Chapter 9: Rosanna

On Sunday morning my mother put a cinnamon roll in front of the most powerful man in Chicago and told him to eat.

"You're too thin," Rosanna said.

"Yes, ma'am," Jonas said, and ate.

The bakery smelled of yeast and sugar and warm butter.

Plywood covered the front window, and a hand-lettered sign taped to it said, Still open. Use the side door.

Marcy sat on a flour sack by the ovens, eating her third roll.

"This is the best thing that has ever happened to me," she said with her mouth full.

"My life used to be filing."

"Chew, Marcy," my mother said.

I leaned on the counter and watched Jonas.

He ate a cinnamon roll.

He wiped his fingers on a napkin and folded it into a tiny square.

My mother watched him too.

"Your wife told me nothing about you," she said.

"Three years, and all I got was a nurse's gossip."

"I'm sorry," Jonas said.

"Don't be sorry. Be useful. Can you lift a fifty-pound bag?"

He lifted a fifty-pound bag.

Marcy made a sound.

I was about to tell my mother to leave him alone when the side door opened.

A bell jingled.

A man stood in the doorway in a rumpled overcoat.

His hair had gone gray and thin, and he held his hat in both hands.

I had last seen him at my eleventh birthday party.

He had left that Tuesday and sent a postcard from Reno.

"Rosie," he said.

The oven timer ticked in the silence.

My mother put down the tray in her hands.

She did not raise her voice, and I realized I had never in my life heard her yell.

"You are not in my shop," she said.

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