They ate together, all 4 of them, at the long dining table that had been set for 1 person for 30 years.
Grace’s groundnut soup, served with rice, filled the dining room with a warmth and smell the room had perhaps never held before. Benjamin told a story about his flight home that made Grace cover her mouth and shake with laughter.
Mr. Caleb sat at the head of the table and ate and listened and said very little, the way he always did. But there was something different about his silence now. It was not the silence of a man alone in a room. It was the silence of a man who was, for the first time in a very long time, exactly where he was supposed to be.
Rebecca sat beside him.
She ate her soup and listened to Benjamin’s story and watched Grace laugh and felt the warmth of it move through her. Cautious still. Careful still. But real. Undeniably real.
She was not going to pretend that everything was resolved. It was not. There were still years of absence to account for, still complicated feelings to work through, still a relationship that was not yet built and would have to be constructed slowly, like something that takes time to get right.