I need to tell you about the lamb chops first.
This was before any of the major events, six months before the Friday when three cars pulled into our driveway, and it is the moment I have chosen as the beginning of the story because it is when I stopped believing the situation would resolve itself.
Juliette had arrived that October Saturday with her two daughters, Margot and Claire, and four of the grandchildren, and they had been at our house for approximately ninety minutes when Juliette came into the kitchen while I was managing the grill and the salad and the children simultaneously and she looked at the platter of lamb chops I had marinated for eighteen hours and she said, in the tone she used for everything she said in my kitchen, which was the tone of someone issuing a correction: “Annie, you’ve been using the wrong cut. These should be ribs, not loin chops. My son deserves the better cut.”
I turned from the grill.
Juliette was not looking at me. She was looking at the platter with the specific expression of someone reviewing evidence of inadequacy.
My husband, Theo, was outside with the children. I could hear him through the window, his voice easy and warm in the way it was when he was happy, which he often was on these Saturdays because the arrivals of his family produced in him a pleasure I had always respected even when it had complicated things for me.
“The butcher was out of ribs,” I said.
“Then you should have gone to a different butcher,” she said.
She moved the platter to a different position on the counter without asking and went back outside.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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