“Did he say why?”
“He said you remind him of someone.”
I should have asked who.
Instead, I began stopping by his room before ending each shift.
Nathan revealed his life in fragments. He told me he had washed dishes as a teenager, driven delivery trucks in his twenties, and eventually spent most of his adult life working in a diner.
He spoke about broken refrigerators, impatient customers, and a waitress who once chased a thief down the street while still wearing an apron.
But whenever I asked about family, he redirected the conversation.
“Were you ever married?” I asked one afternoon.
“Pass me the crossword.”
“Do you have children?”
“Nine letters. ‘Unnecessarily complicated.’”
“Nathan.”
“Bureaucracy.”
“That’s eleven letters.”
“Then the puzzle is wrong.”
One afternoon, while I sat beside him working on a crossword, a man in a dark suit appeared in the doorway.
The change in Nathan was immediate.
His shoulders stiffened. The faint warmth in his expression vanished.
“What do you want?” Nathan demanded.
The man raised a folder. “Your signature.”
Nathan accepted the papers without introducing us. The stranger glanced at my coffee cup and then at the puzzle book lying between us.
Something unreadable passed across his face—hurt, perhaps, or resentment.
“This is Eric,” Nathan finally said. “He handles my paperwork.”
Eric gave me a restrained nod.
