to take a joke.”
Then he said something I never forgot.
“If I stopped working tomorrow, this family would notice.”
“If you stopped working, someone else would carry the plates.”
After that, I stopped talking to him about my job. But I didn’t stop going.
There was something Robert never understood about that restaurant.
After so many years, it wasn’t just a place where I earned a paycheck.
I knew the regular customers.
I knew which elderly man had lost his wife and came in every Tuesday because he hated eating alone.
I knew which single mother sometimes ordered only coffee because she was waiting for payday.
I knew which teenagers were nervous before job interviews and which couples were celebrating anniversaries they could barely afford.
I remembered birthdays.
Sometimes I brought someone an extra dessert.
Sometimes listening mattered more than the
