Chapter 8: Dinner Is Over

I turned around with the flip phone open in my hand.

Tierney stood against the closed door in her green dress, and she looked at the phone, and then at my face.

For a moment nothing moved in hers.

Then she smiled, the same smile she had worn at my wedding.

"Miri," she said gently. "Give that to me."

"No."

"You don't understand what you're looking at."

"I understand it very well," I said. "Dinner's over."

I walked past her and opened the bedroom door.

She followed me, saying my name, softly and then less softly.

I carried the phone down the hall into her dining room, where six people sat with their wine and their half-eaten salad.

Declan looked up first.

He saw the phone, and he saw my face, and he put down his glass.

"Everyone," I said. "I'm sorry to do this at your table."

Tierney's coworker laughed uncertainly. "Miri? Is something wrong?"

"Ten years ago in Madison, I hit a man with a tire iron," I said.

Nobody laughed now.

"My best friend told me he was dead. She told me she would handle it. She has held that over me every day since."

"Miri, stop," Tierney said.

"Last week he texted her from Arizona. Read it yourself."

I handed the phone to the neighbor's wife.

She read the screen, and then she read it again, and her hand went over her mouth.

The coworker took it from her and read it aloud, slowly, to the whole table.

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