Chapter 11
The apartment was quiet that afternoon in a way it hadn't been the night before. No candles, no chandeliers throwing light across the black marble. Just daylight coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, pale and even, showing every fingerprint on the glass.
I was in the dining room folding napkins when Luca came in. He'd changed out of his suit into a dark sweater, sleeves pushed to his elbows. He held Rosa's bowl in both hands. He'd washed it himself. I could see the crack catching the light.
"Emma," he said, and he didn't sit down. He stood at the head of the table where he'd sat the night before. "Will you help me?"
I nodded and set the napkins down.
He placed a fresh gold charger down first, dead center at the head of the table. Not off to the side. Not in the kitchen. Right where his own plate had been for the engagement dinner.
"I want it here," he said. He looked at me to make sure I understood. "Not hidden. Here. Can you set it for me? Just like it was, but right."
I picked up the saucer and set it on the charger. My hands weren't shaking this time. Then I set the bowl down gently on the saucer. The chips on the rim faced out, visible. He watched the way I centered it and then he adjusted it half an inch with his tattooed hand until it sat straight.
We stood there a second looking at it. The dining room felt smaller in daylight, less like a showroom. The white roses from last night were still there, a little open now.
"She'll think it's a joke if we make a fuss," I said quietly.
"We won't make a fuss," he said. "We'll just set the table."
He pulled out the chair to the right of the head and then the one to the left. "Three," he said. "That's all we need."
I went to the sideboard and got two more chargers, white plates, silverware, water glasses. No champagne flutes. I laid them out the way I'd been taught for a family dinner, not a formal one. Fork on the left, knife and spoon on the right. Folded napkins, not fanned. Luca helped me, and he was careful, slow about it, like he wanted to get it right.
While we worked he asked, "Your mom still keep her kitchen table the same way?"
I hadn't expected him to remember I'd mentioned her once before. I smoothed a napkin with my palm.
"Yeah," I said. "Same chipped laminate since I was in middle school. The leg wobbled so she folded cardboard under it. She wouldn't let me throw it out when I offered to buy her a new one from Target. She said that table fed us, so we owed it respect."
He smiled a little. "That sounds like my mother."
"It is," I said. "Rosa's bowl is the same thing. My mom had that one yellow mug with the handle glued back on. She used it every morning. It wasn't about money. It was about not pretending you were someone else."
Luca ran his thumb along the dark vein in the bowl's crack. "I tried to pretend for a long time," he said. He didn't look at me when he said it. "I thought if everything looked perfect, no one could say we didn't belong."
"You belong where you're honest," I said. My voice was low. I wasn't trying to give advice, just saying what I'd seen.
He nodded once. He placed a spoon next to Rosa's bowl, the same one he'd held the night before, and left his hand there a moment before pulling it back.
From down the hall I heard a door open softly. Rosa had been resting in the guest room. Her slippers made a quiet shuffle on the hardwood.
She stopped in the doorway of the dining room. She had her cardigan pulled around her, her hair still tidy from yesterday. She saw the table.
For a second she didn't move. Her eyes went to the charger at the head of the table and the bowl sitting in the center of it. The daylight hit the crack and made it show.
"Oh," she said. It was barely a sound.
Luca stepped back a little to give her space, but he didn't touch the bowl. He let it stay where it was.
Rosa came closer, one hand on the chair back to steady herself. She looked at the three places set, at the bowl honored at the head where the host sat. Her chin trembled and then she pressed her lips together hard, trying not to.
She didn't sob. Tears just welled and slipped down quietly. She touched the rim of the bowl with her fingertips, light, like she was checking it was still warm.
"I washed it," Luca said. "I thought you might want it here. With us."
She nodded and couldn't answer right away. She kept her hand on the bowl and then on his hand for a second. Her shoulders shook once.
I stepped back toward the sideboard to give them room. My own eyes stung, but I kept still and breathed.
That's when I saw her. Vanessa stood in the far doorway, where the hall opened to the dining room. She'd come out in her robe, her blonde hair down now, no jewelry. She wasn't speaking. She just watched us — the table for three, Rosa's hand on the bowl, Luca standing beside his mother.
May you like
She saw it. The center had moved and she wasn't in it.
She didn't come forward. She stayed in the doorway, one hand on the frame, and the light from the windows cut across her face.
