“That’s why,” she said. “The donations. The food banks. The granola bars.”
She paused.
“I feed people.”
The words hung between them, and neither of them moved.
“Your parents,” he said after a long beat. “Are they doing better now?”
“My dad is retired. My mom works part time at the bookstore on the corner of their street and volunteers at the library twice a week. For the first time in her life, she’s doing things because she wants to, not because she has to. That’s what the house bought her. Not the bricks. The freedom.”
He couldn’t stop watching her. Her eyes were bright, but her jaw was set, and she was letting him see both.
“Tell me about your father,” she said.
She was giving him an exit. He took it.
“What do you want to know?”
“Years ago you said he broke promises.”
His jaw tightened. “He did.”
“What kind?”
“Marriage vows. Birthday promises.I’ll be there— and then he never showed. My mother believed him every time. She forgave him every time. He failed her the same way he’d failed me my whole childhood, and every single time, she said yes to him again.”
“That’s why you like contracts.”
“Words are easy. Anyone can say anything. Paper is harder to walk away from.”
“Paper is also cold.”
“A father should be there for his son. Mine wasn’t. Paper would’ve been warmer than what he was.”
It came out harder than he intended. He caught himself and breathed once, and she didn’t flinch.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be. It’s honest.”
“I haven’t said it out loud in a very long time.”
“You can say it again if you need to.”
He didn’t need to. The first time was enough.
The waiter brought the entrees. He told her about the time his mother had taken him to the ballet for his eighth birthday, and they had eaten cheap halal cart food on the curb afterward, and how he could remember the lamb gyro but not a single thing about the show.
She told him her grandmother used to make a chicken and dumpling that wasn’t on any menu in the world because Nana refused to write down her recipes, and how Tessa tried to recreate it from memory each winter and got the dumplings slightly wrong every time. He asked what part she got wrong.She said they were always too dense. She was beginning to suspect Nana had been using cake flour and lying about it.
He laughed.
“I want to taste the wrong dumplings,” he said.
“Some Sunday.”
“That’s a date.”
