Janet and Lucy ask if they can help but I say no. I tell everybody I’ll get dinner on the table and they’re to relax and enjoy their cocktails and antipasto. I open the screen door and feel something cold poke against the back of my injured leg, and I stop to turn around and pet Sock’s long velvety snout.

“I see. So you’re not going to stay with our company,” I say to him as I let him inside the house. “Well there’s not much you can help me with but I’m happy for the company.”

I continue to talk to my shy brindle greyhound as I open a drawer inside one of the refrigerators and select various greens, both tart and sweet lettuces and two of my cherished homegrown tomatoes. A rinse and a whirl in the salad spinner, I explain cheerfully to Sock, and a dash or two of coarse ground pepper and sea salt.

“And we save the vinegar for last so it doesn’t wilt everything.” I continue talking to a dog who doesn’t answer or bark, and then I hear the back door bang again.

I’m startled and just as quickly I remember I’m home and I’m not alone. I hear quick quiet footsteps in the hall. I’m cubing tomatoes as Desi walks into the kitchen, and he wants to know why I’m crying. I blame it on the Vidalia onion I’m just now peeling but Desi is a perceptive little boy. He stands in the middle of my kitchen with his hands on his hips, his mussed-up brown hair in his big blue eyes.

“Aunt Janet says I’m helping you set the table.” He opens a drawer and begins gathering silverware. “Do you want to eat on the sunporch or are you afraid?”

The sunporch is enclosed in glass.

“What might I be afraid of?” I scan a selection of vinegars and decide on a Bordeaux.

We’re not sitting on the sunporch.

“The bad lady who hurt you,” Desi says. “She might see us through the windows if we eat on the sunporch. Is that why you’re crying?”

“She could see us sitting in the yard,” I remind him.

“I know. You can’t stay here anymore can you?” He slides out a chair from the breakfast table and sits down. “But you’ll take me with you.”

“Where are we going?”

“We have to stay together, Aunt Kay,” he says and technically I’d be his Great-Aunt Kay if I were a blood relative.

“You know where the dining room is. Out this door and to the left.” I hand him plates and folded napkins. “We’ll be fancy and eat in there.”

“That’s not why.”

“We’ll turn on the chandelier and pretend we’re royalty.”