I wanted to ask her if she had heard from her mother separately, but she kept her back to me, her fingers gripping the metal frame.
“She asked if she could help with the reception dinner,” Adele added, her voice dropping a fraction.
“We have the deposit covered,” I said. “We don’t need her money.”
“She said she wanted to make things right,” Adele said.
“She had fifteen years to make things right,” I said.
Adele did not answer. She set the chair down with a sharp clatter that echoed against the low ceiling of the basement, leaving the question of her mother’s sudden interest hanging between us.
The basement door clicked open upstairs, and the minister’s assistant looked down the stairwell to call out that the florist was waiting at the side entrance.
By two in the afternoon, the kitchen table was covered in circulars from the local grocery store. Piper sat across from me with a pair of small sewing scissors, clipping coupons for butter and flour while the old refrigerator gave its familiar, rattling sigh in the corner.
My feet rested on the worn blue kitchen rug, the edges frayed from years of heavy boots and muddy sneakers.
“The Oakwood Inn called while you were at the church,” Piper said. She did not look up from her clipping. “The event manager, Sandra, said someone named Mrs. Vance called from Chicago.”
I paused with my pen over the grocery list, where I had just totaled up thirty-four dollars for the baking supplies. “Maya called the venue?”
“She changed the head table seating,” Piper said, checking her watch. “She moved the triplets to table six, and she put herself at the family table next to you.”
“She can’t do that,” I said. “I signed the contract.”
“She told Sandra she was covering the liquor liability insurance,” Piper said. She laid her scissors down with a soft metallic tap. “She already paid them three hundred dollars for the upgrade.”
I looked at the coupons scattered across the yellowed wood of the table. The small sense of security I had kept since morning began to slip away, replaced by the weight of her intrusion.
