Chapter 4: The Morning Table

Breakfast in the Park Ridge house was served at eight, and I was seated below the housekeeper.

There were twelve places at the long table.

Eleni Manolakis sat at the head in black, with her silver hair pinned up and her pearl earrings catching the light from the glass wall.

Stavros sat at the far end.

The housekeeper had the chair on Eleni's right.

A cousin and two aunts sat down the sides, and my plate came last, at the foot, beside an empty chair.

"The girl sits there until she is with child," Eleni said to the table in Greek, as if I could not understand her.

"After that we will see."

Nobody looked at me.

I put the fork in my mouth and chewed the egg.

I was sore in places I had not been sore in a long time, and I held very still so it would not show.

"A grandson," Eleni said, and lifted her coffee.

"By Easter next year.

"I have said so to the church and to the market."

She said it to the whole table, but she looked at her son.

Stavros was reading the front of the paper.

He did not look up.

He turned a page, and his cuffs were buttoned, and his eyes stayed on the print.

I watched his mother watch him.

Something passed over her face, quick and hard, and was gone.

At nine the family doctor came to the house in a gray coat with a leather bag.

I saw him from the stairs.

He went straight to the door of Stavros's study off the foyer.

Eleni stepped out of the dining room and stood in front of it with her hands folded.