273.💍 THE LAST SUNDAY TABLE

Chapter 09 - The Mothers

Evelyn read the supposed power of attorney without removing her glasses. At the bottom of the page, her name had been written in a wavering imitation of her usual hand. She remembered the surgery. A gallbladder infection, four days in the hospital, and a nurse who made her laugh by calling the terrible pudding a culinary misdemeanor.

"I signed a consent for medical treatment," she said. "Nothing about the company."

Alice photographed the document and asked Evelyn to write her name on a sheet of paper. She did so three times. The difference in letter forms was obvious, but Alice reminded Luca that appearances alone were not proof.

"We'll get the hospital records, locate the witnesses, and have an examiner review the signatures. We'll also ask the court to preserve the original."

"How long?" Rosa asked.

"Longer than the seven days on your notice unless the judge grants emergency relief."

Rosa stared through the window at the basil struggling on the sill. "Seven days is a lifetime when you don't know whether you can pay your cooks."

Luca offered to pay all the wages personally. Rosa thanked him and declined.

"If the restaurant needs money, the restaurant can borrow it under proper terms," she said. "No more envelopes passed under tables."

Teresa, who had come to Evelyn's house for the first time in thirteen years, spoke from the kitchen doorway. "She's right. That's how all this started."

The two older women regarded one another. Teresa had once spent Christmas at this house. Evelyn had sat with her when Peter died. Later, after the accusation, Evelyn had sent three letters that Teresa returned unopened. Each had believed the other had chosen Dorian's side.

"I should have come to you," Evelyn said.

"You tried," Teresa replied. "I wouldn't read your letters."

"I could have come in person."

"I might have shut the door."

Neither woman attempted to claim innocence. Emma watched from the hallway, struck by how little room remained for pride once people began telling the truth.

They sat together at Evelyn's kitchen table. The conversation wandered, as conversations do, from bank documents to the cost of groceries, from Peter's old jokes to Angelo's terrible habit of buying flowers for women he'd just annoyed. Then Teresa said, "I thought you'd asked Dorian to get rid of me."

Evelyn looked stunned. "I asked him to find you another position. He told me you didn't want help from the Morettis."

They sat with the lost years. Neither tried to fill them with easy forgiveness.

Before lunch, Teresa took out the old address book she had been unwilling to open since the accusation. She telephoned a retired baker in Cicero, then a former cleaner in Pilsen. Both had been promised small pension supplements through Angelo's fund. Neither had received a check in years. One thought the fund had been discontinued when Angelo died. The other had been told she no longer qualified.

Evelyn wrote their answers down without interrupting. When Teresa reached a man whose wife had died waiting for an explanation, she put the telephone on speaker so Evelyn could hear him. He wasn't angry. He wanted to know whether the money would have paid for the hearing aids his wife had refused to buy.

After the call, Evelyn sat at the table and stared at the pencil she'd been using. "I thought the fund was for the restaurant," she said.

"It was for people all over the neighborhood," Teresa replied. "Your husband sometimes promised more than he could deliver. But he did make some promises worth keeping."

For the first time Luca saw the shape of the work ahead. Saving Caruso's would matter. It would not be enough on its own.

Outside, Luca paced the garden with Alice on the phone. She had located the notary who witnessed the false lease release. He was retired, ill, and in the care of his daughter. His signature had appeared on hundreds of corporate filings during the same period. Some might have been backdated.

"Will he talk?" Luca asked.

"He says he doesn't remember. His daughter wants counsel present. That's reasonable."

Meanwhile, Vanessa had hired her own lawyer and handed over copies of internal messages. The most important was an email from Celia to Dorian: THE CARUSO RELEASE MUST BE CLEAN BEFORE THE BANK LOOKS AGAIN. Vanessa had been copied. She did not try to deny it.

Her cooperation did not erase the eviction she had signed. Luca said as much when Alice told him Vanessa wanted to negotiate a statement protecting her reputation.

"We make factual statements," he said. "Not bargains about who's allowed to look good."

At Caruso's the next afternoon, Rosa and Emma inventoried everything the family might lose. Copper pots, old menus, a brass coat hook, the photographs in crooked frames. Emma placed a small note under the register that said NOT FOR SALE. Rosa laughed at first, then wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Papa and I have argued about that register for forty years," she said. "It's too old to repair and too stubborn to die."

"Sounds like someone I know."

"You'd better mean me."

At closing, Gianni asked whether Evelyn was coming Sunday. Rosa told him she was. He nodded as though a long-delayed appointment had finally been confirmed.

"Bring Teresa, too," he said. "And Luca. We can fit everybody."

Luca arrived after dark with Alice's newest news. A records search had found a second filing from 1998. It did not transfer full ownership, but it gave Gianni a binding option to acquire the building if the Moretti family ever tried to sell it outside the protected trust. The document had been indexed under an older property parcel number, which explained why later searches had missed it.

"An option?" Rosa asked. "Papa could have bought the building?"

"Under the formula in the original agreement, yes. We need to establish whether the option survived the disputed termination."

Gianni closed his eyes. "Angelo told me I'd never have to beg to stay. I thought he meant we'd always be friends."

Emma took his hand. "Maybe he meant to make sure you wouldn't need a friend in charge."

The revelation gave Alice grounds to seek emergency relief. She filed a petition the next morning. They hoped for a temporary order stopping the eviction and the foreclosure sale while a court could examine the competing documents.

But just after five, her call came through while Luca was standing by the empty dining table at his mansion.

"The lender has accelerated the loan," she said. "Celia's company has scheduled a foreclosure sale for Monday morning, and they've filed an affidavit saying the option was canceled."

"We can challenge it."

"We can. But there is something you need to see first. The affidavit is sworn by someone who claims to have watched your father destroy the original agreement."