Chapter 20: Christmas Eve

The family lounge on the fourth floor had been turned into a church supper.

Two folding tables ran end to end under the fluorescent lights, covered in red paper and foil trays.

Thirty people sat along them in their good sweaters, and I knew every face from the shower.

The smell hit me at the door: chili oil, clove, cumin and burnt sugar.

My mother had made every dish the way she cooked for Simone.

I carried a canvas tote on my shoulder with a small speaker in the bottom, and my phone in my coat pocket.

"Jean is here!" a woman called.

"Merry Christmas, Jeanie," said someone else, with a little too much warmth.

I let them look at me.

Simone sat at the head of the table in a hospital gown and a pink cardigan, with an IV in her left hand and a monitor strap around her belly.

A nurse had wheeled her in on request, and the IV pole stood behind her chair.

Gordon sat on her right, gray in the face.

Florence stood at her left, serving.

"Sit," my mother said. "There's a place by your father's end."

"I'll stand for a minute."

"You'll sit, Jeanie."

"I said I'd stand."

I felt Simone watching me, and I kept my eyes on the foil trays.

The side door opened and Colin came in, in a dark coat, with a flat file folder under his arm.

He had shaved badly and his left eye was bloodshot.

Simone smiled at him and patted the empty chair beside her.

"Colin, sit with me."

"I'll stand with Jean."

"Colin."

"I said I'll stand."

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