Chapter 14: Cousin Table

The Aldriches eat Sunday lunch at two, and nobody has ever been late.

By five past, there were fourteen people around the long table in Pru's dining room in Brookline.

I had never seen so many cousins in one place who weren't holding a drink or a paper plate.

Cass had called every one of them herself.

Her message was short: "Anyone who has ever said the Lark thing, be at Aunt Pru's Sunday. Bring nothing but your memory."

I had brought an apple cake, because I can't walk into a room of strangers empty-handed.

It sat on the sideboard with its cinnamon top glistening.

Lark sat beside me in a clean navy sweater, with her hands flat on her knees.

Gordon Aldrich stood in the doorway with a carving fork, dressed for the grill, drawn in from the yard.

"Is this a trial?" he asked.

"It's lunch," Pru said.

"It has the feel of a trial."

"Sit down, Gordon."

He sat, with the fork still in his hand.

Cass stayed on her feet at the end of the table.

She tapped her water glass with a spoon the way her stepmother does, and long habit made everyone stop talking.

"Thank you for coming," she said. "I have one question."

She turned to Pru.

"Where did the rule about Lark come from?"

Every face turned toward the head of the table.

Pru folded her napkin into a square.

"From you, Cass," she said.

"So you keep telling me."

"Years ago, and you were fifteen."

"I don't remember that."

"I know. I have been carrying it for both of us."

"Then why did you never ask me about it?"

"Because you were fifteen and furious, and I was afraid you'd take it back."

Cass looked down the table at the rows of faces.

"And everyone else? Where did you get it?"

A tall cousin in his late twenties, with a beard and a very red neck, cleared his throat.

"From you, kind of," he said.

"From me?"

"At the wedding. You don't remember? We were at the cousin table, the three of us, and we were teasing Lark."

Lark sat very still.

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