Ethan Carter sat alone at the corner table of Marello’s Italian Bistro in downtown San Diego, California, checking his phone for the eighth time.
7:03 p.m.
Thirty-three minutes late.
The chair across from him remained empty—perfectly set, painfully untouched, like a quiet joke at his expense. The waiter had already offered water twice, bread three times, and an apologetic smile that said I’m sorry without words.
Ethan swallowed hard.
Five years after burying his wife, maybe this was all life still knew how to give him—silence and empty tables. Maybe his sister-in-law had been wrong to push him to “get back out there.” Maybe he’d been foolish to believe there was still room for him in that world.
He rested his forehead in his hand and breathed in slowly, thinking of Lucas, his five-year-old son, asleep at Marianne’s place. He pictured the smell of baby powder on the pillow, the small weight of that boy clinging to him after nightmares. Ethan was a physical therapist—he helped others rebuild their bodies. But what had broken inside him wasn’t muscle or bone.
It was right in the center of his chest, where absence still pulsed.
He forced himself to look around.