"The rye is good," Vivian said.
"Thank you."
They watched a bus go by.
"I'm going to say it now," Vivian said. "If that's all right. And then I'll go."
"Okay."
Vivian folded her hands over the bag. She had small, capable hands, a little spotted, with a plain gold band she still wore on the left.
"In March I was sitting alone at a restaurant waiting for a man who didn't come," she said. "I'd known him twenty-two years. He was my neighbor. His wife was my friend. When she died, I brought him casseroles, and when Gordon died, he cut my grass for a year without being asked. Last winter he asked me to dinner. And I was sixty-five years old, and I bought a new dress like a teenager."
Avery waited.
"And he didn't come. And I sat there with a glass of wine poured for him, and I watched my son pretend he wasn't watching me, and I watched him with you — this lovely girl, laughing at something he said — and I thought, *I'm ruining his night. He's over there worrying about his mother instead of falling in love.* I couldn't stand being the reason. And I couldn't stand sitting alone anymore. So I did the worst possible thing, which was both at once."
"You came over."
"I came over." Vivian's mouth twisted. "And I *talked*. God, I talked. Do you know what I did for a living?"
"No."
"Court stenographer. Thirty-one years. I typed other people's words all day. Every question a lawyer asked, every answer a witness gave. I am very, very good at questions. I know which ones open people up." She looked down at her hands. "And I knew exactly what I was doing to you, and I did it anyway, because as long as I was asking you things, I didn't have to be a woman who'd been stood up."
A woman came out of the bakery with a pink box and a toddler. The toddler waved at them. Vivian waved back without missing a beat.
"There's another part," she said. "When Gordon and I were trying to adopt the boys, we had eleven home visits. Eleven. A caseworker named Mrs. Okafor would sit in our living room with a clipboard and ask us everything. How we fought. How much we drank. What our parents were like. Whether we'd ever hit anyone, whether we'd ever been hit. Why we wanted children. Why *these* children. She wasn't cruel. She had to ask. But I'd sit there with my hands in my lap feeling like every answer might be the one that made her decide I wasn't enough." She turned and looked at Avery directly for the first time. "I know what it feels like to be interviewed by someone who might decide you're not enough. I know it better than almost anyone. And I sat down at your table and did it to you over a breadbasket. That's what I came to apologize for. Not for liking you. For making you earn it."
Avery found she couldn't speak for a moment.
"Why *did* you like me?" she asked finally. It came out smaller than she meant. "Everyone keeps saying that. Dorian said it. Paige said it. Why?"
Vivian considered this with real seriousness.
"Because you told the truth about your mother," she said. "Even though it made you look — not bad. Lonely. Most people, when I ask them things, perform. They give me the answer they think a mother wants. You didn't know how to do that. You just told me. And then you told me why bread, and I went home that night after the worst evening I'd had in years and lay in bed thinking, *It needs you to show up at the same hour every day, and if you do, it rises.*" She smiled a little. "I've thought about that a great deal. About showing up. It's why I've been buying rye."