Chapter 2 - THE WINTER STORM OUTSIDE
By 9:00 PM, the café had emptied out entirely. Mina’s husband had come to lock up the front, giving me a gentle nod of farewell before stepping out into the swirling blizzard. Mina insisted I stay in the back booth as long as I wished, leaving a small lamp burning on the counter and the radio tuned to a quiet station playing old Christmas carols.
I sat in the dim light, watching the snow pile against the glass.
My mind drifted back to the dining room table. To the heavy mahogany surface that Thomas and I had refinished together in the winter of 1998. Every scratch on that table had a story. A dent from Owen’s toy truck when he was three. A faint watermark from a vase of lilies Thomas had surprised me with on our twenty-fifth anniversary.
And tonight, Brandon had treated that table like a boardroom where he was the CEO and I was an employee whose contract had just been terminated.
“Mom’s sitting there. It makes sense. She’s the guest of honor this year.”
Donna, his mother, had played her part to perfection. A woman who wore Chanel perfume to a suburban Christmas dinner and spoke about her charity board memberships as if she were bestowing knighthoods upon ordinary citizens. Donna had never liked me, and I had never liked her. We were two different species of grandmother—one who measured love in designer labels and imported wine, and another who measured it in potato soup, worn-out sweaters, and time spent listening on the back porch.
Yet, tonight, Donna had accepted the head of my table with the practiced grace of a queen stepping onto a conquered throne.
My phone remained silent for over an hour. Good. Let them sit in the awkward, suffocating vacuum of their own bad manners. Let Brandon explain to his mother why the woman who cooked the prime rib and paid for the groceries had walked out into a blizzard without a second glance.
At 10:15 PM, the front door of the café chimed.
I stiffened, looking up from my booth. I expected the police, or perhaps Mina’s husband returning for a forgotten coat.
Instead, a tall, familiar figure stumbled through the door, covered in snow, his breath pluming in the cold air.
It wasn't Brandon.
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It was Claire.
Her hair was damp from the melting snowflakes, her winter coat unzipped and flapping open. She wasn't wearing gloves, and her fingers were bright red. She stood in the middle of the empty café, her chest heaving as her eyes scanned the room until they locked onto mine.
