Chapter 18: The Kitchen Table

Margot's POV

At noon I stood outside Nathan's door holding a bakery box, and I realized I had never been afraid of a woman in her sixties before.

The door opened before I knocked.

Mrs. Boyle was short, gray-haired, and wearing a cardigan, and she looked at the box, then at me.

"You brought a cake," she said. "Good. It means you were raised."

"It's lemon."

"Come in. Don't stand on ceremony, the eggs won't wait."

His kitchen was just past the front door and smelled of butter.

She had brought her own skillet from Pittsburgh and a bag of her own flour.

"Sit," she said. "You look like you haven't eaten since you got up on a stool."

I sat at the little table by the window.

She put a plate in front of me, two eggs and toast, and sat down across from me with her hands folded.

"I'll ask you things," she said. "You can answer or not. I won't think less of you if you say it's none of my business."

"Ask."

"Do you love my son?"

I had been prepared for questions about my family, my intentions, my father.

I had not been prepared for that one, asked plainly across a table by someone who had raised him.

"I don't know what the rules are for saying it," I said.

"There aren't any."

"There were, with him. I'm the one who wrote them."

"Then you know how that went." She did not smile. "Try again."

I looked at the eggs.

"Yes," I said.

"Good."

She poured the coffee herself.

"Now the second question. You hid something from him, and he stood up in front of your father and said so out loud. Did that hurt?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because he was right."

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