Slapping Her Out of Her Delusion novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Sunday Lunch

At a lunch of thirty guests Gwen forgives Lydia in public. Lydia asks her about her novel until she contradicts herself, and Constance seats Gwen in Henry's chair. Maud drops the platter.

My mother had set the table for thirty.

She had also put a card with my name on it at the far end, next to a cousin who didn't speak to anyone.

I took my seat in the grey dress from my bag, still creased from the boathouse cot, and nobody said a word about it.

My father's chair stood empty at the head of the table, with a black ribbon tied around the back.

I put my hand on the brass compass in my pocket and held it until the metal warmed.

At one o'clock Gwen came in.

She was wearing my blue dress.

It was the one I had left in my closet when I went abroad, the one with the little covered buttons that my father said made me look like a girl in a painting.

Someone had taken it in at the waist.

"Gwendolyn, darling," my mother said, and held out both hands. "Sit by me."

Gwen sat on my mother's right, with Preston on her other side.

A maid set Gwen's plate down first.

She didn't set one down in front of me until the soup had gone round twice.

Kendrick stood at the sideboard with his hands behind his back, looking at the wall over everyone's heads.

When the plates were cleared, Gwen rose with her napkin pressed to her chest.

"I only want to say a few words," she said.

The whole room turned toward her, and she let it.

"Yesterday there was a misunderstanding. A girl cried in a place she didn't belong, and was hurt for it."

Thirty faces softened.

"But the girl at the gate has a gentle heart. She forgives. She always forgives." She turned her gaze on me, trembling. "Lydia, I forgive you."

A few women dabbed their eyes.

Preston squeezed her hand.

"Now say it back," my mother said to me quietly. "Say you're sorry."

I stood up.

Every fork stopped.

"Thank you, Gwen," I said. "That was lovely. I want to hear more about the girl at the gate."

Gwen's smile slipped a little.

"It's only a book."

"Which book?"

"The Girl at the Gate. Everyone loves it." She said it kindly, as if I'd missed a holiday. "I'm just like her."

"I'd like to read it. Who wrote it?"

"A woman. In Vermont, I think."

"What's the heroine's name?"

"Well, she's called Gwen."

"Gwen. Like you," I said.

"It's the same name because we're so alike."

"What happens in chapter one?"

Gwen's eyes went up and to the left.

"She walks into a great house for the first time," she said. "She sees the staircase, and she weeps."

"And chapter two?" I asked.

"She's slapped," Gwen said. "By the cruel sister."

Nobody laughed yet, because nobody was sure they were allowed.

"That's this week," said an old man near the fireplace.

"It was a long book," Gwen said quickly.

"Then who is the heroine's mother?"

"The housekeeper," Gwen said.

"And her father?" I asked.

Gwen opened her mouth, and for one second nothing came out.

"He's not in it," she said.

Her eyes flicked to my father's empty chair and back.

"There's no such book," a woman said down the table. She was holding her phone under the cloth. "I've just looked. There's no such book anywhere."

Someone coughed, and someone else coughed to cover it.

I heard it then, the first real laugh of the afternoon, small and astonished, from the cousin who didn't speak to anyone.

Gwen's face went white, and then she went pink.

Her chin came up, and her eyes filled in the same breath.

"It's a novel in my heart," she said.

"Gwen," I said, more gently than I meant to, "no one's going to take it from you. I only want to know what's true."

"Enough." My mother's voice dropped over the table like a lid.

She rose.

"I will not have my husband's memorial lunch turned into an interrogation of a grieving girl. Lydia, you are impossible."

"I asked three questions, Mother."

"You asked them cruelly."

She went round to the head of the table and put her hand on the black-ribboned chair.

"Henry would never have allowed this. Gwendolyn, my dear, you sit here."

The room made one sound together.

My mother pulled the chair out herself.

"Mother," I said.

"Henry adored her. He would have wanted her at the head."

Gwen looked at the chair, then at my mother, then at the faces around the table.

For the first time all day there was no performance in her face at all.

She looked frightened, and she looked greedy, and she looked like a child who had been shown a door she had wanted to go through for years.

Before she could move, a platter crashed in the doorway.

Roast potatoes skidded across the floor and a silver dish rang like a bell.

Maud Cuyler stood over the wreckage with her hands still raised and her face the color of paper.

"Not that chair," she said.

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