Melissa pulled a folded pink baby blanket out of the diaper bag, with a laundromat tag still pinned to one corner, and she held it against her chest.
Greg, she said to her brother, you said somebody has to fish the quarters out of the machines. I need to tell you where I was last January.
Before Melissa married well, before any of this, she had been a young mother with a newborn, no heat, and nowhere to go during the cold snap. A laundromat on Salem Avenue stayed open all night, every night that week, so families like hers had somewhere warm to sleep. The owner kept the coffee pot full and never said a word, never made anyone feel like less. She had wrapped her baby in a blanket warm from one of his dryers. She kept the tag.
The Easter table had gone quiet. Kevin had gone still.
Greg bragged about his bonus and called it folding other peoples underwear, and his own wife and her baby had once survived a freezing week because a laundromat owner left his doors open all night.
Melissa said she had recognized Kevin the first time Greg brought her to a family dinner, and had been too ashamed of how far down she had once been to say so, until tonight, when Greg made it one joke too many.
I am Kevins mother. He refilled my coffee and said happy Easter, Greg, and took the joke, because a man who kept families warm all night for a week does not need a sales manager to tell him his life is small. Greg looked at his wife holding that pink blanket, and he did not mention his bonus again.