Chapter 9: The Far End of the Table

Helena's POV

The restaurant had given us the back room, with one long table and candles down the middle.

Randall's mother and I arrived together.

She carried her cane and I carried a gift bag with a leather portfolio in it, the kind Bennett had admired in a shop window two years ago.

The place cards were handwritten in black ink.

Randall sat at the head. Danica sat at his right hand in a cream dress, with a card that read Ms. Delaney.

I found mine at the far end, next to the old cousins.

Six chairs from my husband.

Bennett's friends were laughing in the middle of the table, and he was standing among them in the new suit.

He saw me and lifted one hand, and then he looked at the head of the table.

Randall's mother put her cane against my chair.

"Well," she said. "I've been placed beside the soup."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Be hungry."

A man I didn't know leaned across a cousin and gave me a bright public smile.

"Helena, we're all so glad you're being supportive."

"I'm here for my son," I said.

His smile stayed where it was while the rest of him backed away.

Philip Llewellyn arrived late, in a gray jacket, and was shown to a chair near Bennett.

He looked down the table once.

I felt it, and I did not look back, because I did not trust my face.

Then the first course came, and Randall tapped his glass with a fork.

"Friends, family," he said. "Thank you for coming to celebrate our son."

He did it beautifully.