I stayed seated. I didn’t move. Something in me refused to get up just yet. As if by standing up, I would be accepting everything that had happened. I would be validating their behavior.“Mom,” Michael said, looking at me impatiently, “let’s go. We have to drop Marlene’s parents at their house.”
“In a moment,” I replied calmly. “I need to use the restroom first.”
Marlene rolled her eyes. “Seriously? Take your purse, then. We’ll meet you outside.”
They wanted to get rid of me quickly, as if my presence were contaminating, as if the longer I spent with them, the more risk they ran of someone important seeing us together.
I stood up slowly, picked up my simple cloth purse, and walked toward the restrooms. I felt their stares on my back. They probably thought I was pathetic—an old, humiliated, defeated woman escaping to the bathroom to cry in private.
But I didn’t go to the bathroom.
I walked down the long hallway that led to the kitchen.
It was a route I knew well—very well—because I had walked down that hallway hundreds of times over the last ten years.
Ever since I bought this place.
Yes, this restaurant was mine. Every table, every crystal chandelier, every painting on the walls—mine.