Page 7

"Two months."

"Do you like it?"

"Yeah. It's good. The brothers are good men. They're building something real. Families, lives that matter. I want to be part of that."

"Do you have family?"

"Not really. My parents cycled in and out of prison my whole childhood. I bounced around. Foster homes, relatives who didn't really want me, periods of being on my own. Made one real friend inside, Terry. He looked out for me. Taught me things. He died before I got out."

His voice doesn't change when he says it, but I can hear the weight underneath. The kind of loss that changes you.

"I'm sorry," I say.

He shrugs. "It's life."

"Doesn't make it hurt less."

“No," he says. "It doesn't."

We sit in silence for a moment. I drink my coffee. He still hasn't touched his.

"What about you?" he asks. "Your husband?”

"I don't have a husband. Never did. Luna's father left before she was born. Hasn't contacted us since."

"His loss."

The words are fairly simple, but they hit something in my chest I didn't know was still tender. I look down at my mug.

"I work two jobs," I continue, because it's easier to keep talking than sit with whatever just happened. "Days at Frank's, evenings cleaning offices downtown. Sometimes the opposite. Mom watches Luna while I work. It's not easy, but we manage."

"You do more than manage."

I look up.

"You work yourself to exhaustion every single day," he says. "You smile at customers who don't deserve it, you stay late to help close without getting paid for it, and you still have energy left to be kind to fussy kids in the booth next to yours. That's not managing. That's surviving and protecting someone you love at the same time. That takes strength most people don't have."

I don't know what to say.

How does he know I stay late without getting paid? How does he know about the fussy kids?

He's noticed me. Really noticed me. Not just as the waitress who refills coffee but as a person, a mother, someone trying to hold everything together with duct tape and willpower.

Nobody's noticed me like that in years.

"Thank you," I whisper.

He nods once, then finally drinks his coffee. We sit in silence, and it's comfortable somehow, two strangers who aren't quite strangers anymore, held together by violence and something I can't name yet.

The clock on the wall reads 1:47 AM.

I should send him home. Should thank him again, walk him to the door, lock it behind him, and try to sleep.

But I don't want him to leave yet.

"Tell me more about the Iron Phoenix," I say instead.

He looks surprised by the question, like he didn't expect me to want to keep talking. But after a moment, he sets his mug down and leans back slightly in the chair.