The familiar scent of yeast, flour, and tangy sauce worked as a hard reset. Even so, the implications of the day—Penny’s sudden and shocking appearance, the possibility someone else had been with her daughter at the time of the murder—weighed heavily on her.
As Grace walked into the kitchen, she gave the food prep stations a quick once-over, pleased to see everything in its proper place. Ryan, who’d grown up working alongside his dad, didn’t need any training to run the show. He was already an expert pizza maker and skilled restaurateur, able to step in and take the reins without missing a beat. It was a good thing, too. Grace had her hands full with Penny’s trial, and her sister-in-law, Annie, divorced for many years, was keen on moving to Florida and fishing year-round now that her kids were grown and gone.
Across from her, on the other side of the counter, a half a dozen or so patrons dined happily on perfectly prepared pizzas made to Ryan’s exacting standard. Before the murder and all of the negative media attention, that number would have been double.
Grace knew Ryan belonged in college, not working the ovens. To this day he wouldn’t explain what had triggered him to drop out of Northeastern shortly after Penny’s arrest. No one questioned that he could work at the restaurant—it was a family business, after all—but it was not something Arthur would have wanted for his son. He didn’t even want it for himself.
Arthur’s father, Francesco, had opened Francone’s Pizzeria in 1968 with a three-thousand-dollar bank loan and a dream of leaving a legacy behind. Years later, Arthur would rename the pizzeria Big Frank’s, in honor of his late father, and it continued to be a local favorite. After his death, Arthur’s sister Annie returned to the restaurant she’d left in her youth to help Grace keep the family tradition alive. Everywhere Grace looked she saw signs of her late husband’s legacy. Draped over the lattice that separated the wait staff station from the dining area was the flag Arthur’s father had brought home from Italy. The walls were decorated with pictures of Italy and the Francone family over the years. It was hard to believe how close they were to closing the doors forever.
It was in this very restaurant that Grace had met Arthur. She was in graduate school doing her student teaching and she’d come into Francone’s Pizzeria, as it was called back then, for a slice of cheese and a Diet Coke at least once a week. While it was love at first sight for Arthur, or so he’d later claim, for Grace it was a slower burn. Even so, Grace felt a “bump,” a little dip in her stomach, every time she saw him.
Grace’s parents had grown up on the low end of middle class, and hoped their daughter would partner with someone of greater means. But love is love, and they were quick to accept this pizza-slinging boyfriend as “the one.”
On the day of her wedding, Grace had worn a simple white dress and a crown made of wildflowers. She said her vows under the watchful eye of Jesus at the same church where Arthur’s parents had been married some thirty years before.
As far as Arthur was concerned, the pizzeria was merely a pit stop on the road to rock stardom. He played guitar （really, he played any instrument he could get his hands on） and wooed Grace with ridiculous pizza-making songs, which he layered with more double entendres than a deep dish had ingredients:
Baby, you make my dough rise
I’m the pizza pie to your oven
Melt all over you like I am made of cheese
You’re the only topping that I’ll ever need
Grace kept all of his guitars in their original cases in the basement, standing them up like suits on a rack. On occasion, she’d venture down there, and in a form of meditation and reflection, open the cases and sit on a foldout chair, admiring the instruments while hearing Arthur’s songs play in her head.
Since Arthur’s death, her friends, even Annie, had encouraged Grace to move on with her life, date again, find someone new. Oh, how she hated that phrase—move on. To move on meant to leave, to abandon Arthur’s love, his devotion to her and the children, wasn’t something Grace could simply walk away from. Arthur existed in her mind and in her heart in the present, not the past.
As if to put an exclamation mark on that sentiment, oftentimes Grace found herself speaking of him in the present tense.
Arthur loves this show. Arthur makes the dough like this. Arthur knows how to fix the refrigerator.
She owned a pizzeria now because of Arthur and because she’d lost him. He was present in Ryan’s blue eyes, there in Jack’s lanky build. She heard his laugh in things she knew Arthur would find funny, and saw his heart in Penny, whom he had welcomed into the family as warmly and with as much love and devotion as if she’d come to them via the delivery room.