Chapter 6: The Grandmother

The Marchand house was a gray stone townhouse with a black door, and Etienne's grandmother was waiting behind it.

She was eighty-eight, small and straight-backed, and she held a cane she did not lean on.

She looked at me from my shoes to my hair before she said hello.

"So you are the piano player."

"Hazel Fincham, ma'am."

"Hazel Fincham who is Hazel Rutherford until Monday." She tapped the cane once. "I read the papers. Come in."

Lunch was at a table for six, set for four.

Delphine was already seated, in a cream dress, with her hair loose and a small, anxious smile.

She stood and kissed my cheek.

"I'm so glad you came. Grand-mère, isn't she lovely?"

"She is wearing a borrowed dress," the old woman said. "And she looked at the silver before she looked at me. A practical girl."

"I was counting the forks," I said. "I don't know which one comes first."

"From the outside in. It is the only rule worth remembering."

She said it with a straight face, and across the table Etienne lowered his eyes to his plate.

I could see him fighting a smile.

The meal was soup, then fish, then a long cross-examination.

Where was I from? A small town with one stoplight.

Where were my parents? My father had left when I was six, and my mother had died when I was nineteen.

"Of what?"

"Cancer."

"In which hospital?"

"St. Brigid's, mostly."

Delphine's fork stopped halfway to her mouth.

It was only for a breath, and she picked it up again.

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