Chapter 6: The Fish Fry

"I'll go to the fish fry alone," Cal said. "You stay here and let it blow over."

He was standing at the stove with the phone in his hand and my picture on the screen.

"You have gone to the Founders' Fish Fry every year since you were eleven," I said.

"I can skip a year."

"If you skip it, they win a week of talking about why."

"Clarissa."

"I've spent four days hiding in your house with the blinds down. I'm a pediatric nurse. I can survive a coleslaw."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"You'll hate it."

"Probably. Put on a clean shirt."

The fry was held on the lakefront pavilion every first Saturday in October, and the whole town came.

There was a line of folding tables, a smell of hot oil, a banner from the volunteer fire department and six hundred people with paper plates.

I took Cal's arm at the entrance, hooked mine through his and walked in.

Conversation near the door stopped.

Then it started again, lower, and swept through the pavilion ahead of us.

At the ticket table sat a woman I had known all my life, with a cash box and a laminated price list.

"Evening," she said, in a hushed voice. "Is it the family special? Two for twenty-four."

I felt Cal's arm go hard under my hand.

"No," I said clearly. "Two singles, please. Two separate tickets, at twelve dollars each."

"Oh. Oh, of course, dear."

"And we'll sit together."

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