Too late, she realized she should have said “judge.” Her uncle was a judge. Judges had more power. But Trent looked ruffled anyhow. He said, “Fine! I’m leaving!” Then he slammed his door shut and started the engine quicker than she would have thought possible, and the car lurched backward and then forward and swerved out onto the road.
Alice went back into the cabin. She was shaking. Her bedroom door was closed again, but she didn’t try to open it. Instead she returned to the kitchen. She set her purse on the table.
“We forgot to buy salad dressing,” David told her.
“We can make our own,” Alice said.
Her voice was thin and quavery, but she didn’t think David noticed.
* * *
—
The marinated pork chops turned out beautifully. Even Robin agreed. He’d drawn the corners of his mouth down when he first saw them—damp and inky-looking, strewn with stray bits of spices—but they emerged from the grill a nice crusty brown, and when he took his first bite he said, “Well…”
“Good, huh?” Alice asked him.
“I’ve got to admit,” he said, and Mercy said, “They’re delicious!” David, who was often distrustful of meat, cut himself the smallest bite and chewed it gingerly, with just his front teeth, but a moment later Alice saw him take another bite, so she knew he thought it was okay, at least. And he ate a lot of his salad.
Lily was not at the table. She was in her room with the door shut. They’d called her name twice and she still hadn’t come out, so Mercy rose to go knock. No answer. She opened the door and stuck her head in. “Honey?” she asked. They heard Lily say something. Mercy was silent a moment, and then she said, “Well, suit yourself,” and closed the door and returned to the table. She seemed more amused than distressed. “Young love,” she said lightly to Robin, and she picked up her fork.
“What: you’re going to let her skip supper?” Robin asked.
“She’ll be all right,” Mercy said. She speared a tomato wedge.
“Why are you humoring her, Mercy? It’s the last night of our vacation! We’re eating a special dinner! She needs to come out and join the family like a civilized human being!”
“Oh, Robin. She’s brokenhearted. You remember how it feels.”
“No, I do not remember. She’s fifteen years old. She’s going to fall for some new boy before the week is out; you watch.”
“She says nobody understands her and she wants to die,” Mercy told him. Then she asked, “Can I have the rest of your salad?”
She meant the three chunks of avocado pear sitting alone on his plate. He’d picked his way around them as fastidiously as Cap would pick around any vegetables in his food bowl. “Go ahead,” he told her, and he drew back to give her room to stab a chunk with her fork.
So Lily was forgotten, and it was probably just as well. She’d only have sat there sulky and tear-stained, dampening the atmosphere. Which was very festive, really. Mercy was teasing Robin now with a forkful of avocado pear, and Robin was pretending to shrink away in horror, and David was grinning at both of them.
“Alice took another bite of pork,” her narrator said, “and savored its subtle seasoning.”
3
On the morning of September 6, 1970—a Sunday, clear and cool but nowhere near fall-like yet—Robin and Mercy Garrett drove their son, David, to Islington, Pennsylvania, to start his freshman year at Islington College. They settled him in his room, they introduced themselves to his roommate （a nice enough boy, by the looks of him, though not half as nice as her boy, Mercy felt）， and they said their goodbyes and left.
For most of the drive home, they were quiet. Occasionally they would say things like “Those walls could have used a coat of paint, in my opinion” （this from Robin） and “I wonder if David will remember a single word of my laundry instructions” （from Mercy）。 But generally, they stayed sunk in that sort of silence that radiates unspoken thoughts—complicated, conflicting thoughts cluttering the air inside the car.
Then, on the Baltimore Beltway, fifteen minutes from home, Robin said, “I suppose we should kick up our heels tonight, now that we’re back to just the two of us. Go out for a fancy meal or, I don’t know, have wild sex on the living-room floor or something”—a dry little laugh here—“but you know? I’m feeling kind of let down, to be honest.”
“Well, of course you are, honey,” Mercy told him. “We’ve lost the last remaining chick in our nest! It’s natural we would feel low.”