Chapter 18 - THE TABLE AGAIN
Fifteen years after the bat incident, we hosted a formal Falcone dinner in the same room.
Jamie was nineteen.
Luca twenty-two.
Brandon older.
Victor eighty-three.
I almost canceled after noticing the repaired table.
Jamie said:
“Dad, it’s furniture.”
Exactly.
We used it.
The old crack had been professionally filled.
Invisible unless you knew where.
No special child chair.
Long table.
Equal chairs.
Victor sat halfway down rather than at head because he arrived late and refused help walking.
Progress by stubbornness.
Then Jamie brought his girlfriend.
No family vetting committee.
Good.
Luca brought no one because he hated formal dinners.
Also good.
During dessert, Victor asked Jamie about college.
Industrial design.
Not company.
Then:
“Could use that at Falcon Ridge.”
Jamie smiled.
“Maybe. Don’t recruit.”
Victor raised hands.
“Fine.”
Behavior.
Then one cousin asked about donor conception after hearing old gossip.
Jamie answered:
“My mom used an egg donor.”
No shame.
Then cousin:
“So genetically you’re only Falcone?”
The room changed.
Jamie said calmly:
“Genetically Dad’s side, legally and actually both my parents’ son.”
Good.
Victor looked at cousin.
“Do not turn his mother into a technicality.”
That surprised me.
Claire would have hated him less for that sentence.
Maybe.
Then Luca said:
“Also nobody ask me my DNA. I’m trying to eat.”
Laughter.
The conversation moved.
Normality achieved not by hiding facts but by removing hierarchy from them.
Then Brandon and I went into study.
Same study where Jamie’s emergency phone once rang.
He looked at desk.
“Remember?”
“Yes.”
“If phone didn’t ring?”
I stopped.
“We don’t live there.”
He smiled.
“Therapy.”
“Annoying.”
Good.
Then:
“I’m sorry.”
“You’ve said.”
“Still.”
“I know.”
No need repeat forever.
Then Victor entered without knocking.
Old habit.
We both stared.
He backed out and knocked.
Everyone laughed.
Tiny things.
Then he came in.
“I want one photograph.”
My body tightened.
“Of what?”
“All of us.”
No chair designation.
No continuity.
Just family.
We took it.
Victor in center? Photographer naturally arranged him seated because old. Jamie behind. Luca beside. Brandon. Me.
No one read legal meaning.
Photo went on wall.
May you like
That was allowed.
Symbols can exist without authority if people stop lying about what they mean.
