mentioned it, not with self-pity but the way you'd mention a house you used to live in. He was fifty-two now and heavier in the face, and he spent most of his shifts looking at numbers on a tablet that the franchise group had issued to every manager in their fourteen locations, a tablet that knew to the penny what each plate cost and what each hour of labor cost and what the ratio between those two things was supposed to be. Moira had seen him once in the back office at the end of a Saturday, sitting with the tablet face-down on the desk and his hands flat on top of it, as if it were a dog that might get up.
The bell over the door rang, and the cold came in, and behind the cold came a woman and a little girl.
They stood on the mat for a second in the way people do when they have been out in weather longer than they meant to, letting their eyes catch up to the light. The woman was Black, maybe thirty, tall, in a navy parka that was good quality and old, with the hood up and a dusting of snow on its fur rim. She had a backpack on one shoulder, the kind with a laptop sleeve, and a plastic Walgreens bag looped over her wrist. The little girl was six or seven, bundled in a pink snowsuit a size too small, so that her wrists showed between the cuffs and her mittens. Her mittens did not match. One was red and one was striped. She was holding a library book against her chest with both arms, like a shield, and when she saw the pie case by the register her mouth made a small round shape that she corrected immediately, because her mother had glanced down at her.
Moira set down the silverware. "Two?" she said. "Sit anywhere you want, it's all yours tonight."
"Thank you." The woman's voice was low and a little hoarse, a voice that had been talking over noise all day. She steered the girl to a two-top along the side wall, not a booth, Moira noticed, a table, as if a booth were a commitment she didn't want to make. She helped the girl out of the snowsuit top and hung it on the back of the chair, and she did not take off her own parka. She unzipped it halfway and sat with it on.
Moira brought two waters and two menus and a cup of crayons, which the girl looked at and then pushed an inch away, politely, as if to say she was past crayons but did not want to hurt anyone's feelings about it.
"I'm Moira, I'll be taking care of you. Can I get you started with anything? Hot chocolate, coffee?"