Chapter 9: Mom Arrives

Anders stood up and walked around the table.

He took Bree's phone out of her hand, politely.

"This is a private family dinner," he said into the lens.

Then he pressed the red icon, and the ring light went dark.

"That was forty-one thousand people," said Bree.

"They'll survive," said Anders. "Give us a moment."

He set the phone down in the butter dish and returned to his seat.

I gave him an A. It was not the one I had been saving, but it was close.

"Leonie," said Helen quietly. "Perhaps you should lie down."

"I'm fine," I said.

I was not fine. I had been called the other woman by a woman in a satin robe, in a house I had lived in for seven years.

I had also decided, at some point in the second chorus, that it was time to stop being second.

I did not know how, yet.

Then somebody started pounding on the front door.

It was nearly ten at night.

The housekeeper went to answer, and a furious voice came in from the hall.

"Where is my brat?"

I put down my napkin.

"Oh no," I said.

My mother came through the dining room doors in her church coat, with her purse over her arm and her car keys in her fist.

She was five feet tall, and every man in the room sat up straighter.

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