Chapter 10: Sunday Dinner

Dominic came to the store at seven the next morning, before I had unlocked the door.

I saw him through the glass, standing on the sidewalk with his hands at his sides.

I let him in and locked it behind him.

"Tell me," I said.

"Tell you what?"

"You have a face like a man at a funeral. Tell me."

He told me.

He did it standing in the middle of aisle four, between the hinges and the picture wire.

His voice was flat and his eyes stayed on mine.

When he stopped, I could hear the old cooler hum in the back.

"The first dinner," I said. "The one they canceled an hour before."

"It was for me."

"And you didn't come."

"I was in Lisbon. I never read your name."

"My name," I said.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry."

I took a roll of packing tape off a shelf and set it down on the counter and picked it up again, because my hands needed something to hold.

"You said no to a girl you had never met," I said. "That's fair. I'd have said no too."

"Margot..."

"But I want you to hear what it was like on my side."

He waited.

"Two years ago I was told a family wanted me. I put on a blue dress and sat ready for an hour."

I did not raise my voice.

"Then Constance called my father and said her son was unwell."

"A week later they sent the younger one, and I was so relieved they had sent anyone that I said yes to everything."

"I didn't know."

"You said no, and I got the leftover brother."

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