Chapter 5: Pinckney Street

Fiona had set the table for four in a narrow brick house on Pinckney Street, and she had put my place next to Theo's high chair.

"I know Grandfather told you not to come to Brookline," she said.

"So I thought, why not here? Nobody has to shout in my kitchen."

"He didn't tell me not to come. He told me I wasn't welcome."

"Same thing, with him." She laughed and put a bowl of pasta in front of me. "Eat. You look like you've been living on crackers."

"Goat stew, mostly."

"I'm not asking."

Theo banged a spoon on his tray and shouted a word that might have been "dog."

I asked, "Where's the dog?"

"We don't have a dog," Fiona said. "He just wants one."

I laughed, and the sound surprised me.

For about ten minutes it was an ordinary dinner at my sister's house.

She told me that Theo had walked at eleven months and bitten the pediatrician at fourteen.

She asked how the field hospital had managed without blood, and she actually listened to the answer.

Desmond sat at the end of the table with his plate untouched and said almost nothing.

When Fiona went to the sink, I looked at him over the pasta bowl.

He was looking at the gold band on his finger.

He turned it once, slowly, and stopped.

Fiona came back with a cardboard box and put it on my lap.

"I kept this for you," she said. "It's Dad's. It was in the bottom drawer of his locker. I couldn't give it to anyone else."

I opened the lid.

His watch was on top, the old steel one with the cracked crystal.

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