Chapter 10 - The Gift She Chose
The cufflinks were still available.
The design, at least. Sadi didn't imagine the exact pair had waited in a glass case for a year while the rest of the world moved around them.
The associate brought out a fresh box and set it on the counter.
Rhodium. Plain. Quietly beautiful.
“Would you like a closer look?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Sadi picked one up.
Her hands remained steady.
She had worn jeans and white sneakers again because she liked them. Her sweater was blue this time. The manager greeted her politely, then allowed the associate to continue instead of making her visit a public performance of regret.
The store had made changes after the incident. Sadi's attorney had dealt with its response. Its staff had training and clear procedures for intervening when customers were threatened.
What mattered to her now was how the associate treated the woman waiting behind her, who was wearing a supermarket uniform beneath a winter coat.
“I'll be right with you,” the associate told her warmly. “Please take a seat if you'd like.”
The woman sat.
Sadi put the cufflink back in the box.
“I'll take them.”
“Would you like a card?”
She thought for a moment.
“Yes, please.”
She wrote it herself at the counter.
For all the ordinary days I want with you.
Love, Sadi.
Outside, Arthur waited near the escalator.
He looked at the small bag, then at her face.
“Successful?”
“Very.”
“Your husband asked whether you were enjoying shopping.”
“Tell him I made a deeply irresponsible purchase.”
Arthur's mouth twitched.
“Will that worry him?”
“No. He'll assume I bought another bookshelf we have to build.”
They left through the main doors.
For once, she didn't look over her shoulder.
Roman came home that evening later than planned, carrying flowers and looking annoyed with himself.
“Don't apologize yet,” Sadi said. “Tell me what happened.”
He stopped in the doorway.
“A meeting ran over. Then traffic.”
“You called. I moved dinner.”
He looked toward the dining room.
“You're not upset?”
“I'm hungry. That's a separate condition.”
He laughed and kissed her.
She liked that he came home to her as a person who could be late, tired, or wrong without needing the entire room to reorganize itself around the fact.
After dinner, she handed him the box.
He looked at her before opening it.
“Sadi.”
“Open it before you decide I'm being sentimental.”
He lifted the lid.
Recognition moved across his face.
“These were what you were looking at.”
“Yes.”
He touched one with his thumb.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then he read the card.
When he looked up, the expression in his eyes made her throat tighten.
“You could have chosen something else.”
“I could.”
“You didn't have to go back.”
“I wanted to finish buying my husband a gift.”
He set the box carefully on the table.
Then he reached for her.
Sadi went willingly, laughing a little when he pulled her into his lap despite her protest about the chair.
“It has survived worse negotiations,” he told her.
“That isn't a reassuring statement about furniture.”
He kissed her until she forgot the argument.
His gift was an album.
She opened it expecting something elaborate and found photographs from the past year.
Della laughing beneath a crooked Second Table sign. Mrs. Alvarez on the repaired front steps. Mr. Finch holding his new elevator key like an award he considered overdue.
There were photographs of Sadi working, arguing with a stubborn cupboard door, asleep on the couch with a book against her chest.
One showed Roman attempting to chop vegetables while Louise watched with professional concern.
“Who took that?” Sadi asked.
“Apparently our home contains a documentary crew.”
She turned the page.
There was their first anniversary: two plates, two candles, her hand resting across his on the kitchen table.
She remembered balancing his phone against the water jug and insisting the crooked picture wasn't worth printing.
She had been wrong.
On the last page, Roman had written one sentence.
There were more good days than either of us remembered.
Sadi sat quietly with the album open.
The year had contained lawyers, fear, old memories, and disappointments that had not disappeared simply because she was loved.
It had also contained all of this.
She closed the book and put her arms around him.
“Thank you for remembering.”
He rested his face against her hair.
“Thank you for staying in the pictures.”
The following evening, they went to Second Table's first completion dinner.
Roman wore the cufflinks.
Sadi noticed before he removed his coat.
He noticed her noticing and smiled.
The repaired room beside Della's diner was full. Participants had prepared the meal with their instructors, and several employers had come to discuss placements. Nobody was expected to work the celebration without being paid for the time.
Della checked the plates as though she could inspect confidence into the food.
Maya arrived late because a client had needed her. Mrs. Alvarez saved her a seat and immediately began explaining what the city still hadn't done about the pavement outside.
Some things were improving.
Some things still required Maya.
Sadi stood beside the graduates while each received a certificate. One woman had already secured a full-time job. A young man had obtained an apprenticeship. Another participant had decided to continue training before applying.
They were different beginnings.
All of them counted.
When Sadi sat down, Roman put a glass of water beside her plate without interrupting the conversation.
She looked around the room.
It was loud, untidy, and full of people who had known her before anyone attached importance to her married name.
She belonged here.
She belonged in the quiet house she shared with Roman, too. She belonged at the jewelry counter, in the courthouse, on a bus, in a room where she had something to say.
None of those places required Trevor's permission.
Later, she and Roman walked to the car beneath the restored light over the diner's entrance.
“Good evening?” he asked.
“Very.”
“Anything you want to change?”
She thought of the next class, the applications on her desk, the work she was excited to do on Monday.
“Plenty. Tomorrow.”
He smiled.
At home, they left the dishes for morning.
Sadi placed the album on the table beside their bed. Roman put the cufflinks carefully in their box, apart from the forgotten accessories in his drawer.
She set her alarm for seven.
There would be coffee, work, people to feed, and ordinary things they would forget and remind each other about.
There would be a life she had helped choose.
Roman drew her close beneath the gray blanket.
“Happy anniversary,” he said softly.
May you like
She kissed him.
Then Sadi went to sleep without rehearsing an apology for the morning.
