They had a cake for her. Al made it. It was coconut cream, three layers, and he did not let anyone else have a piece until she had cut the first one, and he stood beside her in the kitchen while she did it with his big arms folded and his face doing the thing that might, on another man, have been a smile. Kenny Vogt, who had grown an inch and a half over the summer and no longer looked as though he might cry at any moment, gave her a card that every busboy and cook and waitress at the Lantern had signed. Mr. Fenstermaker, on his wobbly stool, put down his Pharos-Tribune and said, "Good luck to you, Miss Ruska," which for Mr. Fenstermaker was a speech.
She took off her apron at a quarter past six.
She folded it and put it on the shelf by the walk-in, where she had kept it for six years, and she took out her pencil from behind her right ear and put it in the apron pocket, and then she stood there for a moment in the kitchen of the Wabash Lantern, with the grill hissing and the jukebox going and Al singing under his breath, and she listened to all of it. Every bit of it. With both ears.
Then she pushed through the swinging door.
They were in booth four, the way they always were, against the window, by the tear in the red vinyl patched with electrical tape. Romy was folding napkins into triangles. Hobie had the menu open in front of him, flat on the table, and his finger on it, and he was reading out loud. Not to Cass. To his daughter. Slowly. Word by word.
"'Open—open-faced roast beef sandwich,'" he read, "'served with mashed potatoes and—and brown gravy—'"
"You always get the meatloaf," said Romy.
"I know. I'm reading the whole thing. It's practice."
"Read the pies."
"I'm getting to the pies. 'Chef salad. Choice of dressing—'"
Cass came down the aisle between the booths. She did not come up on the right side. She did not have to anymore. She came up on the left, on her new side, the side where the window was, where for six years she had never once stood, and she stopped there, by the edge of the table, and they both looked up.
Romy's face opened like a window.
Hobie stopped reading. He looked at her standing on his left, and she watched him notice it, the whole shape of it, the way he noticed everything, and she watched something go across his long, patient face that he did not even try, this time, to hide.
"Hey," he said.