Chapter 4: Dinner at Seven

I got in the car because my feet hurt, not because she told me to.

"Dinner is at seven," Margaret said before we left the curb. "The family will be there."

"Which family?"

"Yours."

"I have a family?" I said. "Since when?"

Lindsey looked out the window.

Margaret turned her whole body around in the front seat.

"You have a husband, an aunt, two uncles and four cousins who have been asking about you for a week," she said.

"You will sit with them, you will smile and you will not mention the job."

"What job?"

"The one you have been to see this morning, I assume. Whatever it was."

"I'll mention it," I said. "It's the best thing that's happened to me all week."

She turned back around without a word.

I think it was the first time anyone had ever said no to her in a car.

At seven I came up the back stairs to her wing in a gray sweater and jeans.

The entire family was already seated at a table long enough to land a plane.

There were candles.

There was a silver bell next to Margaret's plate.

Twelve faces turned to look at me, and every one of them wore the same careful smile.

"Kathleen," Margaret said. "You haven't changed."

"No," I said. "I thought I'd come as I was."

"This is a family dinner."

"Then I'm family."

An older man at the end made a noise into his napkin.

Colin walked in a minute later, still in his suit, and took the empty chair beside mine.

He didn't say anything.

He moved his water glass an inch toward me.

Margaret asked how I felt.

"Fine," I said.

"Is there any pain?"

"My ribs."

"Poor thing," said a woman across from me. "It must be so frightening, not knowing anything."

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