That had been a lie. When Laura went back inside to get their coats, her mother was in the kitchen, alone, holding the three pieces of the cake stand in a dish towel. Her face was perfectly composed.
"That was your grandmother's," Margaret said. "She got it as a wedding gift in 1952."
"I know, Mom. I'm sorry. We'll replace it."
"You can't replace it. That's what the word means." Margaret set the towel down on the counter very carefully, the way you set down something that might still cut you. "Laura. I'm going to say something, and I want you to hear it in the spirit in which it's meant."
Laura had known, then, that she would remember whatever came next for the rest of her life. She had been right.
"Rachel has booked a house at the beach for my birthday in June," her mother said. "It's a lovely house. It's expensive. I'm paying for most of it. It's my seventieth birthday, and I would like it to be a nice week. A peaceful week. I would like to be able to sit at a dinner table with my family without anything being broken." She paused. "Maybe you should think about whether that boy is ready for something like this. For everyone's sake. Including his."
"He's your grandson, Mom."
"I'm aware of who he is." Margaret had picked up a sponge and begun wiping cake frosting off the counter. "I'm only asking you to think about it. That's all. You always did take everything I say as an attack."
Laura had not answered. She had gotten the coats, and Lily, who was nine and had been quietly eating her ham in the corner of the dining room as if nothing at all had happened, and they had driven home to Dayton in silence, with Eli asleep against the window in the back seat and the sky going pink and then gray over the cornfields.
She had told Mark about it on the phone that night. Mark was in Texas then, with a storm restoration crew, sixteen-hour days in a bucket truck putting power lines back up after a spring tornado. He worked as a lineman for the power company, and when the big storms came he went where they sent him, sometimes for a week, sometimes for six. The money was good. The absences were long.
"Your mom said that?" Mark had said, his voice tired and crackling. "To your face?"
"In the kitchen."
"Jesus, Laur. I'm sorry." A pause. "You want me to call her?"
"No. God, no. It'll just make it worse."
"Well, she's wrong. Eli's gonna be fine at the beach. He loves the water. He's gonna lose his mind over the birds down there. Did you know they have pelicans? He's been telling me about the pelicans for a month."
"I know about the pelicans," Laura had said, and something in her voice must have sounded strange, because Mark said, "Hey. You okay?"
"I'm fine. I'm just tired."