Drizzled with Death(60)

I had circled the table looking for my name. Sure enough, tucked into a corner, down at the end next to a place card with my name, was one with Graham’s. I picked his up and was looking for a new place to put it when he walked in carrying a plate of stuffed mushrooms. Evil. The whole family knew I couldn’t resist a stuffed mushroom. They must have been betting on the messenger receiving credit for the message. I wasn’t going to fall for that, but I was going to get a mushroom.

With a table this long, it can be difficult to get every dish passed in your direction unless you jump up on your seat and holler. I learned early on not to make that mistake a second time. No matter how cute she tells you she thinks you are, no one is allowed to stand on one of Grandma’s dining room chairs hollering for more turkey like a drunken lord in a mead hall. Or so I’ve heard.

“Your grandmother asked me to make sure you got one of these before the rest of the guests eat them all. She mentioned not wanting a repeat of your fifth Thanksgiving.” He lowered the platter toward me, and I looked at them like I was pretending to decide. As I went to load up one hand with the other, I noticed I was still holding Graham’s place card. He noticed it, too. That’s another thing I didn’t like so much about policemen—they were always noticing something but usually not the thing you hoped they would, like a new haircut or the way a pair of earrings set off your eyes. They were much more likely, in my experience, to notice the bit of steak between your teeth left over from lunch or how you misused a new vocabulary word from your word-a-day calendar. “Why are you holding my place card?”

“I was just checking that Celadon spelled your name correctly. I can’t stand it when people don’t pay attention to details.” I snatched a piping hot mushroom and stuffed it in my mouth before I could stick my foot in there instead.

“Did they spell it just like the cracker?” He waited for me to swallow. I made a big show of checking the front of the card and ended up getting some mushroom juice from my fingers on it while I was at it.

“Looks just fine. Now where did I find this? The table is so big, I may not be able to get it back in the right place.”

“It goes over in the corner right next to yours.” Drat. He really did notice all the wrong details. I was going to get my sister back for her tinkering around in my social life. “I came in a little while ago and swapped it with Knowlton’s.” He offered me the platter once more. I couldn’t think of anything to say to that so I took another one and popped it into my mouth. “I figured if he was going around pretending to be your fiancée, a big family occasion like this would only help him delude himself further.” So maybe he didn’t only notice the wrong things. That was exceedingly chivalrous of him. I suppose he could have swapped Knowlton’s name with someone besides his own but I’d let that slide. Maybe he had no idea if there was someone else I was trying to avoid even more than Knowlton. I chewed slowly, trying to craft a response.

Fortunately, the rest of the room began to fill with revelers, and Graham squeezed the platter into an open spot, plucked the card from my fingers, and steered me to the end of the table we were supposed to occupy. I was pleased to note Knowlton sat at a point at the table so far away he couldn’t speak to me even if he did conduct himself like a mead hall reveler.

Grampa said grace, Grandma gave the tour of the menu items, and we were off and running. Graham on the one side of me and Tansey on the other, I felt like maybe I was in a dinnertime version of the pancake breakfast. I like a man who can eat, but as I watched Graham out of the corner of my eye, it was like seeing someone who was starved. And not just on a physical level. He ate steadily but he seemed to be in a bit of a food trance, like he’d never done something quite like this before. I made a note to ask him about his own Thanksgiving traditions when he had slowed down enough that it wouldn’t feel like I was interrupting a man at prayer. Which did beg the point of why he was able to be available to enjoy dinner with us. He obviously didn’t have to be on duty if he was able to eat with someone. Was his family all too far away? I looked around the table at the assembled faces and thought about how conflicted I’d felt about my own family over the last couple of days.

And that’s when I noticed what I would have realized straight off if I hadn’t been so distracted by Graham and where Knowlton ended up. Lowell was nowhere to be seen. With the exception of the year he was in the hospital, for my entire life, Lowell has sat at our Thanksgiving table. And Christmas and Easter, too. He was as much a part of the family as the rest of us. I wasn’t sure who to be mad at, myself or Lowell and my mother for messing everything up. It was upsetting enough to make me lose my appetite right in the middle of the best food day of the year. I was so upset, it took me a minute to notice Tansey herself had switched from eating mode to socializing.