“For whom?”
She hung up.
Two weeks later, Anna came to visit.
Sophie was nervous all morning.
When the doorbell rang, she stood frozen in my hallway.
“I can’t.”
“You don’t have to.”
“No.”
She breathed deeply.
“I want to.”
She opened the door.
Anna was 34, smaller than I’d imagined, and carried a bakery box.
For several seconds, neither woman spoke.
Then Anna held up the box.
“I didn’t know what people bring to this sort of thing.”
Sophie laughed.
“Neither do I.”
That broke the tension.
We made coffee.
They talked for nearly three hours.
Some of it was painful. Some was strangely funny. Daniel had even used the same excuses with both women.
Then Anna asked Sophie something.
“Did they make you eat in the kitchen too?”
Sophie stopped smiling.
“Yes.”
There it was.
The smallest detail.
The one outsiders would have dismissed as silly.
It had happened to both of them.
“Margaret called it tradition.”
“She told me the same thing.”
“Why?”
Anna looked at her.
“Because once you agree that you don’t deserve a chair, everything else gets easier.”
I thought about that sentence for a long time.
Months passed.
The divorce wasn’t pleasant, but Sophie never went back.
