Chapter 5: The Luncheon

The Little Hearts Fund held its spring luncheon at the Brookfield Lake Club every year, and Janet had chaired it for twenty years.

I knew because I had addressed the invitations since I was twelve.

This year I came in through the front door with five brothers.

They had put on clean shirts, which I was told had never happened on a Saturday.

The surgeon wore a blazer.

The boxer wore a tie, and kept tugging at it.

Dean wore his father's good jacket, and it fit across the shoulders.

"Remember," the firefighter said in my ear, "we're only here to listen."

"We're here to stand," Dean said.

"Standing counts as listening," the youngest said.

Every head in the ballroom turned.

Two hundred women in spring pastels, pearls, and fascinators stopped with their forks in the air.

The string quartet played three more bars and gave up.

Near the front, at the best table, Janet looked up from her salad.

Kaitlyn sat beside her in lemon yellow, with a bruise-colored shadow under each eye.

Neither of them moved.

I walked down the center aisle with my brothers behind me.

I had never before felt what it was like to walk into a room with people at your back.

It felt like being carried.

"Margaret," Janet said, in a voice you could have chilled wine with.

"You're trespassing."

"I'm a guest," I said.

"I was invited. I addressed my own invitation."

Somebody tittered.

"Security," Janet said, without raising her voice.

Nobody moved.

A club waiter with a tray of iced tea set it down carefully and folded his arms.

He had worked there for fifteen years.

He had held the door for me every Christmas of my life, and he gave me a very small nod.

The youngest brother stepped up to the podium and plugged a laptop into the cable the quartet had been using.

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