Mom stopped walking.S
Her face changed.
“Something’s wrong,” she whispered.
“What?”
She gripped her cane.
“That man…”
Before she could finish, the kitchen doors flew open.
The chef hurried into the dining room, moving far faster than I would have expected from a man his age.
Chloe stepped toward him.
“Chef, everything’s fine. These guests were just leaving.”
He walked around her without even acknowledging her.
Then he stopped in front of Mom.
His hands began shaking.
“Maria?”
Mom’s cane slipped from her fingers and hit the floor.
I caught her elbow.
The chef’s eyes filled instantly.
“Maria,” he repeated.
Mom stared at him as if the room around us had disappeared.
Then her lips parted.
“Giovanni?”
He dropped to his knees.
Right there in the middle of the restaurant.
Customers stopped eating.
Waiters froze.
Someone near the bar whispered, “Oh my God.”
Giovanni reached carefully for Mom’s hands.
“Cara mia.”
Mom began crying.
“I thought you were dead.”
His face crumpled.
“And I thought you had forgotten me.”
I stood beside them, completely lost.
Mom looked younger somehow.
Not physically.
Something in her expression had changed.
It was as if the seventy-eight years had briefly peeled away and revealed the girl she’d once been.
Giovanni stood slowly.
“I came here looking for you,” he told her. “All those years ago. I couldn’t find you.”
Mom shook her head.
“My family moved. My father wouldn’t allow me to write.”
Parenting
“I sent letters.”
“I never received them.”
He laughed through tears.
“I opened this restaurant because this was the food we used to talk about making together.”
Mom covered her mouth.
“You remembered?”
“Maria, I remembered everything.”
That was when Giovanni finally noticed Chloe standing behind the hostess desk.
His entire expression changed.
“What happened here?”
Chloe went pale.
“Nothing, Chef.”
I laughed once.
“Nothing?”
Giovanni looked at me.
I told him.
I didn’t dramatize it.
I didn’t have to.
I told him we had a reservation.
That Chloe refused to check it.
That she looked at Mom’s cane and handbag and decided we couldn’t afford to eat there.
And finally, I told him exactly what she’d called us.
Cheap.
Giovanni slowly turned toward Chloe.
“Is this true?”
“Chef, I was only trying to manage the room.”
