Her voice was soft, almost familiar.

I sat there staring at her because my brain genuinely stopped working for a second.

“The usual?” I asked, looking between the two of them.

Dave’s face went completely red.

He cleared his throat and looked down at his paper place mat.

“I come here for lunch sometimes during the week, Clara,” he muttered.

“While you are at your bridge club.”

“Dave has the meatloaf and a black coffee,” Maya said, her voice dropping a little as she noticed the tension.

She looked uncomfortable.

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

I didn’t say anything else while she took our order.

But my hands were shaking so badly I had to put my menu down.

I felt this hot, sick feeling rising in my chest.

Dave was eating lunch here regularly.

Without me.

And he was tipping this young girl fifty percent of the bill every single time.

I sat through that lunch in complete silence, barely touching my club sandwich.

Dave tried to make small talk about the weather and the local high school football team, but I couldn’t process his words.

Every time Maya walked past our booth, I watched her.

I watched the way she smiled at him.

I watched the way Dave’s eyes followed her across the diner.

I felt like a fool.

A seventy-year-old fool who was being cheated on in a cheap local diner.

When the bill arrived, Dave did it again.

He pulled out the faded leather wallet, extracted three twenty-dollar bills, and placed them in the little blue plastic folder.

“Dave, stop,” I whispered, my voice cracking.

“This is ridiculous. You are leaving thirty dollars on a twenty-eight-dollar tab.”

“She works hard, Clara,” he said, his voice pleading.

“Please. Just let it go.”

I couldn’t let it go.

The next week, I made sure we went back to the Oak Diner.

I wanted to see if it was a one-time thing, or if this was his new routine.

It was a rainy Tuesday, and the diner was nearly empty.

Maya was behind the counter, wiping down the coffee pots.

When she saw us walk in, she didn’t smile.

She looked almost scared.

We sat in the same booth, and she walked over with her pad of paper.

“Hi Dave. Hi ma’am,” she said quietly.

I didn’t let her finish.

I looked her straight in the eye and asked the question that had been keeping me awake for seven nights.

“How often does my husband actually come in here, Maya?”

She froze.

She didn’t answer.

She looked over at Dave, her eyes wide and pleading.

I turned my head and saw my husband shaking his head in a tiny, desperate gesture.

He was begging her to lie.

“I don’t really know what you mean, ma’am,” Maya stammered, her voice trembling.

“We get a lot of regulars.”

But as she spoke, her hand went directly to her stomach.