Rick laughed bitterly.
“Exactly.
I’ve done her plenty of favors.”
Something in me settled.
Maybe it was exhaustion.
Maybe it was the realization that Rick was finally saying the quiet part in front of witnesses.
I looked directly at him.
“Giving me the schedule we agreed on when I was hired isn’t a favor.”
The silence after that felt different from the silence the day before.
Yesterday, people had watched me because I was being cornered.
Today, they were watching Rick corner himself.
Nathan folded the warning once, but didn’t put it away.
“My daughter told me about you last night,” he said.
My throat tightened.
“Is she okay?”
It came out before anything else.
Not Why was she here?
Not Does she know who I am?
Not Am I in trouble?
Just that.
Nathan noticed.
His face softened for the first time.
“She’s okay.
Embarrassed.
Upset.
But okay.”
I exhaled.
He looked toward the empty corner booth.
“She has been trying very hard lately to do certain things for herself.
Breakfast was one of them.
She didn’t want people treating her differently because of my name, so she used her own cash and kept quiet about who she was.”
That explained the coins.
The crumpled bills.
The constant glances toward the door.
“She didn’t tell me she was running short,” Nathan continued.
“She was embarrassed.
Instead, she kept coming here because someone treated her like a child who needed breakfast, not like a problem that needed removing.”
Rick crossed his arms.
“With respect, Mr.
Fraser, if I’d known who she was—”
Nathan turned so quickly Rick stopped mid-sentence.
“That’s the part you still don’t understand.”
His voice remained quiet.
That made it sharper.
“You shouldn’t have needed to know who her father was.”
Nobody said anything.
Nathan looked at the warning again.
“Yesterday my daughter came home without finishing breakfast.
She wouldn’t tell me what happened at first.
Eventually she said a man had yelled at the waitress who kept helping her.
She thought she’d gotten you fired.”
He looked at me.
“She cried because she believed your kindness had cost you your job.”
My eyes burned.
I stared at the metal edge of the counter until the feeling passed.
Nathan continued.
