“Oh, for God’s sake,” Patrice said.
Gene walked to the booth slowly, because of his knee. Tara walked next to him with her chin up, the way you walk into a place when you’ve decided you’re not going to be ashamed anymore. Eli was wearing his dinosaur backpack.
“Mr. Costa,” Gene said. “My name is Gene Dombrowski. I’ve been eating pie at your counter for three years. I believe I’m the unstable man who loiters here all day.”
Nick looked up at him. Then he did something I didn’t expect. He started to laugh. Not a mean laugh. A tired one.
“Sit down, Mr. Dombrowski,” he said. “Please. Everybody sit down. Dale, get a chair.”
Dale got two chairs. Tara sat on one with Eli in her lap. Gene sat on the other, stretching his bad leg out under the table with a grunt.
“I’m Tara,” Tara said. “I’m the soup.”
Marianne made a small sound, almost a laugh, and covered her mouth.
“Well,” Nick said. He looked at Patrice. “Now that we have the whole cast.” He picked up Dale’s phone. “I’m going to watch this, Patrice. I want you to know that. I’d rather you told me first, if there’s something to tell me.”
Patrice didn’t say anything. She was staring straight ahead at the wall, at the picture of Dot with her beehive.
Nick hit play.
The audio was tinny but clear. You could hear the jukebox. You could hear Manny’s radio. And then you could hear it.
If you’re handing out free meals, cover mine too.
My little laugh. Then her voice again: I’m serious.
The whole thing played. Gene reading the check out loud. You didn’t want a free lunch. You just didn’t want her to have one. The chair scraping. Who do you think you are? Nobody. I’m just a guy eating pie.
The twenty-dollar bill hitting him in the chest. The video showed it clearly, because the register camera points out at the dining room. You could see her throw it. You could see that Gene never once got closer to her than the edge of her table.
And then she walked up to the register. Into the frame. Right in front of the camera.
Declined.
Declined.
The quarters. One by one.
Nick stopped the video there. He didn’t need to keep going. He set the phone down very gently on the table, like it might break.
For a long moment, nobody said anything at all. Eli shifted in Tara’s lap and whispered, “Is it over?” and Tara whispered, “Shh, baby.”
Then Marianne said, very quietly, “Patty.”
Patrice didn’t look at her.
“Patty,” Marianne said again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“About the card. About any of it.” Marianne’s voice shook. “I’ve been calling you for months. You always say you’re fine. You always say Richard leaving was the best thing that ever happened to you.”
“It was,” Patrice said.
“Patty, they took the house.”
Patrice turned her head slowly and looked at her oldest friend. And her face did the thing again. The crack. Except this time it didn’t close back up.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you dare, Marianne. Not in front of them.”
“Who else am I supposed to say it in front of? You won’t let me in the door. You won’t come to book club anymore. You won’t answer when I call. The only place I ever see you is here, every Tuesday and Thursday, ordering the same salad.”
“Because it’s the only place I go!” Patrice’s voice broke out loud, sharp and ugly. Two customers at the counter turned around. “Because it’s the only place left where I’m still somebody! Where people still bring me my tea the way I like it, and call me Mrs. Holloway, and nobody knows that I’m living in my sister’s spare room and I sold my wedding ring to pay the lawyer!”
She pressed her hand against her mouth like she wanted to shove the words back in.
Nobody moved.
“Six years,” she said through her fingers. “Six years I’ve been coming here. Two days a week. I sit in that booth and I order the salad and for one hour I’m still the woman I was. I had a husband and a house and a son who talked to me. I had friends.” She looked at Marianne, and then she looked away. “And then I walked in on Tuesday and I was counting what was left on my card in my head, trying to figure out if I could still afford the salad, and then this girl…”
She pointed at me. Her finger was shaking.
“This girl walked right past me and gave that woman a free lunch. Just like that. Like it was nothing. Nobody has ever just given me anything. Not one time. Not once in my whole life. I’ve had to work for every single thing, and fight for it, and hold on to it, and then it all just disappeared anyway, and she…” Her voice cracked completely. “She didn’t even have to ask.”
Tara spoke very softly. “I didn’t ask.”
Patrice looked at her.
“I didn’t ask,” Tara said again. “I would never have asked. I was going to sit there and watch my son eat and go home and eat whatever he didn’t finish. That’s what I’d been doing for a year. I didn’t ask for anything. She just saw me.”
Patrice stared at her for a long time.
“I know,” she finally whispered. “I know you didn’t. That’s what made me so angry.”
She started to cry. Not loud. Just tears running down her face, smudging her perfect makeup. She didn’t wipe them. She just sat there in her navy dress and pearl earrings and let them fall, and somehow that was worse than if she’d sobbed.
I didn’t feel what I thought I would feel.
For four days, I’d been imagining this moment. The moment everybody found out the truth. I’d imagined feeling like I won. I’d imagined Patrice getting what she deserved.
Instead, I just felt tired. And sad. And sorry for her, which made me furious, because I didn’t want to feel sorry for her. She’d humiliated Tara. She’d lied about Gene. She’d almost gotten me fired. She’d called a kind old man unstable in front of eleven thousand people.
But I’d also seen her at that register, counting quarters.
And I knew that look too.
Nick cleared his throat. He looked older than he had twenty minutes before.
“Jess,” he said. “You’re back on the schedule. Starting tonight, if you want it. You’ll get paid for the days you missed, all of them, and I’m going to post on that Facebook group myself and tell everybody exactly what happened. I’m sorry. I should’ve come down here and looked before I listened to anybody.” He turned to Gene. “Mr. Dombrowski, your pie’s on the house for as long as you want it.”
“No, it’s not,” Gene said.
Nick blinked. “Sorry?”
“I pay for my pie. Twenty percent, rounded up.” Gene looked at me and winked. “But thank you.”
Nick almost smiled. Then he looked at Patrice, and the smile went away.
“Patrice,” he said, more gently than I expected. “I think you’d better not come in for a while.”
She nodded without looking at him. She stood up. She picked up her purse, the same one she’d dug the quarters out of. She walked to the front door with her back very straight.
The bell jingled behind her.
I don’t know why I did what I did next. Bree says it’s because I’m an idiot. My mom says it’s because I’m my mother’s daughter. Gene says it’s because I see things.
I think it’s just because I’ve sat in a car in a parking lot with the engine off before.
I got up and went after her.
Adrian Hawthorne is a celebrated author and dedicated archivist who finds inspiration in the hidden stories of the past. Educated at Oxford, he now works at the National Archives, where preserving history fuels his evocative writing. Balancing archival precision with creative storytelling, Adrian founded the Hawthorne Institute of Literary Arts to mentor emerging writers and honor the timeless art of narrative.