Chapter 4 - A Seat No One Could Buy
At eight the next morning, Leah carried her bag into the garage apartment's kitchenette and made herself coffee before answering a single call. Then she told the estate's operations team she was taking emergency leave, placed her assistant Marta in charge of the gala aftermath, and sent written instructions about payroll and deliveries. She didn't leave a houseful of employees stranded to prove she could make a point.
Mrs. Bellini arrived with toast and the expression of a judge prepared to deliver a sentence. “Marta can do most of what you do,” she said.
“She can do all of it if people stop correcting her behind her back.”
“Good. You finally noticed.” Bellini spotted the apron on the table. “Where did you find that?”
“In my wardrobe. What's the second table?”
Bellini stopped buttering the toast. “Your mother used to set two tables at Mercer Street. The one in front was for anybody who needed dinner. The other was for people who wanted to stay afterward and figure out why everybody was hungry.”
“A meeting?”
“A room for arguments,” Bellini said. “She thought arguments were better than quiet resentment. Salvatore Melli hated that room.”
“Why?”
“People asked about wages. Rents. Who got paid for deliveries and who carried the pots for free.”
Leah looked down at the worn apron. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“You never asked about the second table. I never knew you found the note.” Bellini softened. “Sweetheart, not every silence in this house is a plot. Some of us are simply old and foolish about what hurts to remember.”
At Mercer Street, Mae had pulled the kitchen tables together. A notice on the door announced a resident meeting at noon. Leah offered to help organize it, and Mae handed her a stack of chairs.
“You can start there.”
By twelve, eighteen residents and neighbors crowded the room. There was a retired barber, a mother working nights at the hospital, a man who used a cane, two college students who rented the top-floor room together, and Odessa with her grandsons. Nobody looked like the anonymous silhouettes in the glossy rendering. Simone explained that she could help them document their housing situation and connect them with legal advice, but no one should expect a donor to solve it by lunchtime.
“I want to hear what everybody actually needs,” Leah said. “Not what the foundation says it plans to give.”
The hospital worker, Joy Ellis, spoke first. “The stairs are dangerous. The roof leaks over our sink. I don't want the building left alone just because we don't want to be moved.”
Mae nodded. “A place can be worth keeping and still need work.”
“Then that's our starting point,” Leah said.
Julian arrived during the discussion and took a seat in the back. Leah noticed he'd changed from gala clothes to a plain blue sweater and old boots. He had brought photographs showing where roof repairs might be possible, but he didn't present them until the residents asked. When Odessa asked him whether the original building could be made safe, he answered honestly: some repairs looked feasible, and others required licensed inspections and funding nobody had secured.
“So you can't promise my boys a room?” she said.
“No,” Julian replied. “I can promise not to draw you out of the picture.”
Afterward, Leah found him stacking chairs. “You didn't have to spend your day here.”
“I wanted to know whether my firm's name was being used to push people out. Also, I liked talking to you before your employer came across the room like an approaching storm.”
“He isn't just my employer.”
“I guessed that.” Julian rested a chair against the wall. “For what it's worth, I'm not interested in winning a contest with him. I'd like to buy you dinner when this isn't the only thing you can think about. You can say no.”
“I don't know when that will be.”
“Then I won't reserve a table.”
His ease made her smile, briefly. She didn't owe him a date for being decent, and he seemed to understand that. When he left, she returned to the kitchen to find Dante standing beside the old stove, listening while Mae explained why the window above it wouldn't close.
“Mae called me,” he said before Leah could object. “She asked whether the family would cover an urgent inspection. I said yes, with no conditions. I haven't promised anything else.”
Mae folded her arms. “I called him because he's got money and it's about time he did something useful with it. You two can argue when the children are gone.”
Leah wanted to laugh. Instead, she asked Dante whether he'd met the residents. He looked embarrassed.
“Not all of them. I'm trying.”
Outside, a black SUV idled at the curb. A man stepped out holding a newspaper folded to its gossip page. It was Raphael, and his face made Leah put down her cup.
“The gala video is online,” he said. “Not the part where Salvatore avoided her question. Just Dante crossing the ballroom and Leah onstage.”
Dante took the paper. The headline described Leah as an ungrateful house employee embarrassing her benefactors after being caught with another man. Someone had supplied her age at the time Bianca took her in. Someone had made a grieving child into a debt that could be called in at any moment.
“Who gave them that?” Dante asked.
Leah took the newspaper away from him. “Don't ask who hurt your pride. Ask who knew enough to hurt mine.”
Raphael swallowed. “The reporter quoted an unnamed estate employee.”
Mae stared at him. “Funny. Half the people at that estate don't know Leah's middle name. But whoever wrote this knows how old she was when Mara died.”
May you like
Bellini had told Leah about the second table an hour earlier. Now the whole city was being reminded that she had once been a child without a home. Leah folded the newspaper carefully, laid it beside her mother's apron, and made a decision.
“Tonight,” she told Mae, “we'll have the second table. And whoever wants to talk about me can come say it to my face.”
