Behind me, in the dining room, the cake sat on the sideboard, with forty unlit candles.
The house was very quiet after they left.
Ray stood in the front hall with his hands in his jacket pockets. Kyle sat at the dining room table with his head in his hands, and Jenna rubbed his back. Marge Halloran was wiping her eyes with a napkin. Bill Halloran, who had slept through most of it, said, "Did I miss something?" and Marge said, "Oh, Bill," and started to cry again.
Aunt Patrice got to me first.
She crossed the room and took both my hands in her papery ones. Her mascara had run in dark tracks down her cheeks.
"Nora," she said. "I am so sorry. We believed them. Every one of us believed them."
"I know."
"That luncheon. I should have said something. I saw your face, and I—"
"They made it easy to believe," I said. "That was the whole plan. Please don't carry it."
She cried on my shoulder for a long time.
Marge came next, and then Jenna, and then Kyle, who stood in front of me with his big soft hands hanging at his sides and said, in a voice like gravel, "He's my brother. I don't know how to be angry at him and love him at the same time."
"You don't have to figure it out tonight," I said.
"I'll do whatever you need. Anything. I swear."
"I know."
He hugged me. It was the first time in my life I'd ever felt Kyle shake.
When the last of them had gone, I turned off the dining room lights, and I stood alone in the kitchen with my hands on the counter.
The little white charger was still plugged into the outlet by the toaster. I unplugged it. Then I stood there and looked at the stove and the cabinets and the linoleum, where two people I had loved had once stood side by side, and I waited to feel something dramatic.
What I felt was tired. A clean, honest, ordinary tired.
It was the first time in six weeks I'd felt tired for the right reason.
Marisol brought Eli home at nine the next morning.
He was still in his pajamas, carrying a plastic triceratops, with a smear of syrup on his cheek. He dropped the dinosaur when he saw me and threw his arms around my legs.
"Mommy!"