A thin strand of tinsel sagged across the counter, uneven and slightly tangled, reflecting dim light that barely reached the corners of the room. A plastic Christmas tree stood near the door, its faded ornaments hanging loosely, half of its lights burned out so that it blinked in a slow, uneven rhythm. Taped to the window was a wrinkled paper Santa, his edges curling away from the glass as if even he was trying to leave.
At a booth near the far window sat Vanessa Miller, her posture slightly hunched as she kept her coat wrapped tightly around her shoulders, not because she had just come in from the cold, but because the heat never quite reached where she was sitting. Her hands rested around a laminated menu, her fingers still, her eyes scanning it without really seeing the food, because what she had memorized wasn’t the meals—it was the prices, each number carefully stored in her mind like a calculation she had repeated too many times to get wrong.
Across from her sat her two daughters, Ava and Chloe, both eight years old, identical in appearance but not in the way they carried themselves. Ava sat straighter, her eyes quietly observant, noticing things she didn’t speak about, while Chloe leaned slightly forward, her fingers tracing invisible patterns on the table as if she were trying to distract herself from the silence. Their legs swung lightly beneath the booth, but their movements were restrained, careful, as though they had learned without being told that taking up too much space might somehow make things worse.
Vanessa had already counted the money in her wallet four times before they walked in.
And then again after they sat down.
Flattening the bills one by one.
Smoothing them with her thumb.
