Chapter 24: The Aunt

I carried the gardenias to the children's ward on Monday morning.

I set them on the nurses' station.

A four-year-old with a cast on her arm put her whole face in them.

"They smell like soap," she said.

"They do."

"Who sent them?"

"Nobody," I said. "They're yours."

I never learned who had carried them to the dock.

I did not have to.

A month later, on the last Sunday before Christmas, I walked into the Bexley dining room.

My husband's hand was in mine.

It was six o'clock, and the table was set for eight.

There was a card at every place, in Lowell's heavy handwriting.

I found mine near the head of the table.

It was on Lowell's right, in the chair where Gwendolyn had sat for thirty-four years.

Ford's card sat beside mine.

At the foot of the table sat the chair by the kitchen door.

It had been mine on the day the trust was read, and now it had another card.

It said Gwendolyn.

She came in last.

She wore plain gray wool with no pearls and no gardenia on her lapel.

She did not look at me, and she did not look at the card.

She walked the length of the table and sat down where she had been put.

Lowell, at the head, watched her do it and said nothing at all.

At six-ten the doorbell rang, and I went to get it myself.

Kendra stood on the porch in a navy coat with her hands in her pockets.

She had gained back some weight.

A new nursing badge from a clinic in Mooresville was clipped to her lapel.