Chapter 13: Sunday Dinner

I scrolled down through the comments with Etienne's coffee going cold in my hand.

"Mon Dieu."

"I KNEW IT. I said it at the boil."

"His own BROTHER??"

"Poor Luc."

"Poor Luc my foot. Ask Mireille where she sleeps."

"Is that the hot sauce lady??"

Etienne read it over my shoulder.

"Somebody's mad about it," he said.

"Four hundred somebodies."

"No. Look." He tapped one comment near the bottom. "Somebody's mad you're drinking out of my good cup."

It was his aunt's neighbor.

It said, "That's his good cup."

I laughed so hard I had to put the phone face down on the rail.

Then I stopped laughing, because I had to drive back over the island in his shirt.

I went to nine o'clock Mass.

I hadn't been in a month.

I went because I'd said lights on, and lights on meant I didn't hide in Lise's apartment the morning after.

Etienne came in his one good shirt and sat beside me in the fourth pew on the left.

The Arceneaux family has sat there since 1914.

The church got quiet in a way that had nothing to do with God.

Two rows up, the shipping clerk turned all the way around in her seat and stared.

The foreman's wife gave me a small nod.

The priest came down the aisle in his green vestments and looked at every face in the church except ours.

At the sign of peace, the woman behind me shook Etienne's hand and not mine.

"Peace be with you," I said to her anyway.

"Hm," she said.

On the way out, the priest stood at the door shaking hands.

He shook Etienne's.

He looked at the parking lot when he shook mine.

"Father," I said.

"Josette."

That was all.

By noon, seven of my eleven napkin orders had canceled.

Lise read them off her phone in the café kitchen, standing on a milk crate because the floor was still wet.

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