Dad still can’t bake.
I stared at it.
Then at her.
Emma crossed her arms.
“You know the saddest part?”
“What?”
“I still ate some.”
I laughed for the first time in days.
Real laughter.
Then she stepped forward and hugged me hard.
“I’m mad at you,” she mumbled into my shoulder.
“I know.”
“But I know why you did it.”
I held her like she was five again, though she was taller than me now and carried other people’s lives in her hands for a living.
“I just wanted you to have a normal childhood,” I said.
She pulled back and wiped her face.
“That ship sailed when you packed my lunch with expired yogurt.”
“One time.”
“It was chunky.”
“That’s how yogurt works.”
She laughed despite herself.
Then her face grew serious.
“I’m still meeting her.”
“I know.”
“Not because I need a mother.”
I waited.
Emma looked straight at me.
“I need peace.”
And standing there in my daughter’s kitchen while rain rolled down the Cincinnati windows, I understood.
The dinner would not reopen old wounds.
It would expose them.
The night Vanessa came, the rain was heavy enough to turn the street black under the lights. I arrived at Emma’s house forty minutes early, pretending it was because I wanted to help cook.
Emma opened the door in jeans and a dark green sweater, hair tied loosely back.
“You’re early.”
“I’m old. We leave early.”
“You missed my choir concert once because you stopped for gas station beef jerky.”
“That was an emergency.”
She rolled her eyes and let me in.
Her house smelled like garlic, coffee, clean laundry, and the kind of comfort no one can fake. Mark was not home yet. He had a late meeting downtown, which I thought was unfortunate because he was a steady presence. The kind of man who did not try to dominate a room but made it easier to breathe in one.
I helped set the table while Emma stirred sauce on the stove.
Neither of us said Vanessa’s name for a while.
Finally, Emma said, “I’m not scared of her.”
“I know.”
“I’m scared I’ll feel sorry for her.”
That was exactly Emma.
She could be angry and compassionate at the same time, which made anger harder for her than it was for most people.
At 6:12, the doorbell rang.
Emma froze for half a second.
Then walked to the door.
I stayed in the kitchen, rearranging silverware that did not need rearranging.
Then I heard Vanessa’s voice for the first time in twenty-four years.
“Oh my God. Emma.”