The purple shirt had drawn jokes from Anthony all morning. He called it the mayor's campaign uniform, although Elias had never run for mayor and had no interest in doing so. Olivia declared that purple made him look like a magician. Elias told her he intended to make twelve pounds of brisket disappear. She asked whether magic could bring Grandma Monica back for just one afternoon. Nobody answered immediately. Elias knelt carefully, took her hand, and said that some people remained with us in the things we remembered to do for one another. The answer did not erase her sadness, but it gave her something to carry into the day. That small exchange was what Elias was remembering when the police arrived.
The backyard had been loud and happy twenty minutes earlier. Tessa had just returned from Boston after passing the Massachusetts bar exam, and Elias had spent the entire week pretending the celebration would be small while ordering enough meat to feed a church convention. There were cousins, neighbors, retired judges, old military friends, law-school classmates, children running near the pool, and enough folding tables that Elias had borrowed half of them from a community center.
Tessa had threatened to leave when she saw the banner. CONGRATULATIONS COUNSELOR MERCER — OBJECTION OVERRULED “Dad, this is humiliating.” “You graduated Harvard Law.”
“So?” “So humiliation is part of your reward.” “I hate you.” Elias opened his arms.
“Come hug the man you hate.” She did. He held her slightly longer than usual because her mother should have been standing beside him.
Monica Mercer had died seven years earlier after a three-year battle with ovarian cancer. She was forty-nine and still telling Elias how to season ribs from a hospital bed during her final summer, which was probably why he now cooked enough food for every celebration as though proving something to the universe. Tessa’s graduation was one of those milestones he had pictured Monica seeing, and throughout the morning he kept catching himself looking toward the kitchen door as though she might walk outside carrying a bowl and telling him he had added too much brown sugar.
By noon, the sadness had softened into gratitude.
At 12:40, an old friend named Evelyn Shaw arrived carrying two bakery boxes. She wore jeans, a loose linen shirt, sunglasses, and no makeup, which made her almost unrecognizable to people accustomed to seeing her behind a podium in full uniform. Elias had known Evelyn for more than twenty years, back before either of them had enough authority to make anyone nervous.
She opened the first box. Peach cobbler. Elias nodded approvingly. “You may stay.”
“I wasn’t asking.” “What’s in the second?” “Lemon cake.” “Now you can definitely stay.”
Evelyn smiled. “I’m honored.” She disappeared into the house looking for Tessa. Across the street, a woman named Marjorie Phelps watched cars arrive.