CHAPTER 4 — THE BOOTH BY THE WINDOW
James asked to sit in the old booth by the window.
The police had taken Patricia, Veronica, and Dr. Cole into custody for questioning. Elias was speaking with officers in the dining room. The guests had finally gone quiet, shame settling over them like dust.
But James looked like he was still standing inside the accident.
Olivia sat across from him in the booth where they had once eaten pancakes after closing because they were too poor to go anywhere else for dates.
The fancy restaurant tablecloths had covered most of the old diner scratches, but this booth still had one mark near the window.
J + O.
James touched it.
His fingers trembled.
“I carved that?”
Olivia nodded.
“You said if the diner ever got famous, people would think we were historic.”
He almost smiled.
Then the smile broke.
“I don’t remember marrying you.”
Olivia looked down.
That truth had been waiting all night, and it still hurt when it arrived.
“I know.”
“I remember pieces. Your voice. Rain. A song. This booth.” He swallowed. “But I don’t remember enough to be the husband you lost.”
Olivia forced herself to breathe.
For three years, she had dreamed of James seeing her, remembering everything, taking her hand, and making time run backward.
But he was not a dream.
He was a man with scars inside his head, sitting across from a wife he had been taught to doubt.
“I didn’t come tonight to make you love me,” she said.
His eyes filled.
“Then why did you stay?”
“Because they stole my name from your life. I wanted it put back.”
He nodded slowly.
Outside, rain slid down the window.
The restaurant manager approached nervously with Olivia’s coat.
“Ms. Reed,” he said, no longer calling her waitress, “the police need your statement.”
Ms. Reed.
James heard it too.
He looked at her hand.
“You still wear the ring?”
“Not on my finger.”
“Why?”
Olivia touched the chain at her neck.
“Because I didn’t want to pretend I was still married to a man who told me to leave.”
“I didn’t write that letter.”
“I know that now.”
“But you believed it.”
She looked at him.
“Yes. Because it had your signature. Because your mother had security drag me out. Because every door closed at once, and after a while, even love starts wondering if it imagined itself.”
James cried then.
Quietly.
Without drama.
The way a person cries when they realize grief is not only what happened to them, but what happened because they did not know.
Elias returned with the police detective.
“They found the original hospital restriction order,” he said. “Patricia requested it. Dr. Cole signed it. Veronica witnessed it. There are payment records.”
James looked at Olivia.
“What happens now?”
Olivia looked around the restaurant.
The chandeliers Patricia had installed.
The hidden bones of the old diner beneath them.
May you like
The booth where love had not been enough to stop greed, but had left a mark anyway.
“Now,” she said, “we tell the truth.”
