I reach for my seat belt to unclip it, but something stops me. Maybe it’s the normalness of it all, but why should that bother me? Where else should Franny be right now? This is her family, and a woman should be with her family in times like these. Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that, on some level, I blame her for being here instead of her mother, and thinking this makes me ashamed. It’s not Franny’s fault her mother’s gone, and, if anything, Franny’s loss is greater than mine. I lost a friend—she lost a parent. A future.
So I don’t get out of the car. Instead, I watch as the girls climb into the back seat of the minivan. Franny checks the girls’ seat belts, doing all the things a mother should. Doing all the things their mother should be doing.
When it hurts too much to watch anymore, I drive away.
• • •
Teo takes me to The Angry Crab on North Lincoln, a deliciously messy eating experience I’ve always loved. I don’t tell him it was one of the places Tom and I went with the kids. As the familiar bouquet of steamed shellfish and garlic fills my senses, I push those thoughts down, the memories that feel fresher than they have in a while, and decide to order something different from what I’d usually have, hoping the unfamiliar will make this evening less weird.
If this is a date, and I suppose it can’t be anything other than that, it’s the first I’ve been on in more than twenty years. Tom and I met in college, and I’m not sure we ever had a real first date. Does inviting me to his dorm room to watch a movie count? The last time I felt this awkward was a few months before that, when my roommate set me up with her boyfriend’s roommate and we all went for beers at a pub. I’d been worried that night, too, about what I should wear, and how my body fit into my clothes, and whether I’d be able to keep up my end of the conversation. Only this was Teo. He’d already seen me at my worst. Shaken, terrified, covered in dust and God knows what else.
We find a table and each order Dungeness crab in “grumpy” garlic butter sauce, making sure to pile up on napkins. It’s a BYOB restaurant, and Teo had the foresight to bring a six-pack of a great IPA I haven’t tasted before.
“I’m glad I didn’t get too dressed up,” I say as we dig into our bags of crab. A trail of spicy steam rises from the food and tickles my nose. The acoustics are terrible, so I have to lean toward Teo to catch much of what he says.
“I should’ve brought you somewhere nicer.”
“What? No. I love this place.”
He grabs a cracker from the table. “Tell the truth, now, or I’ll use this on you.”
“You going to keep that for our next interview?”
“Now there’s a thought. You are a tough nut to . . . crack. Ugh, that’s terrible.”
“It is.”
He opens up the body of his crab and takes a pull from his beer. He’s dressed in a slightly nicer version of his usual uniform—the blue-gray shirt is a button-down, and the jeans have a darker wash to them. The forest-green sweater he’s wearing over his shirt complements the rest of it, which I almost tell him, then don’t, because I have no idea how to do this, be casual with a man. Flirt with him.
“But seriously,” Teo says. “Is this place okay? We can go somewhere else next time, if you want.”
“Next time, huh?”
“I think you made me blush.”
“I do love this place; I don’t need anything fancier. And as to whether there’ll be a ‘next time,’ why don’t we see how this evening goes and then decide?”
“That sounds like a good plan.”
“I am curious, though.” I bite into my own crab claw and nearly moan in pleasure. It’s been too long since I ate something this good, despite the best intentions of my neighbors. “What makes you think I like fancy restaurants?”
“Didn’t you used to run a fancy restaurant?”
“I did.”
I look down at the label on my beer. Brewed right here in Chicago, it says.
“Sorry. It was in your background info . . . I guess it’s weird that I know all these things about you without even having to ask.”
“No, it’s fine. The restaurant’s not a secret.” I look up and smile. “I managed Knife & Fork for fifteen years, and I loved every minute of it.”
“I ate there a couple times.”
“You did?”
“Yup. Great food.”
“Funny to think of us being there at the same time and not even knowing it.”
“Life’s often like that. It’s closed now, isn’t it? What happened?”
“We were shaky after the last recession and never quite recovered. The owners were getting close to retirement and had the opportunity to sell for a lot of money. For the location. The buyers didn’t want the restaurant. There’s some Italian franchise there now.”
“You didn’t want to stay on?”
“No. I . . . We’d actually tried to buy it ourselves, but it didn’t work out.”
We’d scraped together everything we had to put up the earnest money. And then I’d stupidly assumed that fifteen years of loyalty would win me the space, the chance to make it my own. I’d gotten way ahead of myself, commissioning architectural plans that cost the earth and signing a contract with an up-and-coming chef. When the owners “went another way,” I was left holding the bag. Jobless, in debt, heartbroken.
I sincerely hope this information isn’t in his file, or anyone else’s, either.
“That must’ve been tough,” Teo says.
“It was. But life moves on.”
“When did all this happen?”
“A few years ago. I was sad for a while, but I’m over it.”
Tom had never gotten over it. Not the betrayal by the Urbans, who we’d always thought of as family. Not
