The front door opened before he knocked. Christina stood in a flowered apron with flour on one wrist and a smile that made the wrinkles beside her eyes deepen. Behind her came the smell of baked chicken, warm spices, and peach cobbler, and somewhere inside a gospel singer was holding a note Christina always tried to sing along with.
"Thirty-five years old," she announced. "I remember when you were so small I could carry you in one arm. Come here and let me look at you."
He bent down for the hug and held her longer than usual. "If you say I haven't been eating enough, I'm leaving."
"Your face is thin. I don't like it."
"That's the same thing you said last year."
"Then you had twelve months to improve and failed."
He laughed and carried the pastries into the kitchen. Anna Morales was standing at the counter peeling peaches, and William stopped when he saw her. She looked up with the guilty expression of a person who had been caught helping plan a surprise.
"Miss Anna," he said. "I should have known. Grandma doesn't invite accomplices lightly."
"I came for the cobbler," Anna replied. "Anything else happening here is none of my business."
"That makes you the worst liar in the kitchen."
Christina tapped his arm with a wooden spoon. "Leave my guest alone. Go set the table if you're determined to be useful."
Two neighbors arrived before three, followed by William's cousin Isaiah and his wife with their toddler daughter. There was laughter in the dining room, a conversation about a church fundraiser, and the kind of familiar teasing William missed during weeks when work swallowed his evenings. Nobody mentioned the showroom until Anna caught his eye across the table and smiled, which made him suspicious enough to put down his fork.
"What is going on?" he asked. "Everybody is acting like they know something I don't."
"We know it's your birthday," Christina said. "That's enough knowledge for one afternoon. Eat your greens."
After lunch William helped clear plates and tried to wash the dishes, but Christina sent him outside to sit with Isaiah beneath the oak tree. The two men talked about their school days, the businesses they had started, and the odd sensation of reaching an age they once considered impossibly adult. William said he had become so occupied with meetings and forecasts that some weeks he forgot what he had been working toward.
Isaiah looked at him. "You always said you were building a life where nobody in the family would have to be afraid of the next bill. You did that. Maybe now you get to figure out what else a life is for."
William watched his grandmother through the kitchen window. She was laughing at something Anna had said, her shoulders relaxed, her movements easy and familiar. The last time he had seen her in a public room she had been shrinking under a stranger's voice, and he still felt a sharp anger whenever the image returned.