The Life I Chose novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Table Twelve

I sat at my own kitchen counter in the dark and looked at that watch on his wrist.

I had saved for it for five months.

I'd had the back engraved with the date.

The stairs creaked behind me.

Daniel came down barefoot in his jeans, hair flat on one side.

He saw my face and then the screen.

He didn't ask.

He came and stood behind my stool and put his chin on top of my head, and he looked at it with me.

"When?" he said.

"The night he proposed. Two hours after."

He was quiet for a while.

"What do you want to do?"

I closed the cover.

"Go to work," I said. "I've got a double on Thursday."

He laughed into my hair.

"That's not what I meant."

"I know what you meant."

Thursday night the restaurant was full by seven.

It's a long, loud room on Federal Hill with brick walls and a wood oven, and on a good night I open forty bottles.

I was decanting a Barolo for a birthday table when the hostess touched my arm.

"Table twelve's asking for you," she said. "He brought flowers."

I looked.

Holt was sitting alone at twelve, the round two-top right in the middle of the room.

Grey suit, fresh haircut.

A dozen long-stemmed red roses lay across the bread plate.

He saw me and lifted his hand like we had a date.

Ruthie leaned over the bar.

"Want me to spill something on him?"

"Not yet."

I finished pouring the Barolo.

I took my time.

Then I walked over to twelve with my wine key still in my hand.

"Margo." He stood up and held out the roses. "You look beautiful."

I didn't take them.

"What do you want, Holt?"

"Five minutes. Please. I've been thinking about everything, and I've got a way through this. For all of us."

He sat down and gestured at the other chair.

I stayed standing.

The couple at eleven had gone quiet.

So had the four at thirteen.

"Go ahead," I said.

He lowered his voice.

"We get married in the spring. Small. Just family."

"Holt."

"Let me finish. Kendall and the baby move in with us. She needs looking after, and you're so good at that. And when the baby comes, we raise him as ours. Our son. Kendall goes back to school in Lisbon, she gets her life back, nobody ever has to know anything."

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