Chapter 5: The Spare

The donor luncheon was at one o'clock on Sunday, in a house with more rooms than I could count.

Sixty guests stood on the back lawn with iced tea and canapés, under a white tent that had been paid for twice.

My mother had worn her church dress and a brooch.

She stood beside the buffet with her purse in both hands.

"Lorene, you look lovely," Alvin said, and kissed her cheek.

She went pink and said thank you.

I wanted to put her in the truck and drive her home.

Jude stood beside me in a pressed blue shirt, with one hand at the small of my back.

He had put it there when we walked out of the house, and it had not moved.

In public I was his wife, and I had said so myself.

I smiled until my face hurt.

A woman in a pearl necklace and a linen suit came across the grass toward us with her husband in tow.

She took my hand in both of hers.

"You poor lamb," she said. "How are you holding up?"

"I'm fine, thank you," I said.

"I just can't imagine. You must be lost without Wendell."

"I'm not lost."

"Well, of course, of course." She patted my hand. "And it's lovely that there was a spare. Most girls aren't so lucky."

Her husband coughed.

The tent seemed to get quiet around us, though people kept talking.

I felt my smile hold.

I had held my smile through a cow's prolapse, a dog's last breath and a man who threw a bucket at me.

I could hold it through this.

Jude's hand slid from my back to my waist.

"Ma'am," he said.

His voice was perfectly polite.

"My wife is not the spare. She's the reason I'm standing in this yard and not in a ditch somewhere. You said she was lucky."

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