My Brother, My Wife, and Their Son novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Award Dinner
The country club had put Dad's name on an easel by the front doors.
LIFETIME SERVICE AWARD, it said, with the county seal and a photograph of him from twenty years ago.
Maisie was in Harlow Bay for the weekend with the cafeteria's head cook, who had raised four children of her own and had offered before I asked.
Margery stood beside me in her good navy dress with her handbag held in both hands.
Inside the bag, in a plastic sleeve, was her hospital discharge sheet.
"I haven't been on a plane since I was nineteen," she said.
"You held my wrist the whole landing."
"I'm sorry about that."
"I'd have been worse."
A young woman at the door ran a finger down a list.
"Name, please?"
"Cedric Marsden. I'm the honoree's son. This is my guest."
She found a place card that said Colby Marsden and handed it to me without a smile.
"Table one. Your brother hasn't arrived."
"He won't," I said.
The ballroom held about two hundred people at round tables with white cloths.
I knew half of them by sight, the men who had come to our house at Christmas for thirty years and the wives who had told me how proud my father must be of me.
Table one stood at the front, below a small stage with a podium.
Dad sat at its center in his dark suit, with a glass of water and a folded speech beside his plate.
Mom sat on his left in a green dress.
She was holding a black handbag on her lap with both arms around it.
She looked up and saw Margery.
Her fork fell and rang against the plate.
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