Chapter 23: The Seat at the Table

Santo held the blue box out in his good hand, and I didn't take it.

"Open it," he said.

"Tell me first."

"A dealer in Boston bought it from a pawnbroker five years ago. He sold it on to a collector in Newport. I found the collector eleven weeks ago."

"Eleven weeks."

"I started looking the night I read your ledger."

I shifted Daisy to my other arm.

"What did it cost?"

"Forty thousand more than the pawnbroker paid."

"You've been carrying it around for eleven weeks."

"I didn't want you to think it was a price," Santo said. "I didn't want you to think I was buying my way into your kitchen."

I untied the white ribbon with one hand.

The bracelet lay on the satin, thin and silver, with the heart-shaped tag my mother had worn on her wrist every day of my childhood.

The clasp was a little bent, where I had caught it in the pawnbroker's glass.

I didn't cry.

I held my arm out to him.

He fastened it on my wrist, awkwardly, with one hand.

"It's yours," he said. "It always was."

"Thank you," I said.

He bowed his head.

"I'm still angry about the Christmas Eve," I said.

"I know."

"I'll still be angry in a year."

"I know that too."

"Take me home, Santo."

A week later the table sat in the hall on Atwells Avenue, and for the first time in its history it had a basket on it.

Daisy lay in the middle of the long table, in a yellow blanket, chewing on a wooden spoon.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Denied Our Daughter, Now He Begs for Us from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.