Chapter 20 - SUNDAY DINNER
One year later, I hosted Sunday dinner.
Not at Patricia’s house.
At mine.
Jenna brought pie. Robert came early and asked before touching anything in the kitchen. Claire arrived last, carrying flowers and looking uncertain at the door.
We were not friends in the simple sense.
Too much history stood between us.
But she had testified truthfully, rebuilt her career somewhere else, and apologized without asking me to make her feel forgiven.
That mattered.
Rachel came too, although she claimed attorneys should never socialize with clients after litigation because clients eventually learn how boring attorneys are.
I told her she had charged enough for dinner privileges.
We laughed.
For a second, the sound surprised me.
A year earlier, Sunday dinner meant a table where everybody knew a secret except me.
Now nobody was hiding a phone under the table.
After dessert, Jenna asked if I ever thought about the moment I put my phone down in front of Michael.
“Every now and then.”
“Were you scared?”
“Terrified.”
“What made you do it?”
I looked around the table.
For years, I had confused keeping peace with being safe.
They are not the same thing.
“I finally wanted the truth more than I wanted the marriage.”
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Then Rachel raised her glass.
“To expensive truths.”
I smiled.
“To receipts.”
Everyone laughed.
Later, after they left, I stood alone in the kitchen and noticed a faint scar above my eyebrow in the dark window.
I touched it once.
I no longer saw the night Michael threw a glass.
I saw the night his plan broke.
The night Patricia’s name appeared on the transfer.
The night I stopped asking why they had done it and started asking what I was going to do next.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
For one old, instinctive second, my body tensed.
Then I looked.
It was a message from Peter.
BOARD APPROVED THE NEW PLANT. CONGRATULATIONS, CHAIRWOMAN.
I laughed softly to myself.
May you like
Then I turned off the kitchen light and went upstairs.
This time, nothing followed me.
