I almost laughed at the sweetness of it.
After all those years cooking for people who could not be bothered to come, a stranger’s child looked me in the eye and thanked me for potatoes.
Life is strange that way.
It does not always give back what was taken.
Sometimes it gives you proof that you were not foolish for wanting to give in the first place.
On the next Christmas Eve, I did not cook for seventeen people.
I cooked for six women from my building, two volunteers from the kitchen, and one widower who brought store-bought pie and apologized for it three times.
I wore the green velvet dress.
I wore Richard’s pearls.
At 8:40 p.m., I looked at the clock above the stove in the community room and felt the old pain brush against me.
But it did not own the room.
People were laughing.
