Chapter Fifty-Two: The Wedding Dress

The furniture was finely polished and sparkled. It smelled of garlic flavor mixed with jasmine fragrance. On one dining table were two plates of grayish-sliced roast beef with a reddish-brown barbecue sauce. A bowl of rice covered with creamy gravy, a heap of peas, and two tiny cups of horseradish. I sat at the opposite end of Madam Sarah, Evans's aunt. Evans and I had arrived a couple of minutes earlier, but he had hurried off to hang out with the guys at the golf club, leaving me behind with his aunt. "This looks really nice." "I used to run a restaurant with my husband decades ago; oh, a fine big one," Sarah said, and I caught the note of boasting and decided to listen despite myself hating it. "We'd have people trooping in in large numbers; it was a busy time for me. Most times, we get home with gold medals after we participate in several barbecue sauce and grill competitions. You see that over there?" She raised her short hands, pointing to a picture frame that hung on the wal