It took a while. When the room was finally silent, he looked around at all of us.
“I’m not much of a speaker,” he said. “Never was. I ran a machine shop. We didn’t do a lot of speeches.”
People smiled.
“But I want to say a few things about my granddaughter. Because for twelve years, I wasn’t allowed to say anything about her. And I’ve got a lot saved up.”
He looked down at me.
“When Emma was nine years old,” he said, “I taught her how to balance a checkbook. She was faster than me by the end of the afternoon. She found a mistake I’d made. Eleven dollars and forty cents. I’d been carrying that mistake for three months.” He chuckled. “I told her she was the smartest one at the table. Her mother didn’t like that.”
A few people shifted in their seats.
