10. Nobody has to earn staying.
I pressed the paper against my chest.
“Do you know when he wrote this?”
Diane nodded.
“The first year.”
“He was eight?”
“Almost nine.”
I looked across the diner.
Mason was sitting with Hannah.
David had gone to get napkins.
A teenage boy I didn’t recognize was standing nervously beside booth seven.
He held a green card.
Mason looked at him.
The teenager asked something.
Mason nodded toward the empty seat.
The boy sat down.
Neither spoke for nearly a minute.
Then Mason said something.
The teenager answered.
And the conversation began.
Diane stood beside me.
“You know,” she said, “for years Hannah thought she was bringing Mason here because he needed somewhere safe.”
I smiled.
“She was wrong.”
“Completely.”
I looked at my son.
At the green card.
At the repaired vinyl booth.
At all the lives that had crossed that table.
Then I finally understood the greatest secret Hannah had kept from me.
