Chapter 24: A Real Dinner

The Sugar Room closed to the public on a Friday evening in December, and nobody who worked there argued.

Nolan had booked the whole floor.

The long table by the window was set for thirty-eight.

On the pavement outside it, I had once watched my husband hold a door for another woman.

Frances was six weeks old and had finally come home from the hospital.

She slept in a car seat on the end chair, in a knitted hat Vicki had made, with one fist up beside her ear.

"Do not wake her," Vicki said, pointing a breadstick at the room. "She earned that nap."

"Nobody is going to wake her," I said.

"The pool man is going to wake her. I can see it in his face."

The pool man, who had never once been called by his name in my hearing, raised both hands.

He wore a suit that did not fit, and he held a small gift bag.

"It's only a rattle," he said. "It has a stuffed mushroom on it. I didn't know what you'd want."

"It's perfect," I said, and I meant it.

My mother sat at the head of the table in her wheelchair, in a blue dress Vicki had picked.

For once she had left her Bible at home.

Her hand shook less than it had in the spring.

The new medicine, the specialist had said, and the clinic that Nolan had found, and the fact that nobody was frightening her anymore.

She watched everyone come in.

Floor nine arrived in twos and threes, in good clothes, with nervous smiles.

Eleven of them had been fired, and then un-fired by a vote of the board.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Everyone Mocks the Pregnant "Nobody," She's Secretly the Boss's Wife from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.