She started with just coffee and a slice of whatever she’d baked, and then it was “you’ll stay for supper, Walt, there’s plenty,” and then, by deep winter, it was simply understood that I ate at the Tillmans’ on Wednesdays and most Saturdays, that a place would be set, that no one needed to ask.

I had been eating alone for four years.

I want to tell you what it does to a person, the standing invitation to a full table — to walk into a warm kitchen out of the cold and have a small sharp woman say “there you are, sit down, it’s almost ready” like your arrival was expected and wanted and unremarkable.

I had forgotten that feeling existed.

I’d been living on frozen dinners eaten over the sink, not from poverty but from the particular surrender of a man who has decided cooking for one is not worth the trouble.

And here was a table, twice a week, with people at it who knew my name and my business and were glad to see me, and it healed something in me so slowly I didn’t notice it healing, the way you don’t notice a cut closing, only that one day it doesn’t hurt anymore.