This is a work of fiction.
The diner was mostly empty on Tuesday mornings. That was why Evelyn came then.
She had been coming since her husband died, which was fourteen months ago, and in that time she had learned that the man who sat at the far end of the counter — she didn’t know his name — also came on Tuesdays. They had exchanged perhaps thirty sentences total. She found this arrangement acceptable.
Today he said, without preamble: “My daughter called last night. First time in eight months.”
Evelyn poured cream into her coffee. “How’d it go?”
“Strange.” He looked at the window. “She sounds like herself. I don’t know what I expected.”
“What did you want her to sound like?”
He thought about it. “I don’t know. Older, maybe. Like she’d figured something out.”
“She’s twenty-four.”
“I know.”
Evelyn drank her coffee. Outside, a delivery truck backed into a loading bay with short, patient beeps.
“My husband called me from the hospital,” she said. “The last time, I mean. He wasn’t supposed to be using his phone. He just wanted to tell me the food was bad.” She paused. “I’ve thought about that call a thousand times. Whether there was more he wanted to say. I think there probably wasn’t. I think he just wanted to tell me about the food.”
The man at the end of the counter looked at her for a moment. “That sounds like him,” he said, though he’d never met the man.
“It does,” she said.
They were quiet for a while. The coffee was good. The truck outside finished its delivery and drove away.
“I’m going to call her back today,” he said, finally. “My daughter.”
“Good,” said Evelyn.
She left a tip larger than the bill and walked out into the March morning, which was cold but getting better.