She sat at the kitchen table with her pen tapping against her chin, reading the list back to herself like a sermon.

“Twelve rolls,” she said.

“Your niece eats like a field hand.”

“I’m bringing the good bread,” I said.

“You are not bringing bread to a restaurant.”

“Then I’ll bring it to your house after.”

Rachel drew a line through something and wrote call Barb about Rotary in the margin.

Her birthday dinner was the next night, six twenty at the Bramble, and she had invited nine people, including a neighbor I had never met.