Everyone Had a Key but Me novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Slippers

"That's my mother's chair," Gabe said.

Allegra's smile didn't move.

"She'd want it kept warm. She told me so herself, Gabe, the last Sunday."

Bruno was holding his coat.

He looked from his sister to Gabe, and then he hung the coat back on its hook.

"Allegra, let's go home," he said gently, and didn't move toward her.

I understood the scene he was building.

The sister who wept, the brother who couldn't make her stop.

The side door opened before anyone could answer.

Dario's mother came through it with a tray of coffee cups, and behind her came four wives with bread, cold meat and a pot of sauce.

After every sitting, the Santangelos ate together.

It was older than the Table.

The men came back in from the front, and a long cloth went down over the oak.

The wives took in the chair, and the dress in it, and said nothing.

Dario's mother set her tray down in the middle of the cloth.

"Claire," she said. "Sit by me."

She pointed at the seat at Gabe's right.

It was the place a wife sits.

I sat in it.

Gabe took the head of the table, and the carved chair beside him still had a woman in it.

Allegra reached under the table and came up with a pair of grey slippers.

She set them side by side next to his chair.

"You left these at mine," she said, and laughed. "Yours. I keep forgetting."

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