No smile now.
Meredith stared at Lenora.
“Brooks?”
Lenora held her gaze.
“Yes.”
The name seemed to travel through years before landing.
Meredith’s face changed.
Not simply recognition.
Calculation.
Memory.
She looked more closely.
The eyes.
The shape of the mouth.
Something around the jaw.
“Oh.”
Lenora said nothing.
Meredith whispered:
“Isaiah’s daughter.”
“Lenora.”
“I know.”
Lenora’s eyebrow lifted.
Meredith corrected:
“I remember now.”
Better.
Still awkward.
Darius stood beside the table.
He did not rescue either woman.
Meredith looked toward the elevator leading to the private floor.
Then at Lenora’s single place setting.
“You’re here for the closing.”
“Yes.”
A pause.
“I didn't know you were attending in person.”
Lenora’s mouth curved slightly.
“I noticed.”
Darius looked down.
He had to.
Otherwise Meredith would see him almost smile.
She recovered.
Or tried.
“Well.”
She adjusted the strap of her handbag.
“This table…”
Lenora waited.
Meredith looked toward table fourteen.
Her certainty evaporated under a fact she had not possessed thirty seconds earlier.
The absurdity became visible.
She had tried to remove Isaiah Brooks’s daughter from the table where Isaiah Brooks had spent years working.
But that was not why her behavior had been wrong.
Lenora understood that immediately.
Meredith did not yet.
“I didn't realize who you were.”
There.
The sentence.
Lenora’s expression became completely still.
Darius heard it.
Meredith heard it after saying it.
She closed her eyes briefly.
Lenora stood.
Not dramatically.
She simply picked up her handbag.
At five feet eight in heels, she was almost eye level with Meredith.
“That,” Lenora said quietly, “is not the defense you think it is.”
Meredith’s face went pale.
Darius looked toward the floor.
Lenora continued.
“If I were nobody you recognized, would I still have been entitled to sit at the table the restaurant assigned me?”
Meredith swallowed.
“Yes.”
“Then that's the apology.”
Meredith looked at her.
Not angry now.
Unsteady.
“I am sorry.”
Lenora waited.
Meredith tried again.
“I am sorry I assumed you had been seated here by mistake.”
Better.
“And for asking you to move before I checked.”
Better.
Lenora nodded once.
“Thank you.”
No smile.
No absolution.
She turned toward Darius.
“Upstairs?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
They walked toward the elevator.
Meredith remained beside table fourteen.
For the first time in almost four decades, she looked at the table and wondered whose tradition it had actually been.
The elevator doors closed behind Lenora and Darius.
For several seconds neither spoke.
Then Darius said:
“My father is going to enjoy this far too much.”
Lenora looked at him.