Chapter 29: Mom's Supper

Vivian's mouth stayed open.

Nothing else came out of it.

The deputy took her by the elbow and walked her through the door, and it shut behind her with a click.

I sat back down.

Rafael took my hand again and didn't say anything.

My mother's church held its supper on the first Friday of every month.

She'd cooked for it for thirty years.

She'd been walking home from one, with a lemon pound cake, the night she died.

In October the church asked if they could hold their supper at Twelve Stools.

"In her honor," the deacon's wife said. "If it's not too much."

"It's not too much," I said.

That Thursday night I took her recipe card for lemon pound cake out of the shoebox.

I hadn't made it since March.

Lily sat on the counter in her pink glasses and read me the card, slowly, one word at a time.

"Two... cups... sug-ar."

"Good."

"Mama, it says 'Do NOT open the oven.' With a line under the not."

"She meant it."

"Did you ever open the oven?"

"Once. She chased me with a spoon."

The cake came out tall and gold and cracked down the middle, exactly like hers.

I had to go stand in the walk-in for a while.

Lily came and found me there.

She didn't need the wall anymore.

On Friday night the whole avenue came.

The church came. The regulars came. The crew came in clean shirts.

The laundromat lady brought a cake. The mailman brought his wife.

The detective came in a dress, and nobody recognized her until she ordered the pork chops with peppers in her detective voice.

People stood along the wall with plates.

People sat on the steps outside.

Lily went up and down the counter in her apron, looking at every face.

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