He Never Looked Up at Breakfast, So I Served Him Papers novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: Ask Me Again
Five weeks after the birth, Dot told me to sit at the window table.
It was six in the morning in July, and the diner smelled of fresh paint.
She had finished the walls herself, a pale yellow, and left a ladder by the pie case as a threat.
My daughter slept in a basket on my arm.
"That table," I said. "The customers fight for it."
"Nobody fights for it," said Dot. "Nobody has sat there in nine months."
"That can't be right."
"Sit."
I sat down in the chair that faced the street.
The sun was coming over the courthouse, and I could see my own steps from here.
"The first morning you came in," said Dot, pouring my tea, "you ate pie with your coat on and your hand on your pocket. You sat at that table. Seth watched you for an hour. When you left, he took the reserved sign off the counter and put it on that table, and told me no one else could sit there."
"He never said."
"He would sooner swallow the grill."
I looked at the table.
It had a wooden top, worn pale at one edge where someone's elbow went.
A small glass vase stood in the middle with six yellow freesias in it.
They were fresh.
"He's put those in every morning for a week," Dot said.
I touched one petal.
The kitchen door swung open.
Seth came out with flour to the wrists and a streak of it across his jaw.
He had a clean dishtowel over one shoulder and his best shirt on, buttoned wrong.
Behind him, in a line at the counter, nine regulars had stopped chewing.
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