One Christmas, I parked the car in my parents’ driveway, exactly where the oil spot would bother my father most. My uncle Bernard came out first, took one look at it, and shook his head.
“Still driving this thing?” he said. “Matilda, do you ever get tired of proving everyone right?”
Inside, Arthur Kensington sat on the sofa in a navy sweater, one ankle over the other, holding a glass of wine as if the room were lucky to contain him.
He glanced toward the window.
“That is your sister’s car?” he asked Genevieve.
She laughed behind her hand. “Unfortunately.”
Arthur smirked. “If someone pulled up to Northbridge in that, reception would assume they were lost.”
My mother heard him and smiled as though the insult were a compliment.
“Matilda has always been different,” she said. “We try not to push her beyond what she can handle.”
I stood in the doorway with a paper plate, listening.
Arthur looked me over with that polite cruelty common among people who have never built anything themselves.
“What exactly do you do again?” he asked.
“Education software,” I said.
Genevieve waved a hand. “She means freelance online work. Little projects. Nothing serious.”
The family laughed.
I lowered my eyes and ate in the corner.
