“When she was a baby, he brought her here on Fridays.”
Emily looked delighted.
“Daddy brought me?”
“You slept through most lunches.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
She smiled.
Marco looked at me.
“He said the smell of our bread reminded him of his grandmother’s kitchen.”
That sentence reached somewhere deep.
James had loved bread.
Good bread.
Bad bread.
Homemade.
Store-bought.
He considered bread a legitimate reason to choose a restaurant.
I suddenly remembered a Friday afternoon years earlier.
James coming home with flour on the cuff of his coat.
I asked what happened.
He said, “Long story.”
I forgot to ask again.
Marco turned toward Amanda and Margaret.
His expression cooled.
“These children belong here.”
Neither woman spoke.
“Their father helped make sure Bella Luna still exists.”
Amanda stared at her plate.
Marco’s voice remained calm.
“He did not do it so I could create a restaurant where families worry that a child coloring quietly is somehow offensive.”
Margaret flushed.
“No one meant—”
Marco raised one hand.
“I understand what was said.”
The nearby tables had mostly returned to their conversations, but a few people were still listening.
I wished, for half a second, that Marco would lower his voice.
Then I looked at Emily.
Her shoulders were no longer hunched.
I stopped wishing.
“In my family,” Marco said, “dinner was loud. Children dropped things. Somebody always talked over somebody else. My mother would have been suspicious of a table where everyone behaved too perfectly.”
Gerald looked down, hiding a smile.
Marco turned back to the children.
“Now.”
He leaned toward Emily.
“I hear you like baking.”
Emily looked at me.
“How does he know that?”
I honestly didn’t know.
Marco tapped one finger against the table.
“Your father told me many things.”
Emily’s face softened.
“He did?”
“Yes.”
Marco stood.
“Would you like to see the kitchen?”
She glanced at me for permission.
