Chapter 15: Family Dinner

"Yes," I said. "It's true."

My dad stood in Daisy's hallway with rain dripping off his jacket.

He looked at me, trying to find the part of my face that was still twelve.

"Two years," he said. "The dean said two years."

"Since I was twenty. Since Columbus. I didn't know who he was, Dad."

"How do you not know who somebody is for two years?"

I couldn't explain that in a hallway at one in the morning.

I didn't try.

"Dorinda wants everybody at dinner tomorrow," he said. "Seven o'clock. You, me, her and him."

"Okay."

He nodded at the floor.

Then he turned and went down the stairs without hugging me.

He'd hugged me every single time I'd seen him in my whole life.

Daisy came up behind me in her pajamas and put her chin on my shoulder.

"He'll come around," she said.

"You don't know my dad."

"No," she said. "But I know dads. They drive an hour in the rain at midnight because they're scared, not because they're done."

I went back to the couch and didn't sleep.

At seven the next night, the butler took my coat at the Lake Forest door.

"Miss Prewitt," he said quietly. "For what it's worth, the soup is very good tonight."

"Is that a warning?"

"It's the only good news I have."

The dining room was lit like a church.

Dorinda sat at the head of the table in gray silk, her hands folded.

My dad sat on her right, still in his flannel.

Beckett was already at the far end, in a black sweater, his hands unwrapped now, raw and pink across the knuckles.

He stood up when I came in.

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