Free Tiny Little Thing by Beatriz Williams

ago, the man seated next to me, whom we all know, though he wasn’t around as much when we were all kids, army brat that he was . . .”
    Caspian turns his shorn head and says something to Frank, something in a low voice that I can’t quite pick up at this distance, though Pepper tilts back her head and laughs throatily.
    “All right, all right,” says Frank. “Anyway, this kid grew up into a soldier while we were all going to law school, to medical school, and it turns out he’s got a lot of Hardcastle underneath that unfortunate Harrison exterior. . . .”
    Another muttered comment from Caspian, and this time all the men around him laugh, though Pepper—yes,
Pepper
—actually looks a little mystified.
    “Anyway, as I said, and seriously now, while we were home, stateside, safe and sound, our cousin Cap here was fighting for his life, for
our
lives and freedom and way of life, way off in the jungles of Vietnam. Fighting against the enemies of freedom, fighting against those who would see America and all it stands for wiped from the face of the earth. While we gentlemen were safe abed, to paraphrase, he put himself in danger every day, under fire every day, and one day last year all hell broke loose, and—well, we all know what happened that day. As of yesterday, the whole country knows what happened that day.”
    The last traces of jocularity dissolve into the evening air, which has just begun to take on the bluish tinge of twilight.
    I look down at my empty plate. My shadow is outlined on the gossamer porcelain.
    “Cap,” says Frank gravely, from the other side of the table, and I close my eyes and see an unscarred Caspian, a pair of trustworthy shoulders in a shaft of May sunshine, drinking coffee from a plain white cup. “Cap, there’s no way to thank you for what you did that day. What you sacrificed. Medals are great, but they’re just a piece of metal, a piece of paper, a few speeches, and then everyone goes home and moves on to the next thing. We just want you to know—we, Cap, your family—we love you. We’re proud of you. We’re here tonight because of you, and whenever you need us, we’ll band up for you. The whole gang of us. Because that’s what we do, in this family. Cap? Come on, stand up here, buddy.”
    I force myself to look up, because you can’t have Franklin Hardcastle’s wife and hostess staring down at her plate while Franklin Hardcastle polishes off the toast to the guest of honor.
    Frank stands at the head of the table, and his arm climbs up and over the trustworthy shoulders of his cousin, who stares unsmiling and unfocused at a point somewhere behind me. “Cap. To you.” Frank clinks Caspian’s glass.
    The chorus starts up again,
hear hear
and
clink clink
, and then Louis stands up and claps, and we all stand up and clap, until Caspian raises his wide brown hand and hushes us with a single palm.
    “Thank you for coming here tonight,” he says, all gravel and syrup, vibrating my toes in their square-tipped aquamarine shoes. “Thank you, Tiny, for the superb dinner. Thanks for the speech, Frank, though I really don’t deserve it. We’re all just doing what we have to do out there. Nothing heroic about it. The real heroes are the men I left behind.”
    He breaks away from Frank’s encircling arm and sits back down in his chair.
    For some reason, I cannot breathe.
    There are twenty-two people seated around the baronial dining room table of the Big House, and all of them are quiet: so quiet you can hear the teenagers squealing secrets by the pool, you can hear the bugs singing in the dune grass.
    Until Constance’s husband, Tom, throws his napkin into his plate.
    “Goddamn it,” he says. “I can’t take it anymore.”
    “Tom!” snaps Constance.
    “No. Not this time.” He turns and tilts his head, so he can see down the row of Hardcastle cousins and in-laws to where Caspian sits, staring at a bowl of hyacinths, as if he hasn’t heard a thing. “I’m sorry,