His Lifelong Pleas Got Nothing novel · Chapter 28 of 32
Chapter 28: The Last Sunday
The Huntington dining room had the same long table, the same silver, and twelve chairs.
At noon on Sunday ten of them were full.
Odile sat at the head in black wool, with her hands folded beside her plate.
The cousins and aunts and uncles looked at their napkins when we walked in.
Margo came first, with her chin up and no coat.
The assistant came behind her, carrying the leather folder against her chest.
Sam and I came last, and he stopped at the doorway to let me go in first.
"Matilda," Odile said. "You came to the table. How nice. Sit anywhere that's empty."
"I'll stand."
"As you like. Since you've called everyone together, you may say what you came to say."
"I didn't call anyone. You did."
A few of the cousins shifted.
Odile smiled around the table.
"My niece has had a nervous collapse, and my son's wife has been very badly advised. I would ask the family to remember who has fed it for forty years."
I looked at the faces.
There was Margo's mother, who had never once been told, and there was the old uncle who ran the Newport yard.
There was a woman about my age, a cousin by marriage, with a baby in a high chair beside her.
I had been to this table for six years, and I had never learned her name.
"I'm not going to read you anything," I said. "I read it once, at this table, and you heard it."
"We heard a great deal of nonsense," said the uncle.
"Then ask her," I said, and I pointed at the assistant.
She stepped to the table and opened the folder.
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