Chapter 6: Sunday Dinner

"A friend from before," I said. "He came to say goodbye."

Bram looked at the empty end of the alley, then at me.

"Before what?"

"Before the harbor. I told you I have gaps."

"You told the doctors that." He held the door for me. "You've told me nothing yet."

I walked past him into the bar, and I didn't breathe properly until the door shut behind us.

He didn't push. That was the worst of it, because I could feel him not pushing.

At the curb, with the rain stopped, he said, "Sunday. Dinner at my family's house. Six o'clock."

"No."

"My grandfather wants to meet the woman I've been seen with."

"We haven't been seen anywhere."

"Four nights at table six," said Bram. "In this town, that is a parade."

I should have said no again. I should have gone to Emmett's cabin north of the state line.

But the Wainwright family had a photograph of my hand on a desk, and I wanted to see which desk.

"Fine," I said. "One dinner."

His shoulders came down a fraction. He hid it well.

On Sunday he picked me up in a black car, and Pru stood in the window and mimed fainting.

The house sat on the bluff above the harbor, white stone with a long gravel drive.

He parked in front of the steps and didn't get out.

"Before we go in," he said. "You'll do what I tell you. You go nowhere without telling me. Not to the store, not to work, not to the corner."

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