Original fiction · Chapter 2 of 2
A Breakfast Left Open
I remembered the breakfast after Gordon told me which booth we'd sat in.
I'd been eight. My mother was in the hospital and Dad had taken me to May's in the clothes I'd worn to bed. I ordered pancakes and my father said he'd already eaten. I was old enough to know he was lying and young enough to think the lie made it all right.
Gordon had brought two plates. Dad asked for a bill. Gordon told him someone had bought both breakfasts an hour earlier. He left Dad a receipt with the total crossed out so he wouldn't have to ask again.
The person who paid had been Will. He drove a snowplow and stopped at May's when his shift ended. Years later, Dad started keeping a list for customers who wanted to do the same. The numbers were the meal tickets. A line meant somebody had eaten.
The man at the door was Will's son, Aaron. His hours at the warehouse had been cut. He didn't know his father had kept paying for breakfasts after he stopped working on the plow. Gordon hadn't told him. Gordon said he'd had an easier time figuring out how to feed people than how to tell them somebody wanted to.
I took Aaron and his son to Booth Six. The boy wanted pancakes shaped like a bear. I said I could probably manage a rabbit if he was willing to call the ears uneven.
While they ate, I checked the ledger again. My name had no line through it. When I asked Gordon why, he pulled a chair up to the counter.
“Your dad said to leave it open. He wanted you to be able to come back.”
I sat down. A customer came in and waved at me from the door. I lifted my hand back without getting up.
After the sale went through, I took mornings at the café near the school. On my first day, I asked the owner if I could leave a breakfast on the register for someone else. She found a button in the till that would let her do it and asked what name she should put on the slip.
I told her to write Booth Six. She didn't ask me to explain. At ten, when I finally had time to look, she'd already crossed it out.
