Chapter 23: Christmas Eve

Hugh carried a table up my stairs on Christmas Eve morning.

It was his grandmother's old oak drop-leaf from her basement, and it did not want to go around the turn in the middle.

"Lift your end," he said from below.

"I am lifting my end."

"Lift it like you mean it."

"I'm a seamstress, Hugh. I lift tulle."

We got it through the door on the third try.

By five o'clock the apartment over my shop was full.

Mrs. Meade came up the stairs one at a time on Bonnie's husband's arm, and the ham came up in his other one.

"It's very small," she said at the top, breathing hard.

"It's mine," I said.

"I know, dear. That's why it's lovely."

Bonnie brought mashed potatoes in a stockpot and a bottle of red under her arm.

"Look at you," she said. "Glasses. A table. A ham. You're basically a duchess."

I'd strung white lights along the windowsill and draped the last of them over my mother's Singer.

Mrs. Meade sat at the head of the table in her pearls.

Bonnie's husband carved the ham, because Mrs. Meade said Hugh carved like he was cutting line.

The potatoes were lumpy. The ham was perfect.

Bonnie told the story of her husband falling off a ladder at the firehouse party, and he let her tell it wrong, beaming.

Halfway through dinner, Hugh took a small box out of his jacket and set it beside his grandmother's plate.

She opened it.

The emerald-cut diamond sat on the velvet.

Mrs. Meade looked at it for a long time.

"Shayla gave it back," Hugh said. "In an envelope."

"In an envelope," his grandmother said.

"Licked shut."

Mrs. Meade put her small hand flat over her eyes.

"I'm not crying," Mrs. Meade said from behind her hand. "I have something in my eye. It's the ham."

"Yes, ma'am," Hugh said.

She took her hand away and snapped the box shut and put it in her handbag, sniffing.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Fiancé Chose His Ex, So I Chose Myself from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.