The dinner is in your Pasadena home, the same craftsman house where Valerie learned to ride her bike in the driveway, where Lucy used to sit on the porch steps eating peaches in summer, where every bookshelf still carries the ghost of a woman you buried too soon.
You had ordered roasted salmon, prime rib, mushroom risotto, green beans almondine, and a vanilla bean cake with raspberry filling.
You had worn pearls.
You had put on lipstick.
You had let yourself believe, foolishly, that maybe tonight Valerie would remember you were not an obstacle.
Maybe she would remember you were family.
But Valerie arrived forty minutes late in a gold dress, diamond bracelet glittering at her wrist—the same bracelet you gave her when she turned thirty. She did not hug you. She did not say happy birthday. She looked around your dining room as if she were already measuring where she would put her own furniture.
Then she moved your place card.
You were supposed to sit at the head of the table.
