Chapter 15: The Servant's Chair

By Saturday night my mother had changed sides.

She did it the way she did everything, with a card in her own hand and the good silver.

Twenty people sat down to dinner in the dining room.

They were my father's partners and their wives, three of his sisters, and the neighbors from the funeral.

My father's chair stood empty at the head with its black ribbon.

My mother sat at its right hand, and she put Gwen at her side, in a green silk dress I had never seen.

My name card lay at the far end, between a cousin and the wall.

I looked at the card for a while.

Then I went to the service door, where the under-maid kept a plain wooden chair for polishing.

I carried it down the length of the room.

The conversation stopped.

I set the hard kitchen chair with the missing rung at the foot of the table.

Then I sat down in it.

"Lydia," said my father's eldest sister from the middle of the table, "there is a perfectly good seat."

"I like this one."

"It's a servant's chair."

"I know," I said. "I wanted to see how it felt."

My mother lifted her glass and tapped it once with her spoon.

"Friends," she said. "Before we eat, I owe you all an honesty."

She stood.

Her pearls and her posture were the same as ever, but her hand on the stem of the glass was white at the knuckle.

"Mr. Aldercott's will was read yesterday," she said. "Some of you have heard rumors, and rumors are cruel."

She breathed in.

"So I will say it myself."

Gwen had gone still beside her.

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