The serving platter had a chip in the blue glaze where the white ceramic showed through like a tooth. My mother handed me the dry pot roast, her wrist wobbling under the weight of the stoneware.
“Take the center cut, Mia,” Helen said, her voice dropping into that soft, pleading tone that usually preceded a sigh. “You look like you haven’t eaten a real meal since Tuesday.”
I took a small piece, the meat grey and smelling of scorched onions. Across from me, my father, George, cleared his throat aggressively, the sound like gravel sliding down a plastic chute. He was sixty, but he gripped his dinner fork with a white-knuckled intensity, scraping the tines against the porcelain until it set my teeth on edge.
“Six hundred dollars more in county taxes this year,” George said, aiming the fork at the salt shaker. “For what? They haven’t paved the shoulder on Eighty-Fifth in three years. It is a disgrace.”
“George, please,” Helen said, rubbing her temples with her index fingers. “Not before they get here.”
I adjusted my glasses, sliding them back up the bridge of my nose. “Before who gets here?”
“Brianna and Kyle,” my father said, laying his fork down with a sharp clack that sounded like a small bone breaking. “They had some business in town. They are coming by for dessert.”
“They were supposed to be in Orlando looking at apartments,” I said.
My mother looked down at her carrots, her fingers tracing the edge of her placemat. “Plans change, Mia. People have to adjust.”
I set my water glass down. Through the screened door of the dining room, the damp Florida heat hung heavy over the porch, carrying the scent of cut grass and stagnant ditch water.
The sound of tires crunching on the gravel driveway broke the silence. A moment later, my sister Brianna entered the room, her high heels clicking fast against the linoleum. She was thirty, two years younger than me, but she carried herself like she was constantly on camera.
“The traffic on State Road Two Hundred is an absolute nightmare,” Brianna said, her voice high and rapid as she pulled out a chair. She tapped her pink, manicured nails on the polished oak of the table.
