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No one was officially calling the upcoming dinner on the twenty-fourth an engagement dinner. It would have been vulgar to assume before it actually happened, at least according to the unwritten laws of Maple Bluff.

Paul hadn’t proposed, I hadn’t accepted, there was no ring on my finger, no announcement in the paper, no smiling photograph in the society pages where Paul looked proud and I looked like a woman who had wandered into a municipal ceremony by mistake.

Still, everyone knew what was coming. Our families had known each other for years, and that was how expectations worked in my mother’s world.

Bitsy sat at the table in a sleeveless yellow blouse, white slacks, and pearls, her blond hair smooth, lipstick fresh, with a blue folder open in front of her beside florist cards, a guest list written in her careful cursive, and three tiny fabric swatches.

I stood in the doorway wearing one of my father’s old button-down shirts over shorts, my hair damp from the shower.

“Laura Catherine,” my mother said without looking up. “Cream of asparagus or chilled cucumber?”

“Good morning to you too.”

“The first course.”

“Coffee is usually my first course of the day.”

She lifted her eyes over her reading glasses. “Cream of asparagus or chilled cucumber?”

The kitchen smelled like toast, coffee, furniture polish, and the faint lemon scent the housekeeper used. The little television on the counter had the sound turned low, the picture flickering whenever someone opened the refrigerator. My father’s newspaper lay folded beside his empty coffee cup, his reading glasses balanced on top of the sports page.

“Cream of asparagus,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because chilled cucumber sounds like something you serve when you want people to leave early.”

My mother’s pencil paused as her mouth twitched. “Patricia suggested cucumber.”

“Then definitely asparagus.”

“Don’t start.”

She wrote asparagus in her pretty cursive, the kind of handwriting that made grocery lists look like invitations. Mine looked as if it had been done in the back seat of a car going over railroad tracks.

A grapefruit half appeared in front of me, already sectioned and glittering with sugar. Beside it lay the serrated grapefruit spoon, because my mother believed using the wrong spoon was where society began to unravel.

I sat and picked it up. “Is this still a family dinner, or should I expect reporters?”

“It’s a family dinner.”

“There are twenty-six names on that list.”

“Some people are like family.”

“That phrase has done a lot of damage in this country.”

She looked at me then, really looked, and I felt the older version of myself showing through in ways I couldn’t quite control. At twenty-three, I had hidden my sharper edges from my mother because she always knew where they were. At fifty, I had raised two children, survived school board meetings, hospital waiting rooms, home repairs, and one Thanksgiving when Paul’s aunt brought her own gravy in a thermos. Bitsy Hale no longer frightened me the way she once had. She could still make me feel twelve, but that was a different talent.

“Patricia likes to know things in advance,” she said.

“That sounded almost Christian of you.”

“Eat your grapefruit.”

I ate because certain battles weren’t worth juice in the eye.

She turned a page in the folder. “Your father thinks we should keep the bar simple. Wine, beer, and champagne.”