to him. “Anyway, we keep pretty busy, between my classroom full of kids and Chris’s physical therapy patients.”