Chapter 9: Sunday Dinner
My mother called on Saturday evening, the night before the dinner she had invited us to without asking.
"I assume you're still coming tomorrow," she said.
"That depends," I said.
"On what?"
"On whether you're going to pretend the last week didn't happen."
A pause.
"No," she said.
"I'm not going to pretend."
"Then we're coming."
The apartment on Fifth Avenue was the same as it had always been — high ceilings, old furniture that had belonged to my grandparents, the smell of the dinner my mother's housekeeper had been making on Sunday afternoons since before I was born.
Dominic was already there when we arrived, standing near the window with a glass of wine he was holding too carefully, the way people hold things when they are braced for something.
He looked at Sloan first.
Then at Willa in the carrier against her chest.
Then at me.
"I should have called you," he said.
"I'm sorry."
It was direct and unadorned, which was not usually how Dominic operated.
I nodded once.
He nodded back.
That was enough, for now.
My mother came out of the kitchen.
She was wearing an apron, which I had not seen in years.
She stopped a few feet from Sloan and looked at Willa with an expression she didn't try to manage.
"May I?" she said.
Sloan looked at her for a moment.
Then she unclipped the carrier and lifted Willa out and held her toward my mother.
Eleanor Crane took her granddaughter with both hands, carefully, the way someone holds something they know they don't deserve yet.
Willa blinked up at her.
My mother's face did something I had not seen it do since my father's funeral — it simply opened.
"Hello," my mother said softly.
Just that.
We sat down to dinner.
My mother had made the things she always made on Sundays — the roast, the potatoes, the green beans with almonds that I had eaten at this table my entire life.
She held Willa through the first course and only handed her back when Willa began to fuss for a feed.
Halfway through the meal, my mother set down her fork and looked at Sloan.
"I owe you an apology," she said.
"A real one.
Not an explanation."
Sloan waited.
"What I did to the settlement was wrong," my mother said.
"What I offered you when Willa was born was wrong.
I treated you as a problem to be managed, and you were never that." She paused.
"You were the person who protected my son's daughter when no one else was paying attention.
And I repaid that by trying to diminish what you were owed."
The table was quiet.
"I can't undo it," my mother said.
"But I won't pretend it didn't happen, and I won't ask you to either."
Sloan looked at her for a long moment.
"I don't need you to be sorry forever," she said finally.
"I need you to be different going forward.
For Willa's sake."
"Yes," my mother said.
"That I can do."
Dominic refilled the wine glasses.
I looked around the table — my mother, my brother, Sloan, Willa in her carrier on the chair beside us — and felt something settle that had been unsteady for a very long time.
After dinner, while Dominic helped clear the table, my mother sat beside me on the sofa near the window.
Willa was asleep in my arms.
The city was dark outside, lit from below, the way it always looked on Sunday nights when I was a child and the week felt far away.
"She looks like your father," my mother said quietly.
"You said that before."
"It's still true." She looked at Willa's face.
"He would have been ridiculous about her.
Completely undone."
"I know," I said.
My mother was quiet for a moment.
Then: "The bar association matter.
I'm cooperating fully.
My attorney is handling it."
"I know," I said again.
"There will be consequences."
"Yes."
She nodded.
She had known that before she made the call to her attorney.
She had known it before she walked into my penthouse.
Eleanor Crane had spent sixty-three years making decisions and living with what they cost.
This one would cost more than most.
She was not going to pretend otherwise.
"Vincent," she said.
"Mom."
"Don't run again." She said it simply, without drama.
"Whatever happens between you and Sloan — that's yours to figure out.
But don't run from her." She looked at Willa.
"Or from this."
I looked down at my daughter asleep in my arms.
Four weeks old.
Barely here.
May you like
Already the most important thing.
"I'm not going anywhere," I said.
