Chapter 11: The Dinner Party

My father held his investor dinner on Wednesday night, and Sheridan put me at her left hand.

Twenty guests sat under the dining room chandelier.

The governor's wife was on my father's right.

Beside her sat three men from a bank.

They had come to decide whether to lend Winslade Hotels forty million dollars.

I wore the navy dress.

I had not slept since the shed.

Before dinner I found my mother alone in the upstairs hall, pinning her hair in front of the long mirror.

She had not spoken to me since the luncheon.

Her hands shook so badly that the pins kept falling.

I picked one up and held it out.

"I saw Dad on Monday night," I said quietly.

She did not take the pin.

"Two in the morning. In the garden. He was coming out of the cottage with an empty tray."

The color left her face.

"Who is he feeding, Mom?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Every night a tray goes out there. Sheridan says it's grief."

"Camilla, please." Her eyes filled with tears. "Please don't."

"Don't what?"

She turned back to the mirror and put the last pin in with an unsteady hand.

"Don't make me choose," my mother whispered.

At dinner she drank.

I watched her do it.

The first glass of white went down before the soup, and the second with the fish.

By the main course she had stopped bothering to hide it.

My father watched her too.

"Diane," he said, low. "That's enough."

"It's my table," she said.

Nobody laughed.

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