Chapter 4: Dinner With Gus

I wore the green dress because I couldn't think of a reason not to.

Uncle Gus was already in my father's dining room when I got there, and he stood up and held out both arms.

"There she is."

He smelled of soap and cedar, the way he had when I was six and he used to carry me on his shoulders at the foundry picnic.

His name was Augustin Thorpe, but I had called him Uncle Gus since before I could say Augustin.

He was sixty-three now, silver-haired and soft-voiced, in a grey cardigan with leather buttons.

He had sent me a handwritten birthday card every year of my life.

"You've gotten thin," he said, holding me at arm's length.

"I've gotten the same."

"You've gotten her chin."

He said it with so much love that I almost forgave him.

Torin sat across the table from me.

He had on a dark suit and his glasses, and he shook Gus's hand with a warmth that surprised me.

"Gus is the reason I'm in this chair," he told my father. "He took me in when I was nineteen and had nothing."

"I took in a boy who was already clever," Gus said. "All I did was point."

My father passed the potatoes and said nothing.

He'd said very little all week.

I put a spoonful of green beans on my plate, and my phone buzzed once against my thigh.

I took it out under the tablecloth.

TORIN: Knees apart.

I looked up.

He was cutting his lamb and listening to something Gus was saying about a board meeting.

He didn't look at me at all.

I parted my knees under the table.

My phone buzzed again.

TORIN: Good. Now take off your underwear.

My face went hot.

I put down my fork.

"Bron, you're flushed," Gus said.

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