Chapter 17: The Rehearsal Dinner

I walked up the drive of the house I grew up in at seven o'clock.

I wore my sister's black dress and a strip of white tape.

The front door was lit and open.

Leopold stood in it, in his dinner jacket, with one hand held out.

"Dinah," he said warmly.

"Father."

The word tasted like metal.

He took my hand and kissed it, and I let him.

Behind him in the hall a quartet was tuning, and the housekeeper from the Grand was directing waiters with a clipboard.

She did not look at me.

A waiter with a tray of champagne glasses passed me without a glance.

I knew the line of his shoulders under the white jacket.

He turned his head a quarter inch and spoke without moving his lips.

"She's on the back stairs. East side. Nine o'clock."

It was Elias, with his split lip hidden under a white napkin on his arm.

I kept walking.

Dinah had left the house at five for a walk in the garden, in front of two guards.

She had come back in through the kitchen with the caterers.

No one counts twins in a house where only one is expected.

Leopold was letting it happen, and he thought that was his idea.

I took Dinah's chair at the long table, between Quentin and an empty seat for Adelaide's cousin.

Twenty guests, three board members, two lawyers, a priest, a florist who would not stop touching the centerpiece.

Quentin's hand found my knee under the tablecloth.

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