Chapter 8: Gran's Table

At ten on Saturday night my grandmother answered the door with a rolling pin.

"I don't buy anything," she said.

"I'm not selling," said Anthony Crane.

I was at the kitchen table in sweatpants with a legal pad, and I heard him from the hall.

I knew the voice.

I stood so fast the chair tipped.

"Gran. Don't."

"He's got a raincoat," Bea said over her shoulder. "Lawyers wear raincoats."

"That's my husband's lawyer."

"Then he can stand in the rain." She looked him up and down. "Are you the one who warned her about the Rowan girl?"

Anthony said nothing for a moment.

"I might be."

"Then come in. You look like you haven't eaten since Tuesday."

"Mrs. Lang, I'm here to deliver a paper."

"You can deliver it sitting down."

She took his coat.

I stood in my own grandmother's kitchen and watched the most feared divorce lawyer in New York sit at a table with a dish towel on it.

"I'm sorry," I said. "She does this."

"I have been fed worse by clients."

"Eat," Bea said.

She set down a plate of lasagna the size of a brick.

He looked at it.

"I really should not."

"Do you want to be rude to a woman of seventy-one?"

He picked up the fork.

He ate the whole plate in silence, steadily, and did not look up once.

Bea watched him with her chin in her hand.

"Married?" she asked.

"Gran."

"I'm making conversation."

"No," Anthony said.

"Ever?"

He set the fork down.

"Once."

"What happened?"

"She took my house and went into the city."

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