“Did you want to sit over there?”
Connor followed his gaze toward the leather chair.
“Sometimes.”
Leo waited.
Connor added, “Not always.”
The answer seemed to hit Leo harder than anger would have.
Not always.
Two words dismantled years of assumptions.
Leo pulled out the chair beside his own place at the head table.
Then he stopped himself.
He looked at Connor.
“Where do you want to sit tonight?”
Connor looked at the crowded table, then at the quieter end of the room.
“Can the music stay like this?”
Leo glanced toward the pianist.
“Yes.”
“And no ice?”
Leo looked confused.
Maya almost smiled.
Connor pointed toward his water glass.
“Maya doesn’t use ice.”
Leo looked at her.
For three months he had watched hundreds of drinks pass through that room without noticing the one glass prepared differently for his son.
“Why?” he asked.
“The sound bothers him,” Maya said.
Connor corrected her softly.
“The sound and the cold glass.”
Maya nodded.
“The sound and the cold glass.”
Leo looked at the napkin wrapped around Connor’s water.
Then at the amber lamp.
His eyes moved back to Maya.
“You changed that bulb too?”
Maya hesitated.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Connor answered before she could.
“It was buzzing.”
Leo stared at the light.
He had sat fifteen feet away from his son dozens of nights and had never heard it.
Maya had heard it because she had bothered to wonder what Connor was hearing.
Marco shifted near the table.
“Boss, can we talk privately?”
Leo didn’t look at him.
“Go home.”
Marco’s face went white.
“Leo.”
“You’re done here tonight.”
The words were controlled, without threat or spectacle.
Marco looked around for support and found none.
He took his coat from the back of a chair and walked toward the exit.
When he passed Connor, he gave him a furious sideways glance.
Leo saw it.
“Marco.”
Marco stopped.
“Don’t look at him like that again.”
