“Mama, are we allowed to sit anywhere again?”
My head lifted.
The same woman stepped into the restaurant holding her son’s hand. It was the third time she had come in this week. And somehow, I had noticed every single time.
Rain clung to the edges of her dark hair, dampening the shoulders of her coat. The boy beside her shook his sneakers slightly against the mat near the door, trying to shake off the rainwater the way kids always did when they had been told not to track mud inside.
She glanced around the restaurant briefly before giving him a tired but patient smile.
Jack straightened immediately. “Evening, Jiya!” he called out. “Pick any table you like.”
“Thank you, Jack,” she replied softly.
They moved toward the small table near the window like they always did. The boy climbed onto the chair across from her while she helped him settle in, brushing a few drops of rain from his hair before sliding the menu toward him.
“You’re doing it again,” Jack muttered beside me.
“Doing what?”
“Staring.”
“I’m not staring.”
“You absolutely are.”
I ignored him and lifted my whisky to my lips, but my eyes drifted back toward the table anyway.
The boy was talking animatedly now, pointing at something on the menu while Jiya listened with patience. I wondered what the name Jiya meant. Every so often, she smiled at him in that distracted way parents did when they were exhausted but still trying to give their child their full attention.
Something tightened in my chest.
The scene across the room felt painfully familiar.
Eva used to sit exactly like that while Chloe babbled endlessly about school or the cartoons she had watched that morning.
I forced my gaze back to the bar and finished the whisky.
Jack poured another without asking. “You should probably stop looking over there,” he said quietly.
“Why?”
“Because you’re starting to look like someone kicked your dog.”
“I don’t have a dog.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did not respond.
Across the room, the little boy laughed at something his mother said.
The sound cut through the restaurant like a blade.
For a moment, the world around me shifted.
I was no longer standing behind the bar. I was sitting at one of those tables while Chloe swung her legs beneath the chair, telling Eva and me about a drawing she had made at school.
I blinked.
