The first course was a butternut squash soup.
I had made it myself that morning, before the house woke up, standing at the stove in the grey pre-dawn quiet with the radio off and my hands moving through the familiar steps without needing to think about them. Roast the squash. Brown the onions low and slow until they were soft and sweet. Add the stock, the cream, the nutmeg. Blend it until it was smooth enough to coat the back of a spoon. I had tasted it twice and adjusted the salt and thought, in the distant way I thought about food I made and never ate, that it was good.
Now I was carrying it to the table in a tureen that weighed more than it looked, and the dining room was full, and something was wrong.
I had felt it since I walked through the door. That particular quality of silence
