When the seventh woman canceled her plans to see him a second time, I’d had enough.
I didn’t tell him what I was doing. I just got in my car one evening and drove across town to that restaurant myself, because I was going to find out what my father was doing to scare all these women off if it was the last thing I did.
The place was warm and dim and smelled like garlic and old wood. Strings of little lights hung across the ceiling. It was the kind of restaurant that hadn’t changed its menu or its wallpaper in thirty years and was proud of it.
I showed the waitress a photo of my dad on my phone.
She recognized him instantly. Her whole face softened.
“Oh,” she said. “Tom.”
“You’ve served him before?”
Something shifted in her expression. Careful, now. “Several times.”
