Chapter 9 - A SEAT AT THE HEAD OF THE TABLE
Three months later, the crystal chandeliers in the Moretti dining room were lit again.
Only this time, there weren’t thirty nervous millionaires staring into their champagne flutes.
And there wasn’t a single black catering uniform in sight.
I stood near the French doors wearing a soft navy wool dress—not a maid’s apron—carrying a binder of pediatric clinical notes instead of a silver serving tray.
Wait—let me explain how I got here, because if anyone had told me on the night of the engagement dinner where we would all be standing by springtime, I never would have believed them.
Arthur Bellini and Matteo Moretti never made bail.
With Julian Bellini’s signed affidavit from Locker 418, the shipping ledgers Elena had preserved for four years, and the Polaroid photograph Lily had taken in the driveway, the federal prosecutor didn’t need Luca to testify against his own family. Both men pled guilty to racketeering, conspiracy, and the murder of Julian Bellini to avoid a federal trial in downstate Illinois.
As for Vanessa?
Two weeks after the night at Union Station, after her collarbone surgery healed, she packed two suitcases to move to Miami, where her sister lived.
Before she left for O’Hare, she came to the house one last time with her arm in a white sling. She didn’t ask Luca for money, and she didn’t ask for forgiveness. She stood in the front foyer, handed Lily a brand-new velvet stuffed rabbit to replace the worn ear on Mr. Barnaby, and looked straight at me.
“Thank you for not stepping aside in the dining room, Claire,” she had said quietly. “If you had listened to me that night, we never would have found out what my father did to my brother.”
Luca had quietly paid off the debts Arthur had left attached to Vanessa’s name and bought her a small flower shop in Coral Gables so she could start a clean life under her mother’s maiden name. She sent Lily a box of Florida oranges every month.
Now, the double doors to the dining room swung open, and Luca walked in carrying a huge silver platter of homemade manicotti himself, wearing an apron dusted with flour over his tailored dress shirt.
Behind him walked Elena.
The pale scar along her jaw was still there, and she still got short of breath when the Chicago wind came off the lake too sharp, so my mother and I took turns managing her respiratory therapy right there in the house while Luca paid for me to finish my final semester of registered nursing classes at Loyola.
“Alright, everyone,” Luca announced, setting the steaming platter in the center of the mahogany table where my mother sat laughing with Marco near the fireplace. “Before the cheese gets cold—where is the boss of this house?”
“Right here, Daddy!”
Nine-year-old Lily came skipping in from the study wearing a bright yellow velvet dress with white lace cuffs that actually fit her wrists. Her dark hair was brushed until it shone, tied back with a yellow silk ribbon Elena had braided for her ten minutes earlier.
She was carrying a new drawing in purple crayon—a picture of five people standing under a big station clock—and she marched straight to the head of the dining table.
Her chair wasn’t in the storage room under extra linens anymore.
In fact, Luca had replaced the single chair at the head of the grand table with three matching carved walnut chairs set side by side at the very top: one for himself, one for Elena, and right in the middle between them, slightly raised on a velvet cushion, Lily’s chair.
And right beside Elena’s seat were two permanent places set with gold-rimmed china for my mother and me.
Lily climbed into her chair between her parents, smoothing her yellow skirt with great dignity. Then she paused, looking over at me as I started to sit down beside my mother.
“Claire?” Lily asked.
“Yes, sweetheart?”
Lily reached into the small pocket of her yellow dress and pulled out Elena’s grandfather’s gold pocket watch.
Luca had taken it to an old master jeweler on Wabash Avenue the week after Union Station. The cracked, bloodstained crystal was gone, replaced with clear sapphire glass, and a brand-new Swiss mechanical movement had been fitted inside the case so it ticked steadily and softly again.
“Mommy and Daddy said I get to give you your start-of-school present,” Lily said, hopping down from her chair to walk the three steps over to me.
She placed the heavy, ticking gold watch into my palm.
I blinked in surprise, looking up at Elena and Luca. “Mr. Moretti—Elena—I can’t take a family heirloom like this. This belongs to Lily.”
“Open the back cover, Claire,” Elena said softly, leaning her head against Luca’s shoulder as he wrapped his arm around her waist.
I pressed the small brass catch at the top of the crown.
The rear gold cover popped open.
Inside, where the faded blue Union Station locker ticket had once been hidden, the jeweler had engraved four lines in delicate script across the polished gold plate:
To Claire Dawson— Who took the tray, Held the line, And brought our family home.
My throat tightened until I couldn’t speak a word. My mother reached under the table and squeezed my left hand while Lily stood on her tiptoes waiting for my reaction.
“Do you like it?” Lily asked anxiously. “Daddy said nurses need a really good watch so they know when to give people their medicine.”
I knelt beside her chair, slipped the gold chain over my neck so the warm watch rested right over my heart, and kissed the top of her dark hair.
“It’s the best watch in Chicago, Lily-bug,” I whispered. “And I’m never taking it off.”
Lily beamed, climbed back into her seat between her mother and father, and reached out to hold Luca’s hand with her left and Elena’s hand with her right.
“Daddy?” Lily asked as Luca lifted his water glass for the toast.
“Yes, baby?” Luca said, his dark eyes warmer than I had ever seen them.
“Nobody is ever going to Switzerland, right?”
May you like
Luca smiled, kissing the back of his little girl’s hand before looking across the candlelit table at his wife, my mother, and me.
“Never, sweetheart,” Luca said softly. “Everyone who belongs in this house is already sitting at the table.”
