That evening they ate leftovers with the reverence leftovers deserve when they have been cooked against loneliness. Jack sat beside Claire instead of across from her, a migration so natural Mae only raised one eyebrow behind her round glasses. Their knees touched under the table once, then again, then stayed, a conversation conducted entirely in warmth. Mae pretended not to notice while noticing everything, including the way Jack's voice went softer when Claire spoke and the way Claire's laughter arrived easier than it had the night before.
After dinner Mae brought out a shoebox of photographs bound with a rubber band that snapped like an old opinion. She spread them on the counter like evidence in a trial about love. There was Walter in a paper hat, gravy ladle raised like a sword at a Thanksgiving long before Claire was born. There were Jack's parents, young and laughing in front of the diner's chrome, his mother's hand on his father's shoulder as if anchoring him to joy. There was Jack at ten, missing a front tooth, holding a turkey leg with both hands and an expression of pure conquest. There was Mae in the 1940s, curls dark then, glasses already round, floral apron already a uniform, standing beside a younger Walter whose smile suggested he knew his gravy was a problem and did not care.
"This place survived the war," Mae said, tapping a photo of the diner with blackout curtains. "Survived fancy chain restaurants trying to move in from Rutland with their plastic menus and their ketchup in fancy bottles. Survived my son's terrible ideas about adding a salad bar in 1964. It will survive this storm. It will survive you two making eyes at each other over my biscuits like I don't have eyes of my own."
"Mae," Jack said, ears pink again, a color Claire was beginning to catalog with fondness.