"Dad, not at the table," her mother said, very quietly. Her eyes were still closed. "Please. Not in front of—"
Grandpa Walt pushed his chair back.
It scraped on the linoleum, a long ugly sound. He got up faster than Josie had seen him get up since June, his hand gripping the table edge, the cane swinging on the chair back and knocking against the wood. He took two steps to where her mother sat. Her mother opened her eyes and looked up at him, and her face was not smug anymore, and it was not anything Josie had a name for. It was the face of someone at the top of the stairs in the dark.
His hand came across.
It made a sound like a book dropped flat on a floor. Her mother's head turned with it. Her hair swung. She gasped, a sharp, sucked-in sound, and her hand flew up to her cheek, and she stayed like that, turned, her mouth open, staring at the wall where the shadows were, as if she could not understand what the wall had done.
The piano song kept playing on the radio.
Josie heard someone say *no*. She realized it was her.
***
"No," Josie said again. "No, no, don't, Grandpa, don't."
She was out of her chair. She didn't remember getting out of it. She was standing between the table and her grandfather with her arms half up, not touching him, just holding them out in the air like you'd hold them out to stop a door from closing, and her face was wet all over, and she was saying *don't* over and over as though he were about to do it again, though he wasn't moving at all.
He was standing very still. His hand was still a little bit raised, the fingers open, and he was looking at it.
Behind her, Benji began to cry. Not the whining cry he did when he wanted the tablet, but the other one, the real one, the one from when he was three and had fallen down the back steps, a high thin wail that came out of him with his mouth still full, so that a piece of chicken fell out of it onto the plate. He was pushing himself back in his chair, pushing with his feet against the table, and the water glasses shook, and his glass tipped and rolled and water ran across the cloth and dripped off the edge onto the floor.
"Mama," he wailed. "Mama. Mama."
Her mother didn't answer him. Her hand was still on her face. Josie could see the red coming up around the edges of her fingers, spreading out from under them onto her neck. Her eyes were very bright and very far away.
"Theresa," said Grandpa Walt.