I was sitting in my mother’s old booth at the Waffle House on Route 11 last Saturday when a man in a nice suit walked up and asked if I was Linda’s daughter.

I said yes. I always sit in her booth. She worked at that place twenty-two years and she’s been gone since 2021, but I still drive out there for coffee most Saturdays like she’s going to come around the counter any minute and tell me I’m parked in her station.

Old habits, I guess. Anyway, this man stood there twisting his hands, and I figured he was lost or wanted directions. He did not look lost. He looked nervous, like a kid about to confess something to the principal.

Let me back up and tell you about my mama first, because you need to know her to understand the rest. Linda was the kind of waitress who knew your order before you sat down. Five dollars and fifteen cents an hour plus tips, and she did it for twenty-two years without ever once acting like it was beneath her. She had this way of calling everybody “honey” so it actually felt like she meant it. Truck drivers, drunks at two in the morning, kids who couldn’t pay. She fed them all. To be fair, I loved that about her when I was little. It got harder to love when I was grown and wanting more of her for myself.

Because here’s the thing I’m not proud of. For about fifteen years, my mother worked a double every single Thursday. Open to close. And Thursday was the night I’d cook a real supper and want her at my table with me and my girl. I’d ask her every week, and every week she’d say, “Some weeks that’s just how it is, honey.” It made me so mad. I had myself convinced she’d rather sling hash to strangers than sit down with her own grandbaby. We even fought about it once.

That fight stuck with me. I told her she was being stubborn, that she didn’t need the money that bad, that Emma was growing up and barely knew her.

And I said something I still hear in my own voice at night. I said, “I don’t need your tip money, Mama. I need you at the table.” She just looked at me real quiet and stirred her coffee and said, “I know, baby.” That was it. She kept right on working Thursdays. I let it sit between us for years, this little cold spot I never bothered to thaw out.

So now you’ve got the picture. My mama’s gone, I’m sitting in her booth feeling sorry for myself, and this man in the suit sits down across from me uninvited. He says his name is Marcus. And then he starts talking, and I swear I almost got up and left because I thought he was about to ask me for something.