For four years my husband’s family called me the walking credit card and ordered lobster every time I was at the table. At my father-in-law’s birthday dinner I smiled, let all nineteen of them order, and then a waiter came out carrying a tray of nineteen separate checks.

The Lantern House in Merrick Bay, nineteen adults, one long table at the back.

The waiter had not finished handing out the menus before the ordering started, and I watched my brother-in-law order a bottle of something at a hundred and ten dollars without opening the list.

And that is when it finally landed properly.

They did not think I was mean, and they did not think I was generous.

They did not think about me at all. I was the mechanism by which the evening got paid for.

So I smiled, and I let every single one of them order, and I did not say one word.

At about half past nine, after the plates went, the waiter came out of the back with a tray.

On it were nineteen identical leather folders.

And he started at the far end and worked his way down, and put one in