“You can eat later.”
Jessica Reed slid Nancy’s dinner plate across the table before the seventy-one-year-old woman could even lift her fork.
Ceramic scraped hard against the Formica tabletop.
The sound cut through the booth, sharp enough that Nancy’s eyes followed the plate as if it had been pulled out from under her hands.
“What am I waiting for?” she asked.
Jessica didn’t answer right away.
She picked up Nancy’s steak knife, pressed it into the steak, and began cutting.
The blade dragged against the plate.
Then she transferred several pieces of Nancy’s meal onto the plate of her youngest child.
“The kids need food first.”
Across from them, Brian Reed raised his coffee cup and took a slow drink.
He had watched every second of it.
Nancy looked at her son.
“I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
Jessica gave a small shrug.
“That sounds like your problem.”
A waitress moving past their booth slowed almost imperceptibly.
Her gaze landed on Nancy’s empty place setting, then on the steak being divided among the children.
Jessica caught her looking.
The waitress lowered her eyes and kept walking.
Jessica reached into the bread basket, searched through the slices, and selected the driest one.
She tossed it onto the table in front of Nancy.
“Here,” she said. “That should be plenty.”
Nancy stared at the bread.
Around them, the roadside diner outside Mesa, Arizona, carried on as if nothing had happened.
Forks clicked against plates.
Children laughed near the windows.
The coffee machine hissed behind the counter.
At the register, a trucker dropped loose change into a waiting hand.
But inside their booth, the air had gone close and heavy.
Nancy didn’t touch the bread.
She turned toward Brian again.
“Brian?”
His shoulders tightened beneath his button-down shirt.
He kept his eyes on his coffee, rubbing his thumb around the rim of the mug.
“Mom, please.”
She waited for more.
Nothing came.
“Just don’t turn dinner into something bigger,” he finally said.
Jessica leaned back, pleased.
