Chapter 7: Sunday Dinner

"If you go, you go alone," Donovan said. "I won't walk you up to that house."

It was Sunday, and we were in the hall with my coat half on.

"I'm not asking you to."

"You're breaking the second rule."

"I'm breaking it for one meal."

He didn't argue again.

He took my phone out of my hand, opened the voice memo, pressed the red button and slid it back into my breast pocket.

"Keep the screen against your chest," he said. "I'll be at the end of the drive."

Dermot drove me to Milton.

The Kilbride house looked the way it had looked all my life, white columns and gravel and every window lit.

I climbed the steps with the battery pack on my shoulder and rang the bell of the house I had grown up in.

A cousin I hadn't seen in a year opened the door and stared at the pump.

"Deirdre," he said. "Wow. Hi."

The dining room had been set for twenty-two.

Every chair had someone in it.

I saw my aunt, my father's three brothers and half the foremen from the docks in their good jackets.

At the head of the table, at my father's right hand, sat a silver-haired man with a hospital pin on his lapel.

I knew him from every charity dinner I had ever attended.

He was the chairman of the transplant committee.

My mother half rose from her chair.

Maeve, beside her, put both hands over her mouth, and the whole table turned.

"There she is," said my father.

He stood and held his arms out wide, with his napkin in one hand.

"Our girl is home."

Nobody had given me a seat.

A cousin dragged one in from the hall and set it at the far end by the sideboard.

I sat.

The room smelled of roast beef and furniture polish, and it was so warm that I felt the pump working harder.

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