“Lydia. Wait.”
It was Dean.
I stopped in the doorway and turned around.
He’d stood up at the end of the table. His face was blotchy. His eyes were red and swollen. He looked like a man who’d been hit by a truck and was somehow, for reasons nobody understood, still standing.
“I didn’t know,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “About any of it. I swear to God, Lydia. I knew Ethan wanted to help me with the restaurant. He kept saying he’d figure something out. I thought he meant a loan from his company, or a second mortgage on Mom’s condo, or… I didn’t know he meant this. That he’d…”
“I believe you, Dean.”
He wiped his face with his sleeve.
“I’m so sorry about your dad,” he said. “He fixed my van once. The delivery van, for the restaurant. Back when I first opened. He charged me for the part and nothing else. He said every new business deserves one free break.”
That sounded like Dad.
“Thank you,” I said.
Dean laughed. A shaky, broken little laugh.
“The restaurant’s going to close,” he said. “It was always going to close. I think I knew that. I’ve known it for two years. I just kept hoping somebody would… that somehow it would all get fixed.”
I looked at him. This tired, rumpled, decent man. Who’d walked into a nightmare he didn’t build.
“Dean,” I said. “Come see me in a month. After the dust settles. I’d like to talk to you about it.”
“About what?”
“About what a good bookkeeper can do for a restaurant. Before it’s too late.”
His mouth fell open.
“No promises,” I said. “But I know a little bit about numbers.”
Then I walked out. Down the narrow staircase that smelled like roses and lilies. Out onto Main Street, into the cold, bright October morning.
My father’s truck was parked at the curb.
I got in. I put the key in the ignition.
The engine caught on the first turn.
It always does.
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.