Now, sitting inside the diner, I finally understood why she had been so nervous. Everyone seemed to know Leo personally. Marcy didn’t even hand him a menu.
“Usual?”
“Grilled cheese today.”
She gasped dramatically.
“On your birthday? Living dangerously.”
Leo smiled. A teenage busboy walked past our booth and called over his shoulder.
“Saturday still good, Leo?”
“Yes.”
I immediately turned toward my son.
“What’s Saturday?”
Before Leo could answer, Chloe’s fork slipped from her hand and hit the plate with a loud clang. Leo flinched.
“Sorry,” she said quickly.
But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at me.
A few minutes later, an elderly man approached the table.
“Eighteen. Hard to believe.”
“Time doesn’t change based on whether you believe it, Mr. Howard,” Leo replied.
The man laughed, then looked at me.
“You raised a good one.”
Before I could ask exactly how he knew my son, Mr. Howard tapped the table twice. Leo tapped twice back, and the man walked away. I leaned toward Chloe.
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“Not here, Kait.”
My heart started pounding.
“So there is something. What have you been hiding?”
Leo looked toward us, and I stopped myself. Whatever this was, I wasn’t going to turn his eighteenth birthday into an interrogation.
Then dessert arrived, and something else struck me. There was no loud birthday song. No staff gathered around the table. No clapping and shouting. Marcy placed one slice of chocolate cake in front of Leo with one candle. After he blew it out, the nearby employees clapped softly exactly once and returned to work.
I looked around the diner differently. These people knew not to touch Leo unexpectedly. They knew which sounds bothered him. They knew how long to wait for an answer. They even knew how he preferred to be celebrated.
Across from me, Chloe wiped a tear from her cheek.
“Why are you crying?”
“Later.”
“Stop saying later.”
“Please, Kait.”
Something in her voice frightened me.
Near the end of dinner, I went to the restroom. When I came back into the hallway, Marcy was waiting for me.
“Kaitlyn?”
I stopped. She glanced toward the dining room, where Chloe was watching us.
“You need to know what your son has been doing here all these years.”
My pulse jumped.
“What has he been doing?”
Marcy didn’t answer immediately. She looked over my shoulder.
“Watch.”
