‘You used to say squares felt stingy, so you cut sandwiches into triangles when you wanted them to feel generous.’
The knife stopped in her hand.
She stared at him.
Once.
Twice.
‘Isaiah?’
He laughed then, but it came out as something close to breaking.
After the pantry closed and the last child left with a paper bag and a cookie, they sat across from each other in the fellowship hall with two cups of weak church coffee.
For a while they did little but look.
Recognition had its own gravity.
So did disbelief.
Victoria was thirty-one.
Life had not been easy to her.
Her father had died when she was fourteen.
Her
mother developed kidney disease and spent years in and out of treatment.
Victoria had taken community college classes part-time but dropped out when working nights became the only way to keep the apartment and medications paid for.
