He Had Me Drowned, Then Wept at My Grave novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Gravy
At the Sunday lunch before the hurricane, Daphne tells the table she is pregnant, Rhea lays out photographs, Leo orders his men to take her to the causeway, and she drops her ring in the lamb gravy and walks out.
I told twelve of my husband's family I was four months pregnant, and my husband told his men to take me to the causeway.
It was Sunday lunch, the day before the hurricane, and the whole family sat at the long table in his late father's house with the shutters already nailed.
The lamb had come out an hour before.
I had waited for it because I wanted every one of them there.
"I'm having a baby," I said.
Nobody spoke.
My husband's hand stopped halfway to the bread.
For one second his face opened, and I thought, maybe.
Then his stepmother laid a brown envelope beside the platter and slid it across the cloth.
"Before you congratulate her," she said, "look at what she's been doing."
She was fifty-five, silver in her black hair, a gold cross the size of a thumb on her blouse.
Her name was Rhea, and she had hated me since my wedding day.
She had waited three years for this.
My husband tipped the envelope out.
Photographs slid over the tablecloth, and I saw the first one upside down.
Leo straightened it with one finger.
It was me on the Sponge Docks with a man in a green jacket, my hand on his arm.
He was the doctor's brother who drove me to my checkups, because Leo wouldn't.
In the next picture the man was holding the door of a car for me.
"Four months," Rhea said, folding her hands on the cloth.
"And my son has not touched her since Easter."
The table made a low sound, a dozen people drawing breath at once.
Twelve faces turned to me, and I knew them all.
His uncle, who had danced at my wedding.
His cousins, who had watched me wear long sleeves in July and said nothing.
I looked at Leo.
"It's yours," I said.
He didn't look up from the photographs.
My wrist ached where he had broken it in the second year, and my right side ached where he had cracked two ribs in the third.
I had told the doctor I fell on the dock both times.
I had come to this lunch with one hope, and the hope was that a child would make him stop.
Leo laid the last photograph down very gently, the way he did everything before he hurt me.
"Nikos," he said.
Two of his men stood by the kitchen door in dry black jackets.
"Take my wife to the causeway."
His voice was calm.
"Take her car, and see that she doesn't come back from it."
The men started toward me.
No one at that table moved to stop them.
His uncle studied his wine.
A cousin I had once bought a christening gift for looked at his plate and picked up his fork.
Rhea poured herself water.
I stood up.
My knees were shaking, but my voice wasn't, and I will always be proud of that.
"You haven't even asked me," I said.
Leo finally raised his eyes.
They were black and flat and certain, and he said, "I don't need to."
I put my hand on my stomach where all of them could see it.
"Then I'm leaving," I said.
The room was so quiet I heard the rain start on the roof.
I slid my wedding ring off my finger.
It stuck at the knuckle, because my hands had swollen with the baby, and I twisted it free.
The gold was warm from my skin.
I held it up so Leo could watch me do it.
Then I dropped it into the bowl of lamb gravy in front of his seat.
It went in with a small wet sound and sank.
"You can have it back," I said, "when you can say my name without your hand shaking."
His hand was shaking, and he knew it.
Nikos reached for my arm.
I stepped back from him, took my purse off the chair, and walked out through the dining room, and the hall, and the front door.
The wind hit me hard enough to turn me sideways.
The sky over Tarpon Springs had gone the color of a bruise, and the whole street was moving.
Pickups with mattresses tied down, station wagons with dogs in the windows, families inching toward the highway with their headlights on.
Everyone in town was leaving before the storm.
I walked into the middle of the evacuation traffic with my purse over my shoulder and my hand over my child.
Behind me the front door banged open.
"Daphne!"
It wasn't Leo's voice.
Callie came running down the steps with her braid whipping across her face, twenty-one years old, Rhea's daughter, the only person in that house who had ever been kind to me.
She had a yellow rain slicker in one hand and a set of car keys in the other.
"Put this on," she said, shoving the slicker at me.
She was out of breath, and she was crying.
"Get in my car, right now.
"I'm driving you, and I'm taking the long way round."
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