When a couple left without paying for the dinner, I cried, because I didn’t have the money to cover it. However, this turned out to be the luckiest $400 I had ever spent.
Four hundred dollars was two weeks of groceries in my house. It was the electric bill and enough left over to put something toward next semester’s tuition.
It was not dinner.
At least, not to people like me.
I had moved to a neighboring state for college, close enough to visit home when I could afford the trip but far enough that every emergency felt unbearable.
It was not dinner.
I had been waitressing at a restaurant near campus for almost a year, balancing evening shifts with classes and sending whatever I could spare home.
My mother and I had always been close, even though affection didn’t come naturally to her. Evelyn was stern, orderly, and proper
