Chapter 23: Opening Night

Lydia's POV

On the first Monday in April, the sign went back up over Wolcott Avenue.

It was the same red letters on a white board, rehung by two men on a ladder.

I stood on the sidewalk and held the ladder's foot.

Farrington's.

Forty seats, the same as before.

The building had a new front window and a new stove.

The old tile floor was my father's own work, scrubbed until it showed the pattern.

Preston had kept his word without once telling me how.

The deed hung in a plain frame by the register, in my father's name.

A note from the lawyer said the title passed to a kitchen trust on my signature alone.

I had signed it in the lawyer's office with Elias in the next chair.

He had not said anything, and he had held my other hand.

Now the dining room smelled of onions and bay leaf.

"Ten minutes to doors," Nan called from the kitchen.

She had come over from the pastry shop with four trays of lemon cake under towels.

"I made forty," she said. "If somebody puts a candle on one, I'm going to throw a pan."

"Nobody is putting a candle on anything."

"Chef says I can plate the soup if I don't talk," said the busboy, at the pass, grinning.

He wore a white apron now.

The Grand had let him go in January, and Elias had hired him in a day.

Then Elias had lent him to me for the opening.

At the front window, where the best light came through, the staff had pushed ten two-tops into one long table.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Foolish Husband's Regret Comes Late from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.