He Said Losing My Emotions Was Better, Then He Begged Me to Feel Again novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: The Harvest Supper
The Harvest Supper is held in the Grange hall three weeks after the Choosing, and every founding family has to attend.
Martha said we could skip it.
"If you skip it," I said, "Odile gets to tell them what happened."
So we went, the three of us, with Gillian on my other side carrying a pie.
Long tables ran the length of the hall under paper lanterns.
Orson sat across from me, thinner than three weeks ago, with shadows under his eyes.
Odile sat at the head table, in grey, with her gloves folded beside her plate.
Nobody sat near us.
They looked and looked away.
When the plates were cleared, Odile rose with a glass of cider.
"A toast," she said, and the hall went quiet. "To the women of this town, and to one in particular."
She turned her face toward me and smiled.
"Miranda Clendenin has endured the Choosing with a grace I have not seen in a young woman in thirty years. She hasn't wept or raged or made a spectacle. She has simply carried on."
Murmurs went around the hall.
"To Miranda," Odile said. "Who shows us that calm is a gift."
Glasses lifted.
I stood up.
I didn't raise mine.
"Thank you, Mrs. Draper," I said. "I'd like to ask a question, since we're toasting."
Odile's smile did not change.
"By all means, dear."
"How long has it been since you tasted your wedding cake?"
A fork clinked somewhere.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Your wedding cake. Or your son's christening. Or the first snow. You told a room I'd never have a bad day again, and you said it with a clean plate in front of you, because you haven't had a good one either."
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