Chapter 15 - A Place at the Table|
Teresa's gold chair looked ridiculous beneath the community room's fluorescent lights.
I loved it immediately.
She had asked Luca to bring it from her apartment for the foundation's Sunday lunch.
Someone had polished the carved legs, but a small scratch remained where I had dragged it across the mansion floor.
Teresa had refused to have that mark repaired.
“It doesn't bother me,” she said when I noticed it.
Then she asked me to taste the soup.
The room smelled of tomatoes, warm bread, and the lemon cleaner our volunteers used too enthusiastically.
Folding tables stretched beneath paper decorations made by neighborhood children.
There were no place cards.
People sat wherever they pleased, and several had already changed seats to catch up with friends.
Teresa wore a blue cardigan with her mother's silver butterfly brooch fastened above the pocket.
The gold open-hand foundation pin rested on the other side.
She had put them on herself that morning.
Hannah arrived straight from a hospital shift with faint marks on her cheeks from her mask.
She hugged me, found the coffee, and immediately began comparing comfortable shoes with June.
Ellen Brooks checked the kitchen with our volunteer coordinator before joining a conversation near the windows.
Ruth counted neither donations nor receipts that afternoon.
She was too busy guarding the last corner piece of cornbread.
I moved among them carrying a pitcher of water until a volunteer took it from my hand.
“Your lunch is getting cold, Emily.”
I almost said I would eat later.
Old habits could survive even the most thorough change of address.
Then I looked toward the table.
Luca was holding his mother's chair while she settled herself.
He bent to hear something she said, laughed, and kissed her cheek.
She touched his wrist before he moved away.
There was no audience waiting for a toast.
He would have done it if the room had been empty.
Teresa noticed me watching.
“Come sit, sweetheart.”
There was an empty chair beside Luca.
On its other side, Hannah had placed my purse to keep the seat for me.
I sat down.
For a moment, the room seemed very quiet, although spoons were clattering and somebody was laughing in the kitchen.
I could remember the weight of that gold chair against my arms.
I remembered being twenty-six and calculating whether one decent choice might cost my sister another semester.
Now Hannah was arguing cheerfully about hospital parking.
My apartment keys were in my purse.
On Monday, I would return to work that mattered to me, with colleagues who expected questions instead of silence.
Across the table, Teresa was explaining her latest rose-growing disaster without apologizing for taking anybody's time.
Luca reached for my hand beneath the table.
I turned my palm into his.
We had another dinner planned for Thursday.
For now, that was enough to make me happy.
Halfway through lunch, an older man appeared at the doorway with his daughter.
He looked at the crowded room and hesitated.
“We might have come too late.”
Teresa raised her hand.
“We have soup.”
His daughter glanced at the tables.
“I don't want to make extra work.”
Hannah stood to fetch two plates.
Luca brought chairs from the stack by the wall.
I shifted my place setting, and June moved the bread basket closer to the center.
Within a minute, there was room.
Teresa introduced herself and asked the man whether he preferred coffee or tea.
He answered, and the conversation opened around him as easily as the table had.
I looked at the little scratch on Teresa's chair one last time.
May you like
Then somebody asked me to pass the bread.
I did, and stayed in my seat.
