For Ten Years, My Best Friend Took My Autistic Son to the Same Little Diner and Lied About Why. On His Eighteenth Birthday, a Waitress Told Me the Secret That Changed Everything I Thought I Knew About Him..105

Diane didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, she pulled out the chair beside the desk.

“You might want to sit down.”

“I don’t want to sit down.”

“All right.”

“Tell me.”

She took a breath.

“When Mason was eight, Hannah brought him here during lunch.”

“I know.”

“No. You know they came here. You don’t know what happened.”

I waited.

“There was a boy sitting in booth seven.”

Diane paused.

“His name was Tyler.”

Something changed in her face when she said the name.

“He was sixteen. My son.”

I looked at her.

Diane continued.

“Tyler had been having a terrible year. His father and I were divorced. He was getting bullied at school. He’d stopped talking to me. That afternoon, he came here because I was working.”

She glanced at the photographs.

“He sat in the booth with his hood up. Wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t answer me.”