Chapter 8: Sunday Dinner

Stefan's POV

My mother had cooked Sunday dinner every week of my life, and for eleven years I had skipped it.

This Sunday I was early.

She noticed.

"Stefan," she said at the door of the rectory kitchen. "You've shaved."

"I trimmed."

"You look like your father."

I did not answer that.

My father had been dead since I was nineteen, and what I remembered of him was a quiet man who agreed with her.

The table was set for two with the good china.

She'd made pot roast, the way she did when she wanted something, and she poured me a glass of red wine without asking.

I sat where I always sat, with my back to the window and the St. Brendan's courtyard behind me.

"I saw the video," she said, cutting her meat in small, even squares. "That girl has grown into quite an actress."

"She wasn't acting."

"Of course she wasn't. That's what makes her so effective."

I put down my fork.

"Mom," I said. "I know about the Wing."

She did not look up.

"Which wing?"

"The Gorski Wing. I know what it cost, and I know what the trust paid," I said.

"You know a great deal for a man who hasn't been to dinner since he was twenty-two."

"I have the permit."

My mother laid her knife across her plate.

She dabbed her mouth with the napkin, folded it, and set it beside the knife.

"Do you remember how you bought your marina?" she asked pleasantly.

"I took out a loan."

"A loan that required a guarantor. Do you know who guaranteed it?"

I did.

I had always known.

"You did," I said.

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