Chapter 2 — The Guest Nobody Remembered Inviting
Daniel carried the hidden place card into a quiet side room.
Margaret followed reluctantly.
“Who is Samuel?” Daniel asked.
Margaret sat down.
For years, Daniel had heard one version of the story.
Margaret had grown up with two brothers.
Her younger brother, Peter, died in a car accident when he was twenty.
Her older brother, Michael, moved to Arizona.
No Samuel.
Never once.
Margaret stared at the card.
“Samuel wasn’t my brother.”
“Then who was he?”
“He lived with us.”
In 1985, when Margaret was sixteen, her parents agreed to temporarily take in Samuel Vale.
Samuel was seventeen.
His mother had been hospitalized for several months after a serious accident.
His father was already dead.
The Vale and Ellis families attended the same church.
So Samuel moved into Margaret’s house.
“Temporarily became almost two years,” Margaret said.
Samuel ate breakfast with them.
Celebrated Christmas with them.
Helped Margaret study mathematics.
Taught Peter to drive.
He became part of the family without anyone formally saying so.
“Then what happened?”
Margaret’s expression hardened.
“He left.”
“Just like that?”
“One morning his room was empty.”
No goodbye.
No explanation.
Margaret’s father, Robert Ellis, told the children Samuel had chosen to return to relatives in another state.
“Did you ever hear from him again?”
“Once.”
Margaret received a postcard six months later.
It contained only:
I’M SORRY. IT WAS BETTER THIS WAY.
Margaret never answered.
“I spent years thinking we meant nothing to him.”
Daniel looked toward the hidden place card.
“And now somebody reserved him a chair beside you.”
Margaret nodded.
Then Marcus entered carrying the event’s master seating binder.
“We found something.”
He opened to Table 17.
Samuel Vale’s name was there.
Not handwritten.
Not recently added.
He had been included in the original seating plan.
Then crossed out three days earlier.
Beside the deletion were the initials:
M.E.
Margaret stared.
“Those aren’t mine.”