Chapter 5: A Question for the Tea

That evening I stood in Mama's back room with a tape measure around my neck and nothing to measure.

The lace was the only thing I wanted, and I could not walk into Prytania Street and ask for it.

Gaspard leaned in the doorway with a mug.

"You're going to the Tea," he said.

"I'm obliged to go."

"That's not what I asked."

I wound the tape around my fist.

"In my second month in that house, Hortense wanted a portrait of the krewe's families on the stairs."

"She said the collar was so pretty, she'd like it in the picture."

"I lent it."

"And?"

"And she said she'd send it back with the photographer."

"Then she said it was being cleaned."

"Then I stopped asking, because every time I asked, she looked at me as if I'd accused her of a crime."

"Did you write it down?"

"Gaspard, it was my mother's lace. Who writes that down?"

"Somebody with a mother-in-law like that."

He said it lightly, and I almost laughed.

I thought about how I had been the girl who hadn't known to write things down.

I decided I would not be that girl on Saturday.

"I'm not bringing a lawyer," I said. "I'm not bringing a speech. She'll be ready for those."

"What are you bringing?"

"One question."

"Which question?"

"I'll know when I see where she's sitting."

He looked at me over the mug for a moment, and there was something in his face I did not have a name for yet.

It was not pity.

I was watching for pity, and this was not it.

"All right," he said, and went to wash the cup.

At nine, my phone rang with a number I knew by heart.

It was the kitchen line at the Prytania house.

"Chère," said the cook in a low rush. "I've got three minutes before she comes down. Are you sitting?"

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Gave Me a Check at Twelfth Night, So I Took Their Mardi Gras from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.