Chapter 4
The laughter had been arranged.
That was the part Celina tried hardest to hide.
Six relatives admitted it by sunset.
Not that Lucille told them to laugh.
Celina did.
She had moved through the banquet before Emmett arrived, telling certain cousins that the First Plate was returning and that everyone should “keep it light” if Lucille rejected his offering.
Keep it light.
Meaning laugh when a child’s face broke.
I called the six into the conservatory dining room.
“Why?”
One cousin shrugged uncomfortably.
“Celina said Emmett would laugh too.”
“He didn’t.”
Silence.
Another said:
“We thought he knew it was a game.”
“Did anyone ask?”
No.
Of course not.
Adults invent consent for children constantly.
It saves them the inconvenience of feeling guilty.
Then Nicholas Morello, seventy-three, spoke.
“It used to be funny.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“The First Plate.”
He smiled weakly.
“Children would get nervous. Spill things. Sometimes the matriarch pretended not to approve.”
Pretended.
Not shattered the plate.
Not insulted the food.
Not compared it to dog scraps.
Lucille had taken an old rite and sharpened it.
“Why?”
Nicholas looked toward the door.
“Victor used to say rituals were becoming meaningless.”
Victor.
My late grandfather’s brother.
Dead six years.
Still apparently advising everyone from memory.
Lucille had been closest to him.
Celina grew up listening to both.
I understood slowly.
This was not simple nostalgia.
They believed rituals only mattered if the child feared failing them.
Without fear, acceptance meant nothing.
I hated the logic.
Then Nicholas said:
“There’s another reason.”
I waited.
“Lucille wanted the capos to see how you reacted.”
There.
The real target appeared.
“Explain.”
He rubbed his jaw.
“She thinks you’ve become too centered on Emmett.”
I almost laughed.
“He’s my son.”
“That’s what she means.”
The room tightened.
Lucille had complained for months that I ended meetings early for bedtime, moved dinners when Emmett was sick, and refused to let family business invade the nursery wing.
Normal fatherhood.
Political weakness, according to her.
The First Plate had two outcomes.
If I allowed Emmett’s humiliation, Lucille proved family tradition outranked fatherhood.
If I destroyed the banquet over it—
she proved fatherhood outranked family.
I had overturned the table.
Exactly what she wanted witnesses to see.
May you like
Not a child being humiliated.
A boss choosing his son over Montaro.
