Fifteen Years After My Father Changed the Locks, He Seated Me at Table Twenty-Two

“The diner on Main Street?” I asked.

“Gerald still goes there every Sunday morning at seven thirty.”

“I know,” Clare said, scraping the last of the ice cream from her wooden spoon.

“That’s why David booked our table for eight.”

“He’ll see us sitting in the window booth,” David said.

“Let him see,” Clare said.

“He spent fifteen years telling this town you vanished, Evie.

Tomorrow he can watch us eat blueberry pancakes together.”