Chapter 7: Sunday Dinner

My stepmother lunged for the notebook, and Nash caught her wrist.

"Careful," he said. "The floor's slippery."

"That is my property!"

"It's got my wife's dates in it," Roan said from the doorway. "Keep it, Sutton."

I put the green notebook in my sweater, against my ribs, where I could feel the corners.

I left the house with my mother's hummingbird in one fist and a box of her photographs under my arm.

Nobody stopped me.

At six o'clock that evening the old man held his Sunday dinner.

He had done it every Sunday for sixty years, the Eyebrow told me, and he had never once let a guest skip it.

He had sent the car for the Landrys at five.

I sat at the long table in the dining room in a green dress Nash had found, God knows where, with the notebook on my lap under the napkin.

Roan sat at my right.

Across from me my father stared at his plate.

My stepmother sat beside him with a glass of white wine in her hand and a calm face.

Camryn wore pale yellow, with a bare throat.

And beside her, in a jacket and tie, with his hair wet from a shower, sat Reed, who couldn't look anywhere.

The Silent One brought out lamb.

Nobody touched it but Nash.

"This is very good," Nash said, to nobody. "I'd like the record to show I said it was good."

"Sutton," my father said, finally. His voice was hoarse. "Sweetheart, about the other night..."

"Eat, Landry," said the old man.

My father picked up his fork.

I waited until dessert.

Camryn waited, too, and when the plates were cleared she put her elbows on the table and smiled round at the room.

"We should play something," she said. "Everybody's so serious. Reed and I were just saying. Truth or Dare. For old times."

Reed made a small, choked sound.

"Oh, yes," I said. "Let's."

Everyone looked at me.

I took the notebook out from under the napkin and put it on the white tablecloth, with the rubber band still around it.

"Truth or Dare, Camryn?"

Her smile wavered.

"Truth," she said, lightly.

"Good." I slid the rubber band off. "Who is T., and what did your mother pay him three hundred dollars for on the fourteenth of June?"

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