My Son Said He Couldn't Come to Our Anniversary Lunch.

My son said he couldn't come to our anniversary lunch. I found him at my table, toasting his wife's mother. For fifty years my husband and I kept that corner table in the rose garden tea pavilion. A year after I buried him I went alone in my blue silk dress, expecting two chairs and a lemon cake with our names on it. I walked into twenty guests, a raised glass, and a party billed to what my daughter-in-law called the family account. By the second toast I knew whose name that account was in.