“What can I get you, Mama?”
Without thinking, I turned toward Richard and started to answer for him.
“He’ll have—”
Richard quietly took my hand beneath the table and squeezed once. I stopped.
Leo waited.
Nobody hurried to fill the silence.
Richard answered for himself.
“Coffee, please.”
Leo carefully wrote it down and looked at me.
“And you?”
For eighteen years, I’d believed loving my son meant making the world easier before it had a chance to hurt him. That evening, love looked completely different.
Love looked like waiting.
“Tea,” I said. “With lemon.”
Leo wrote it down.
“Okay!”
Then he walked away.
Three seconds. That was all he’d needed from me in that moment.
Before we left, Marcy pointed toward an old time clock near the kitchen.
“Don’t forget.”
Leo took his card and pushed it into the machine. The clock made a loud chunk as his first shift was officially stamped. The employees burst into excited cheers.
