Chapter 24: Sunday Dinner

Eleanor's dining room table seated twenty-four, and on Sunday at four there were five of us at one end of it.

She had put the good china out and flowers down the middle.

She had also, without telling anyone, moved the cook out of her own kitchen.

"You will not touch a pot today," she said to me at the door, in French. "You will sit, and be served."

"I want to cook," I said.

"Then tomorrow you will cook. Today, someone else may be useful."

The someone else was Preston.

He came out of the kitchen with an apron over his brown sweater and a tureen in both hands.

His hands were not steady. He set the tureen down in front of me as if it could break.

"It's Mawmaw's gumbo," he said, in French. "From your card. I made it eleven times this week."

"Eleven?"

"Mother says the first ten were not food."

"The first ten were not food," Eleanor agreed, from the head of the table, and unfolded her napkin.

I lifted the lid.

The roux was too dark, and the okra had gone to slime at the edges.

A sprig of thyme floated on top, and the whole thing smelled of burned onion.

I took a ladle, and filled my bowl, and tasted it.

Nobody breathed.

Rémy, beside me, kept his eyes on his plate with great care.

"It's terrible," I said.

Preston's face fell.

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