Chapter 15: The Same J

At midnight Hannah was sitting on my kitchen counter with a bowl of dry cereal in her lap.

She had not sat there since high school.

Cedric was at the table, still in his rehearsal jacket, with a groomsman's tie wound around one fist.

Russell had walked out of the dinner behind Cynthia and had not come home.

Hannah had gotten into my car in her socks and said, "Maple Street," and nothing else for twenty minutes.

"I should be hungry," she said now.

"You ate four crackers," Cedric said.

"That was cheese."

The front door opened without a knock.

Annette came in with a foil pan in both hands and her reading glasses pushed up into her hair.

"It's a lasagna," she said. "I made it Tuesday, in case of war."

"Aunt Annette," Hannah said. "It's midnight."

"War doesn't check the clock."

She set the pan on the stove and looked at Hannah, and then she came around the counter and held her face in both hands.

"I am furious at your father," Annette said. "I will be nice at the wedding. I will not be nice before it."

Hannah laughed and then cried a little into Annette's cardigan.

Cedric found plates.

We ate lasagna at midnight standing up, and for ten minutes nobody said anything that mattered.

It was the best meal I'd had in a month.

Then Hannah's phone buzzed on the counter.

She read the screen and went still.

"It's Cynthia," she said.

"Don't answer," I said.

"She sent a picture."

She turned the phone around.

It showed a sheet of cream paper, creased in thirds, with a short typed paragraph.

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