Chapter 16: Her Side of the Table

Nolan took me to the diner where I waited tables at twenty-two.

I had not been inside in fourteen years.

The booths were still red, and the pie case still hummed in the corner.

"You picked this?" I asked.

"Dolores said it was the only place you were happy before the money."

"She talks too much."

"She told me you'd say that."

We slid into a booth by the window.

A waitress with a pencil behind her ear brought two menus and a long look at my face.

"You're the one from the television," she said.

"I'm the one with the coffee order."

"Two sugars," she said, and walked off.

Nolan grinned at me across the table.

We had been there ten minutes, arguing about the meatloaf, when the bell over the door rang.

Dolores walked in with her reading glasses swinging on their chain.

Behind her, upright and slow, came Constance, with her cane actually in her hand.

"We were told there would be pie," said Dolores.

"Mother," Nolan said. "You're supposed to be resting."

"I've rested for sixty-six years," said Constance. "I would like a hamburger."

Dolores slid in next to me.

Constance sat across from Nolan, and the waitress wrote nothing down.

"You said a date," I whispered to Nolan.

"I said I'd never taken you on one. I didn't say I'd take you alone."

I laughed. I couldn't help it.

Constance cut her hamburger into four neat pieces and put one on Nolan's plate.

"Eat," she told him. "You never eat when you're nervous."

"I'm not nervous."

"You've straightened that fork three times."

Dolores snorted into her coffee.

"Leah," Constance said, "when you told my son no on television, I clapped. In my own sitting room. Alone."

"Mother," Nolan groaned.

"I would like to be invited again," Constance told me. "To anything."

I looked at her thin hands on the table.

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