If you looked at my life on paper, it would resemble a list of losses.
I wake up at 4:30 every morning in a house that makes all the wrong noises. It’s too big for one person and too important to sell. The third room down the hall still smells of strawberry shampoo and innocence.
If you looked at my life on paper, it would be a list of losses.
I can’t open the door without feeling like I’ve been hit in the chest with a brick. My daughter’s trainers are still lying next to the bed, the laces tied as if she had just taken them off after school.
But she won’t be back. Eliza will never come back.
My husband used to leave the light on in the hallway, just in case. After the accident, he stopped opening that door. Then he stopped coming home altogether. Grief pushed us apart, and we became strangers to each other, passing silently in the same space.
Then he stopped coming home altogether.
One afternoon, he left a note on the kitchen table next to the sunflower and an unfinished shopping list.
The divorce papers were tucked underneath, already signed.
So yes, my daughter is gone. My husband is gone.
And the only thing I have left is the diner.
My daughter is gone. My husband is gone.
It was small; not in the cosy, charming way people talk about when they discuss ‘hidden gems,’ but rather in the way that your knees creaked when you sat down on the bench and the seats hissed beneath you as they exhaled.
The floor creaked in places that no amount of cleaning could hide. The linoleum had a round burn mark where my grandfather had once dropped a whole tray of roast chicken and tried to pretend that the floor had always looked that way.
The coffee tasted like memory and burnt edges — strong, bitter, and familiar enough to feel like home.
But it was mine.
My grandfather, Henry, opened this place when the neighbourhood still smelled of bread and motor oil, when you knew every family three blocks away, and you could shout out the window to call the kids in for dinner.
He always stood behind the counter in his stained apron and smiled.
‘We don’t just feed people, kid,’ he would say. ‘We feed their hearts.’
But it was mine.
Then he would wink and place a plate of pancakes on the counter as if he were dealing cards in a casino.
When he died, I stood in the empty diner for a long time before deciding to buy it outright. It seemed crazy, but at the same time, it felt like love.
‘I don’t know if it’s smart,’ I said to my best friend Susan as I filled out the paperwork. ‘But I know it’s right.’
‘You’re staying true to your roots,’ she said, looking at me with that same half-smile. ‘That means something.’
And it did. At least for a while.
Then came the condominiums, the chain cafés. And $15 toasts. Then came the bills, which didn’t care whose name was on the paper. They had to be paid.
The rent went up. The price of eggs rose. The electricity company sent warnings in bold red letters. I even maxed out my credit cards.
I skipped my lunches and cleaned the kitchen myself because I could no longer afford staff.
They had to be paid.
I was drowning. I wasn’t proud of it, but it was the bitter truth. So I called my broker. And for the first time in a long time, I wondered if love was enough to keep a roof over my head.
And then that night came.
It was cold, so cold that it didn’t just settle on your skin, but penetrated your bones and stayed there.
The city outside the window moved faster in such weather — everyone with their heads down, their coats zipped up, rushing from one warm place to another, with no time to stop.
I wondered if love was enough to keep the roof on.
The diner was dead quiet.
The bell above the door hadn’t rung in hours. The neon OPEN sign buzzed by the window, casting a tired pink light on the empty benches, as if trying to convince even itself that we were still in business.
‘Laura, what should we do?’ I asked myself aloud. ‘We can’t keep this place going any longer…’
I sat behind the counter, absorbed in the silence, pretending to take inventory. But I wasn’t. I was just writing meaningless numbers to feel like I was doing something useful.
‘We can’t keep this place going anymore…’ I said.
Then the phone rang.
It was such a simple sound—almost cheerful—but it made my heart skip a beat, as if I had been caught doing something forbidden.
Just that morning, the estate agent had come to view the property. He was younger than I expected, wearing a neat shirt and a polished watch, calling me ‘Miss Laura’ as if we were already finalising a deal that hadn’t even begun.
And now he was back.
‘Don’t worry, there will be offers,’ he said. ‘Location is gold right now. And developers love old buildings.’
Old buildings. That’s what he called them.
I nodded, hugging my arms, pretending not to remember every greasy tile and scratched corner, as if I would never see them again.