Chapter 7: What You Came In With

Marguerite's went quiet around us while Dean read the first page of his envelope.

I walked out without my dessert.

My mother held my elbow, and my father carried Ricky's dinosaur drawing, which the boy had pressed on him at the lobster tank and then forgotten.

Outside, the evening was warm, and the lot lamps had just come on.

Dean came out fast, with the envelope crushed in his fist.

"Rosalind."

I stopped beside my father's car.

"You served me," he said. "In a restaurant."

"You booked it."

"You think you can walk out of here with half of everything?"

"I think I can walk out with what's mine," I said. "I put two hundred and twelve thousand dollars into that renovation account."

"That was a gift to the house."

"The house has no kitchen."

His mother had come out behind him. She stood on the curb, gripping her purse with both hands.

Dorothy stood a little farther off, holding Ricky against her side, quiet for once.

"You walk out of this marriage with exactly what you walked into it with," Dean said. "Which was a drafting table and a bad lease."

My father stepped up beside me.

He is a retired high school shop teacher, and he is not a tall man.

"Son," he said. "I'd lower my voice."

"This isn't your business, sir."

"It was my business the day I walked her down the aisle," my father said. "I'm only now getting around to it."

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