Chapter 11
The Sunday Table stayed at my house.
For six months.
Then I ended it.
That shocked Adrian.
Grant would have called it victory.
It wasn’t.
Serena had been wrong to seize the tradition.
She was not wrong that the tradition concentrated too much social authority around me.
So we changed it.
Sunday dinners rotated between family homes.
No host became gatekeeper permanently.
Some weeks mine.
Some Adrian’s.
Some older relatives.
Some younger.
No automatic agenda.
No private appeals disguised as dessert.
Rafe hated the logistics.
That made me enjoy it more.
The first dinner at Adrian’s new house was awkward.
He checked the oven fourteen times.
The roast was terrible.
Nobody died.
More importantly, he controlled his own door.
I arrived at the time requested.
Not early.
Not with extra guards inside.
That was harder for me than punching Grant.
Adrian noticed.
“Only two?”
“Outside.”
He smiled.
Progress.
Halfway through dinner, Peter Voss started asking me about a business dispute.
Adrian interrupted.
“Not tonight.”
Peter looked at me automatically.
There.
Old reflex.
I took a sip of wine.
“This is Adrian’s house.”
My son looked at me.
Small moment.
Big correction.
Later he said:
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did.”
“No. You chose to.”
Better.
He was right.
We were both learning language.
The old family structure taught us every boundary was rebellion.
Serena used that.
Grant profited from it.
I had maintained enough of it that their argument could grow roots.
May you like
Owning that did not absolve them.
It made me harder to fool next time.
