That thought hurt more than I can explain.
I should tell you about Spencer’s mother, because she matters, and because she had d*ed four months before that hearing and I had not been allowed to grieve her properly.
Celia Langford was seventy-three, sharp as a tack, and the only person in that family who ever asked me how I was and waited for the answer.
She had come to the townhouse on Wednesdays, when Spencer thought she was at bridge, to sit with Eli over his library books.
At her funeral in May, Spencer had me seated in the last row, behind the hotel managers, and when I came through the receiving line he put a folded check in my hand in front of forty people and said, loud enough, “Buy Eli something decent to wear. He can’t show up to things like this looking like he lives with you.”
