PART 5

Christmas dinner began forty minutes late.

Nobody suggested that I leave, although the atmosphere had become awkward enough that one of the caterers quietly asked whether the meal should be delayed another hour.

Robert insisted we sit down.

The boys needed dinner, and he seemed determined that they would not remember their first visit to this house as an evening spent waiting for adults to make up their minds.

The dining room table stretched beneath a chandelier my sons could not stop looking at.