Chapter 24: Grandma-to-Be

The christening lunch was held in my own dining room.

Sophie had insisted.

"It's Grandma's house," she said, when Evan's mother offered the church hall. "Everyone can come to Grandma's house."

I had spent three days polishing the table.

It was my mother's, an old oak one with a leaf that stuck.

I had stripped and oiled it myself the winter before the shower.

By noon the house was full.

Evan's parents had come, and his mother carried the cake the size of a door.

My neighbors came, and the customers from the open house, and the woman in the green cardigan, who brought another pie.

Tom stood in the doorway with the baby in the crook of one arm.

Sophie had handed her to him and walked away, and the baby had settled at once.

He had not stopped smiling since.

Nobody had asked me to wear anything special.

I wore the linen jacket and my mother's garnet pin.

The baby had been christened in the church an hour earlier, in a white gown that had been Sophie's.

She had slept through the water.

At one o'clock Sophie tapped a spoon on a glass.

"Everyone, sit," she said. "Everyone but Mom."

I laughed.

"Where am I going?"

"Come here."

She took my hand and led me to the head of the table.