My mother, Beatrice Fairchild, stepped down from the shaded porch — a woman carved from ice and old money, draped in designer silk.

Earlier that day she had done something strange, something I had argued about and then let go, the way I let so many of her decisions go.

She had dismissed the caterers I had hired.

She had sent our housekeeper home.

She had insisted, coldly and absolutely, on taking control of the entire event herself.

“We need complete intimacy today, Hannah,” she had said, in the tone that had ended every argument of my childhood.

“Just family.