Chapter 20: The Last Dinner

On Saturday night my father's dining room held thirty-one people, and he had set the table with my mother's good silver.

I counted from the doorway.

I was wearing my mother's ivory coat with the collar up, and behind me on the gravel stood a dozen people from the shop floor.

I had asked them myself.

The foreman was first, in the one suit he owned.

My father rose at the head of the table with a wineglass in his hand and tears already in his eyes.

"My daughter," he said brokenly. "Thank God."

Half the room turned.

I knew some of the faces from my childhood, from the glass fairs and the Christmas parties at the plant.

My mother's friends, the ones he had invited, because he thought he could still use them.

At his right sat a thin man in a gray suit with a leather bag.

My father had introduced him on the phone as an old friend of the family.

"The doctor has kindly come to speak with you," Augustus said. "In a spirit of love."

"I'm sure he has."

"You haven't been yourself, Juliana. The marriage, that man, the scenes on that bridge. People are worried."

He let the tears fall.

"I only want a family agreement tonight. A guardian for your affairs, to help you through this fragile time."

"A family friend. Me."

He had already laid the paper beside my plate.

It was two pages, and it called me incapacitated in plain type.

A hush went around the table.

I looked at my mother's friends, one at a time.

They looked back, uneasy, caught between a daughter and a man who had fed them for forty years.

I laid my coat over a chair.

"Dad," I said, "you're right that I haven't been myself."

His shoulders relaxed.

"I've been much worse. I've been polite."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Marry Me Twice, Mr. Granger from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.