“I do.”
Denise laughed once. It was a short sound, polished by use, the laugh she brought to meetings when a junior person had spoken too soon. She turned it toward her son with a softness that did not quite reach him, and then she looked at Emily again, and the softness was gone, and the amusement was there, thin and bright as the chrome.
Denise said, “She brings plates. Let her bring plates.”
Caleb’s voice cracked, because he had practice at recovering in front of her and the practice was not the same as ease. He put his hand flat on the worksheet, not hiding it, claiming it. “Mom. Let her try.”
A woman at the next booth glanced over and glanced away, embarrassed for everybody, which is a common charity and a useless one. Emily shifted the pot to her other hand. Her apron pocket held four creamers, a pen, and a scrap of order on which she had written, hours ago, the word rye and then forgotten whose rye it was. She waited. Waiting was not the same thing as retreat. Denise studied her the way she might have studied a claim that had arrived without the proper cover sheet. The amusement deepened, not kindly, but with a genuine spark of interest, as if the afternoon had offered her a private entertainment in a public room.