Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Lorraine sent the invitation through Ruth.
She called it a family supper, said everyone had suffered enough, and asked Sophie to bring the bowl she had borrowed last Easter.
The album appeared in the final line, almost an afterthought: Lorraine would be glad to return it when they could sit down together properly.
Sophie read the message in her car outside the museum.
She called Hank, who said Lorraine had moved the album since he’d last seen it.
Jesse had come for it the previous Sunday and waited in the hall for forty minutes while Lorraine said she couldn’t remember where she’d put it; she called Sophie afterward to say she’d found it and would give it back herself.
“I’m going,” Sophie said. Rain collected along the bottom of the windshield. “Tell her I’ll bring the bowl.”
Jesse called that evening while Sophie was packing dishes into a box for Kelly. She answered with a mug wrapped in a towel beneath her arm and told him she was taking her own car.
“I’ll come,” Jesse said. A television played behind his voice, and he turned it down. “Can you tell me what time?”
“Six.” She set the mug in the box. “I’m taking my own car.”
“I heard you.” He sounded irritated, and she almost told him she hadn’t been asking. They arranged where to park, then ended the call with the television still silent at his end.
Kelly offered to come, then said she was coming whether Sophie wanted her or not. Sophie asked if she intended to sit in the driveway because Lorraine certainly wouldn’t let her in.
“I can sit in a car,” Kelly said. She began searching for her keys, and Sophie took them off the table and held them out to her.
“Go home,” Sophie said. She kept her hand extended until Kelly took them. “Please. I don’t want to be thinking about you freezing outside.”
Kelly pulled on her coat. “Call me when you’re out,” she said, fastening the wrong button and leaving it that way.
“I will,” Sophie said. She caught her sister’s sleeve before Kelly reached the door. “I mean it.”
On Sunday she arrived five minutes late.
The house smelled of roasting meat, and Lorraine stood in the hallway in a dark blue dress Sophie remembered admiring before the wedding.
She had worn it to Sophie’s thirtieth birthday and insisted on washing the dishes afterward so Sophie could sit with her friends.
“There she is,” Lorraine said. She opened her arms, and Sophie put the bowl into them.
“You asked for this.” She kept her coat on. “Where’s the album?”
Lorraine looked at the bowl. For a second her mouth lost its smile, then she called to Hank to take it and reached for Sophie’s coat herself.
“We’ll get to all of that,” Lorraine said. She touched Sophie’s sleeve. “Come in out of the cold.”
Sophie moved past her. Ruth was at the table with Bethany, and Jesse stood by the window holding a glass he hadn’t drunk from.
Two of his older cousins had come too, men who’d helped fit out his workshop and still called Sophie the museum girl.
One rose to kiss her cheek, then sat down without asking where she’d been living.
The great white portrait still hung above the mantel. On the side table stood Sophie’s green photograph, turned sideways behind a vase. Hank had moved his chair a little closer to it, or perhaps it had always stood there and she had never noticed.
Lorraine put a hand on Jesse’s arm as she passed. “Doesn’t she look lovely?” she asked him. “I’ve told you there’s nothing to worry about.”
“Mom. Don’t.”
Lorraine laughed lightly. “I can’t say she looks lovely?” she asked Ruth, who smiled without answering.
“I’d like the album first,” Sophie said. “Then we can sit.”
Lorraine looked toward Hank. He went into the hall and returned with a garment bag, setting it over the back of his chair. Sophie watched Lorraine see it and stop halfway through reaching for a serving spoon.
“Why is that down here?” Lorraine asked. Her voice sharpened before she glanced at Ruth. “We aren’t clearing closets.”
“Where’s their album?” Hank asked. He left his hand on the hanger.
“In the bedroom,” Lorraine said. “I told Sophie I’d bring it down after dinner.”
Hank went upstairs. Lorraine followed him into the hall and spoke too quietly for Sophie to hear. His answer carried back to the table.
“The book, Lorraine,” he said. His feet paused on a stair. “Where in the bedroom?”
She told him. Sophie put her bag on the empty chair and finally took off her coat, which made Lorraine smile when she came back into the room.
“There,” Lorraine said. She lifted the lid from a dish. “We can eat while it’s hot.”
Hank returned with the album. Sophie took it from him and opened it on the sideboard, checking the first pages, then the photographs of Marianne and Kelly. A loose print slid from the back: Lorraine in white beside Jesse, with a small note in Lorraine’s handwriting about the size she wanted.
Sophie put the loose print on the table. “You took it to order more pictures?”
“I wanted copies for relatives,” Lorraine said. She set the serving spoon down. “After everything became so complicated.”
“You said you were keeping it away from a damp window.” Sophie closed the album and kept her hand on it.
“I said it might be damaged where it was,” Lorraine said. “Must we pick apart every word?”
Sophie put the album in her bag and zipped it closed. Ruth began serving herself potatoes while Jesse came away from the window.
“You can put that in the hall,” Lorraine told Sophie. She reached for the serving spoon, but Sophie kept the bag against her chair.
“Who did you tell I took money?” Sophie asked. “I need to know who heard it from you.”
Ruth looked at Lorraine. “I didn’t say that exactly,” she said. “I said there was concern about the accounts.”
“There was no concern,” Jesse said. He put his glass down on the mantel. “We sorted the bills out. Sophie didn’t take anything of mine.”
“I was worried,” Lorraine said. “You were too upset to talk properly.”
“I talked. You didn’t like what I said.”
Sophie watched his mother sit slowly. Lorraine touched her forehead, then looked up at him with the damp, startled eyes Sophie had seen at the wedding. Jesse put one hand against the back of a chair, gripping the wood.
“I had calls about it at work. From people you told to keep an eye on me.”
“Because I love you,” Lorraine said. “I’m sorry if that embarrasses you.”
“You told me she’d emptied the savings,” Bethany said. “Then I rang Jesse like you asked, and he said she hadn’t.”
“I said he’d been left with the bills.” Lorraine turned toward Ruth. “You understood what I meant.”
Ruth kept eating. The cousin nearest the door said there was no point going over who’d said what when everyone was upset.
“You asked if I needed help getting the money back,” Jesse interrupted. “There wasn’t any money to get back.”
“All right.” The cousin held up his fork. “You could’ve said that on the phone.”
“I did. You told me to keep an eye on her anyway.”
Ruth laid her knife across her plate. “I’ll tell the people I spoke to,” she said to Sophie. “But I won’t have them saying I invented it. I repeated what I was told.”
Lorraine began to answer, and Bethany asked her to pass the water. She had to ask twice before Lorraine moved the jug.
Hank unzipped the garment bag. Lorraine caught the green sleeve before it touched the table, and he let her hold it while he put the receipt beside her plate.
“Put that away,” she said. She tried to fold the sleeve back into the bag one-handed. “You’ll get gravy on it.”
“There’s the dress I was supposed to have collected,” Hank said. He left the receipt where it was when she pushed it toward him. “You’d better tell them about that too.”
Lorraine looked at Jesse. “It didn’t fit properly. I thought it did when I bought it. I was embarrassed.”
“You had the blue one,” Sophie said. She pointed at the dress Lorraine was wearing now. “I asked you to change into it.”
“On the day? With everybody standing there?” Lorraine reached across Hank for the garment bag. “Nobody at this table seems to remember being kind to anyone.”
Sophie almost answered. Then she saw Jesse looking at the green sleeve, and waited while Lorraine stuffed it inside and caught the beadwork in the zipper.
“This is what I’ve been dealing with,” Lorraine said to Jesse. She released the dress and reached for his wrist. “Even now. After I lost half your wedding.”
Jesse pulled his hand back. Lorraine stared at the empty space between them, then folded her hands in her lap.
“You left.” His voice caught. “Dad offered to get you something else.”
“I had wine down my front.” Tears spilled before she finished. “People were laughing.”
Sophie remembered the stain and felt the old, unwelcome pleasure. She held her coat against her stomach while Jesse looked at his mother and visibly struggled to keep speaking.
“I wanted you there,” he said. “I kept looking at the door. I thought you’d come back.”
“I couldn’t.” Lorraine reached for him again. “You know I couldn’t.”
Hank sat down heavily.
“I asked you again in the car,” Hank said. He rested both hands on the table. “We could’ve been back before the speeches.”
“You wanted me sitting beside her friend all evening?” Lorraine asked. She abandoned the zipper and faced him. “Listening to everybody pretending they hadn’t seen it?”
“You asked if they’d seen enough.” Hank’s voice rose, startling Sophie. “That was what you said to me before we even reached the main road. Then you rang Ruth.”
Sophie looked at Jesse. He had gone pale, one hand still holding the chair, and he was staring at his father with an expression she had never seen on him before.
“You heard that?” Jesse asked Hank. “That day?”
Hank nodded. Jesse stayed by the chair, looking at him. “You heard her say that, and you watched me drive over to see if she was all right?” he asked. “You helped me put the new locks on. You could’ve told me any of those times.”
“I should have,” Hank said quietly. “I thought it would settle.”