Chapter 5: Sunday Supper

Honorine Gaillard lives in a pink Single House on Tradd Street with a piazza down one long side and a garden gate that squeals.

I came up the steps on Sunday at one o'clock in my good navy dress with my hair down.

A woman who calls you by name gets the dress.

Anson opened the door himself.

He had been to church in a dark suit, and he had taken off the jacket and rolled his sleeves to the elbow.

I looked at his forearms for one second and then looked at the hall.

"She's in the dining room," he said. "She will ask you questions."

"I answer questions for a living."

"Not hers."

The dining room ran the depth of the house, with a long mahogany table, nine chairs and a sideboard of silver nobody had polished in a week.

Honorine sat at the head.

She was small and white-haired, in a black cardigan with a pearl pin, and her eyes were the same pale blue as her nephew's, only warmer.

"Sit by me, Miss Marchant," she said. "Not there. That's Luc's."

I stopped with my hand on the back of a chair.

It was set like the others, with a plate, a glass and a folded napkin.

Nobody sat in it.

"Luc was my other nephew," Honorine said. "He sat there for thirty-three years. I haven't had the heart to take it away."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Eat."

There were seven at the table, counting cousins, an old harbor pilot and the pastor.

A bowl of red rice went around, and a platter of fried shrimp the size of my thumb.

I sat on her right.

Anson sat at the foot, the whole length of the table away.

For the first twenty minutes nobody said anything to me that mattered.

The pilot told a story about a tug.

A cousin complained about the parking.

Honorine watched me over her glass.

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