Part III
Dinner was delicious. The table was so crammed with people that they could hardly fit all the plates and silverware on it. They ended up serving themselves from dishes lined up on the kitchen counter, buffet-style.
Once everyone was seated again, the family held hands to say grace. Then they dug in. The next few minutes, there were no sounds but enthusiastic words of praise for Annie's cooking. Ducking her head from modesty, Annie smiled demurely. She'd worked for days to get the feast just right.
All was going well until Mary asked, "So where's Robbie this year?"
Eric dropped his fork with a clatter. All around the table, Camdens froze in mid-bite.
Annie smiled sadly. "I'm afraid Robbie won't be a part of this family anymore."
"Why?" Mary persisted. "What did he do?"
"I know what he did," Ruthie interrupted smugly. "He had one of those skanky magazines with half-naked girls in it."
"I found it in his room while he was out visiting Joy." Annie sniffed and her voice grew hard. "Some nasty thing called Gear or something like that, filled with topless women. When I confronted him, he had the nerve to insist that he only read it for the articles. Then he started saying he was old enough to buy whatever reading material he wanted. Well, I told him otherwise. As if I would let someone who read that filth be around my children."
All the Camdens had stopped eating now, except the twins, who obliviously shoveled food into their mouths as fast as they could. They wanted to get away from the table in time to watch Pokemon.
"He wouldn't accept that I was right and he was wrong. So, he had to go. I think he's back in Florida, but I don't really care." Annie smiled her tight-lipped smile at Mary from across the table. "You girls are so much better off without him. Mary, maybe you should look up that nice Wilson boy. He was such a responsible young man."
Mary sighed. "I should have known that Robbie was bad. I guess I was just too stupid to see it."
From the head of the table, Eric made a strange noise, as though he were suppressing a sob.
"I know. He fooled everyone except me," Annie said consolingly. "It broke your father's heart. He still cries at night sometimes."
Lucy stirred her mashed potatoes with her fork and moved her turkey around on her plate, hoping the food would look eaten. She knew she wasn't going to be able to swallow another bite.