Chapter 1 - The Seat at the Head of the Table
Valerie’s hand hit my face so hard my glasses flew into the leg of the marble buffet.
I was still turning back toward the birthday cake when the first slap landed. The second came before I had fully caught my balance, and the edge of the dining table dug into the back of my thighs. Crystal rattled. One of the waiters gasped from the doorway.
Valerie stood inches from me in her gold gown, breathing hard, her blonde hair loose over one shoulder, the heel of one red shoe skidding on the polished floor.
“You should’ve died already,” she said.
My seventy years had taught me how to survive funerals, layoffs, childbirth, my husband’s cancer, and the slow humiliation of being treated like a woman whose usefulness expired with her waistline. Nothing had prepared me for my granddaughter striking me in my own Beacon Hill dining room while my birthday candles still burned.
Richard stayed behind her, one hand half-raised, not to stop her but as if he had just remembered he ought to look shocked. Robert, my younger brother, was standing near the sideboard with a linen napkin in his hand, his mouth tight and pale.
Valerie bent, grabbed my upper arm, and yanked me away from the carved chair at the head of the table.
“That seat is mine.”
I stumbled, caught the table with one palm, and heard my glasses skitter somewhere across the marble floor.
“Valerie,” Richard said, but there was no command in it. Only warning.
She pointed toward the kitchen. “Go sit back there if you want to play matriarch.”
I knocked her hand away. My cheek burned. My scalp prickled where she had nearly caught my hair.
“You own nothing yet,” I said.
Her face changed when I reached into my handbag and pulled out the folded document I had meant to discuss after dessert. It was only a draft, but she recognized the letterhead at once.
“Everything becomes mine anyway,” she said.
She took half a step toward the papers, and for the first time that night, Richard actually looked afraid.
May you like
He wasn’t looking at me.
He was looking at the clause on the first page.
