Chapter 7: Chestnut Hill

Lowell Crewe lived in Chestnut Hill in a stone house with a driveway long enough to need a name.

Thirty relatives were already inside.

Cousins, great-aunts, and a second cousin with a glass of scotch and a child on each knee.

The table was laid for dinner under a chandelier the size of a Volkswagen.

"Take a breath," Sebastian said at the door.

"I'm breathing."

"You're not."

"I'm doing it very quietly."

He laid his hand at the small of my back.

He did it lightly, without looking at me.

I felt it all the way up my spine.

"Clause nine doesn't apply to you," he said. "I know. I'm not asking."

"Then what are you doing?"

"I don't know how to stand next to you any other way."

I opened my mouth, and Lowell's voice reached us from the hall.

"There they are!"

We were seated halfway down the long table, next to a cousin with a smile.

Sebastian pulled out my chair before the cousin could.

He sat close enough that our knees touched under the cloth.

He passed me the bread before I asked.

He poured my water.

A great-aunt asked where we would honeymoon.

"We haven't decided," he said, and looked at me as if I might say Paris.

Every move was exact.

Every one was real.

I couldn't tell where the performance ended, because there wasn't one.

"And what do you do, Olivia?" Lowell asked from the head of the table, over his glass.

The table quieted.

"I'm a physical therapy assistant. At an outpatient clinic in Port Richmond."

"Ah." He smiled at the table. "So you help people walk."

"I do."

"How wonderful. A caring profession. Like a nurse, but with less paperwork." A cousin laughed. "Did you train at a community college?"

"I did," I said. "Two years, at night, while I worked a second job."

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