He Thought I Was an Orphan Until I Went Home novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Birthday Dinner
Ada cooks the roast at her mother-in-law's birthday, and Austin hands her divorce papers at the table. She signs, tears up his check, and walks out into the rain, where a stranger calls her by a name she has never heard.
Phyllis Tallmadge turned fifty-eight on a Friday, and by seven o'clock all twelve of us were seated at her dining table.
I had cooked the roast myself, in the kitchen of the house I was not allowed to call mine.
My husband and I lived in the apartment over the garage, behind the main house.
Phyllis called it a kindness.
She had called it a kindness for five years.
"Ada, the gravy is thin," she said, without looking up.
"I'll warm it," I said, and I got up and warmed it.
That was my place at that table.
I was the girl Austin had brought home from nowhere, with no mother, no father and no one to call when something broke.
Phyllis introduced me that way to every guest.
"This is Ada, Austin's wife. We took her in. She has no people at all."
I was used to it.
I had stopped being hurt somewhere around year two.
I put the gravy boat down and Austin tapped his glass with a fork.
He stood up, tall and fair and handsome in the blue shirt I had ironed that morning.
"Before we cut the cake," he said, "I want to say something about my mother."
Everyone smiled.
He talked about her strength, and her sacrifices, and the way she held this family together.
Phyllis dabbed at one eye.
Then he said, "And I want to be honest with her, and with all of you, because this family doesn't lie."
He reached under his chair and set a manila folder next to my plate.
I looked at it.
Then I looked at him.
"Ada, these are divorce papers," he said, in the same warm voice.
Nobody gasped.
That was the part I remembered afterward, that nobody at that table was surprised.
An aunt in a green cardigan kept chewing.
"I've met someone," Austin said. "Her name is Daphne Larkin, and she's here tonight."
The front door opened on cue.
A tall young woman in a white wrap dress came in with a bottle of wine.
She smiled.
Phyllis stood and kissed her on both cheeks.
"Her family owns three inns on the river," Phyllis told the table. "Larkin Hotels."
Then she turned to me, and her voice dropped into the tone she used on stray dogs.
"Ada, dear, be sensible. You knew this was charity from the start."
"Charity," I said.
"We fed you, we housed you, we gave you a name."
"Austin has done more than most men would."
"You have nowhere else to go, and nobody to go to."
Daphne gave me a small, sorry smile.
"I really hope we can be friends," she said.
I looked around the table.
Twelve faces, and not one of them looked away.
I had spent five years waiting for one of them to say my name like I was a person.
I opened the folder and read the first page.
It said I would take nothing from the marriage, and I would claim nothing, and I would leave within the week.
There was a check clipped to the back for five thousand dollars.
"That's generous," Austin said. "That's from me."
I picked up Phyllis's gold pen from beside her plate.
"Ada," Austin said, with the first flicker of nerves. "You don't have to sign tonight."
I signed every page where the yellow tabs were.
My hand did not shake.
Then I unclipped the check, tore it in half, and set the halves on his plate.
"Keep it," I said. "You'll need it."
"Don't be dramatic," Phyllis said.
"I'm not," I said. "I'm finished."
I walked out of the dining room and across the yard to the garage apartment.
It took me six minutes to pack.
I took my winter coat, my laptop, and a tin box of my father's things that I had carried through four foster homes.
I left the wedding ring on the kitchen counter.
When I came back across the yard with my bag, the rain had started, cold and steady.
Nobody had followed me out.
Through the dining room window I could see Phyllis cutting the cake.
I had two hundred and twelve dollars in my checking account and nowhere to sleep.
I stood at the end of the driveway with my bag on my shoulder and no idea which way to walk.
A pickup truck I had never seen before was parked at the curb, with its engine running and its lights off.
The driver's door opened.
A big man in a canvas work coat got out and stood in the rain, looking straight at me.
He was not young and not old, with a buzzed head and a short black beard, and he held his hat in one scarred hand.
"Ada Mead?" he said.
"Who's asking?"
"You were born Ada Van Dorn," he said. "Your mother was Anne Van Dorn, of Van Dorn Hill."
I did not know what to say.
My mother had never told me she had a family.
"Your grandfather died five weeks ago," he said, quietly. "Miss Van Dorn, he left you the whole hill."
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