Chapter 16: Ophelia Confronts Raymond at Sunday Dinner

The dinner was Ophelia's idea, which her father knew immediately.

Raymond Park did not say so. He said: wonderful, the Thai place on Connecticut had become mediocre and he had been meaning to cook properly for weeks. He said: I'll make the claypot chicken your mother used to like. He said all the right things in the right order, and when he hung up he stood in his kitchen for a moment with the phone still warm in his hand and considered what his daughter might want from him that she had decided required a home-cooked meal to obtain.

He started the marinade at noon. He was not worried. He was, in the precise administrative sense, alert.