Claire and Nicholas After Divorce novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: Yes the First Time

On the first Saturday in spring, Ames & Daughter opened its door.

I had not planned a party.

Audrey had, and she had not told me.

By ten in the morning the little shop was full.

Women from my mother's old neighbourhood came in their church coats and stood around the long table touching the wood.

The old director arrived with his cane and a cake, and told everyone he had known her before the company.

Judith sat on the folding chair by the window, which she now called her throne.

She had her infusion every month, and the bill came to her in her own name, marked paid by me.

She read it every time, to remind herself, and she liked to hold the receipt up to anyone who would look.

"That is how it's done," she told a baffled delivery boy. "Plainly. With a signature."

I stood by my mother's sewing machine, in the light.

Nobody had asked me to speak.

Audrey tapped a spoon on a glass anyway.

"A few words from the chair of Corbin Home," she said. "Or the owner of the second-best table on Ames Row."

"Second?"

"Linden & Son has a drafting table with a better story."

Laughter ran through the shop.

I put my hand on the iron wheel.

"My mother started with a machine, and a loan, and a table," I said. "Someone took the company from her. I've taken it back, and I've put her name over the doors of every store, so nobody gets to forget. But this is where she began, and I'd rather be here than on Wacker."

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