"You were a principal," he said. "You'd know. I just figured, if you came all this way, there's something I still don't understand. I'd rather hear it from you than not hear it."
Loretta came back with the coffee and the pie, set them down without a word, and left again. Vivian added cream to her coffee, slowly, and stirred it, and took her time.
"You wrote that you didn't think it was my job to forgive you," she said. "You're right. It isn't. But I want to tell you what my job has been, my whole life, so you understand what you were asking without knowing you were asking it. My job, since I was a little girl, has been to walk into rooms where people have already decided what I am, and change their minds. Over and over. One room at a time. I did it in school, where I was one of three Black girls in the honors program. I did it in college. I did it at every job interview, and every parent conference, and every district meeting where some man from downtown talked to me like I was the secretary. I did it in grocery stores and department stores and doctors' offices. I did it so often I stopped noticing I was doing it. I got very, very good at it. I wore my good navy dress to your store, Mr. Mercer. Did you notice that? I wore my pearl earrings. I wore comfortable shoes but good ones. I was doing my job before I ever walked through your door."
Grant was looking at her with an expression she could not quite name.
"And the thing is," Vivian said, "I'm sixty-one years old. I'm retired. My husband is dead. I buried him on a Tuesday in February, and I've spent a year and a half learning how to sleep on one side of the bed. And I thought, just once, I would like to walk into a room and not have to do my job. Just once I would like to be a widow buying a necklace with her husband's money. That's all. I didn't want to change anybody's mind. I didn't want to be an example of anything. I just wanted to be somebody's wife, one more time, for half an hour." She set down her spoon. "That's what you took. Not the necklace. That."
Grant put his hand over his eyes. For a moment neither of them said anything at all. The diner went on around them: plates clattering in the kitchen, the bell over the door, a radio playing old soul music behind the counter.
"I don't know how to give that back," he said finally, his voice muffled.
"You can't," said Vivian. "That's what I came to tell you. Some things you can't give back. You can only stop taking them from other people." She pushed the plate with the peach pie across the table toward him. "Eat that. It's the best pie on the South Side, and you look like you haven't eaten in a week."