Chapter 10: Sunday Dinner

Connor's mother called me on Saturday and said, "Sunday dinner. One o'clock. Pippa will be there."

She didn't ask how I was.

She is seventy-four and has never in her life asked how anyone was.

I drove to her brick house on Linden Street in my good grey dress.

My hands were steady on the wheel.

Abraham had left firewood by my door both mornings since the night in the lane.

He hadn't said a word, and I hadn't told him to stop.

Connor opened the door.

"Jo. Thank you for coming." He kissed the air near my cheek.

Brynn sat at the dining table with a napkin in her lap, wearing a high-necked blouse.

She looked composed and very polite.

Pippa sat across from her with her hands in her lap, in a navy dress I didn't recognize.

The pouch hung around her neck over the collar.

"Hi, Pippa," I said.

She nodded at her plate.

Connor's mother took the head of the table and said grace.

Then she served the roast with a hand that didn't shake.

For ten minutes nobody said a thing I would call real.

Brynn asked for the gravy.

Connor told a story about a customer who traded in a hearse.

Pippa moved a pea from one side of her plate to the other.

"I understand," Connor's mother said at last, not looking up from her knife, "that there was an incident at the school."

"There was," I said.