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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