The first week without him felt longer than it should have.
Time stretched inside the restaurant, heavy and elastic, bending around every familiar sound. The doorbell’s late ring. The coffee grinder’s sigh. Even the scraping of chairs seemed to look for him, like the room itself had learned his rhythm and now missed the beat.
Daphne didn’t tell anyone how often she caught herself glancing toward the door. She worked longer hours instead, rearranging shelves that didn’t need rearranging, tasting every batch of bread twice. The postcards he had left sat in a neat stack by the register, their blank backs like promises still waiting to be written on.
Mira noticed, of course. She always did. “You’re moving faster,” she said one morning, watching Daphne polish the counter until her reflection almost smiled back. “That’s not necessarily a good thing.”
“I’m keeping the rhythm,” Daphne replied.
“Feels more like you’re outrunning it.”
They both knew the line between those things was thin.
Business stayed steady. The *Sunday Table* event was now weekly, a quiet miracle that somehow managed to refill the space with laughter every time it risked feeling hollow. Finn became the self-proclaimed host, Jamie his assistant of mischief, and Mira—the reluctant guardian of structure—counted the receipts afterward with quiet pride.
But one Thursday evening, the rhythm broke.
It started with something small. A customer complained about an order; Finn, exhausted from back-to-back shifts, snapped back. Mira stepped in too sharply. Words flew, louder than usual, sharper than they should’ve been. The room froze. Jamie, halfway through drawing a doodle on a napkin, looked up like someone had cut the music mid-song.
“Stop,” Daphne said, softly at first. No one heard. “Stop,” she repeated, louder. “This isn’t us.”
Mira turned toward her. “Then who is it, Daphne? Because lately, I’m not sure you even know.”
The words hit harder than they should have. Mira’s tone wasn’t cruel, but the truth inside it had edges. Finn muttered something under his breath; Jamie pushed the napkin aside, staring at the floor. Daphne’s throat tightened, the air gone thick around her.
“I’m doing what I can,” she said.
“Sometimes doing everything isn’t the same as doing right,” Mira said, quieter now but unwavering. “You’re trying to hold every corner at once. You’re not letting anyone else breathe.”
For a heartbeat, no one moved. Then Daphne turned away, her hands still on the counter though the counter no longer felt steady.
The argument dissolved in the way storms do—no clear ending, just the echo of something torn and the strange silence afterward. Customers pretended not to notice. Music resumed, a song slower than usual, the kind that fills rather than fixes.
After closing, the lights hummed softly. The others had gone home. Daphne stayed, washing dishes that were already clean. Her reflection wavered in the sink water, rippling each time she breathed too hard.
Mira came back from the doorway. “I shouldn’t have said it like that,” she admitted.
“You were right,” Daphne said, not looking up.
“Maybe. But right isn’t always kind.”
The sentence hung between them like steam—visible, temporary. Daphne finally turned. “He’s been gone a week,” she said. “And it feels like I’m holding a house made of air.”
Mira stepped closer. “Then let the air move. It won’t collapse.”
“I don’t know how.”
“You don’t have to. That’s why we’re here.”
The apology was wordless but understood. They stood in silence until the room began to breathe again.
Outside, the city had gone silver with drizzle. Daphne walked home alone, umbrella folded, letting the rain draw soft lines down her arms. She thought of Caius somewhere far away, maybe watching a different kind of storm. She wondered if he’d found light yet—or if, like her, he was still learning where to look.
The next day brought an envelope.
It arrived tucked between invoices, unmarked except for her name written in his slanted handwriting. Inside was a photo—blurry, taken at dusk. A window lit from within. A note beneath it: *Light isn’t what finds us. It’s what waits until we’re ready to open the door.*
She read it three times, then once aloud, just to hear his voice inside the silence.
That night, *Sunday Table* returned. Finn baked something that refused to rise but tasted like effort. Jamie read a story about a cat that never left the same porch. Mira poured wine for everyone, even herself. And Daphne, for the first time all week, sat instead of serving.
When the music started—slow, warm, unsteady—she didn’t dance. She listened. The chairs, the plates, the laughter—they all sounded a little cracked, and that was fine. The sound of living had never been smooth. It was a heartbeat that missed sometimes, but always found its way back.
Later, after everyone left, she locked the door and turned off the lights. The dark was gentle. Her reflection in the glass looked older, surer, less afraid of being alone.
She took out the photo again, tracing the shape of the light with her fingertip. “You found it,” she whispered. “Now I will too.”
Outside, rain tapped the roof like quiet applause. Inside, the air moved freely again, unmeasured, forgiving. And somewhere, halfway across the world, another window was glowing—two lights, holding the same rhythm, choosing each other without needing to be in the same place.
The following morning, sunlight spilled into the restaurant like it had decided to stay. It touched the tables, the counter, even the old piano in the corner that no one had played in months. The city outside was waking gently, but inside, there was a sense of something mended—not fully, not forever, but enough.
Daphne arrived early again, but this time she didn’t rush. She made coffee slowly, let the steam rise before pouring. The postcard he’d sent rested beside the register, its photo curling slightly at the edges. She kept glancing at it like it might change when she wasn’t looking.
Mira came in soon after, eyes tired but soft. “Truce?” she asked.
“Permanent,” Daphne said, and poured her a cup without another word.
They worked in quiet partnership. Finn showed up humming, pretending not to check if everyone was still mad. Jamie carried in a paper bag full of crayons. “I’m redesigning the chalkboard,” he announced. “We’ve been too grown-up lately.”
“What’s the theme?” Mira asked.
“Clouds that forgot to rain,” Jamie said. “They’re my favorite kind.”
The day unfolded without trouble. Customers came, ate, lingered. The air smelled like sugar and citrus and faint forgiveness. Daphne watched them, each conversation a reminder that life was still happening in small, tender ways. She didn’t feel healed; she felt human again, which was better.
That evening, after closing, she sat by the window reading the note from Caius once more. The words had started to fade from being touched too often. *Light isn’t what finds us. It’s what waits until we’re ready to open the door.*
She whispered it aloud, the sentence warming her throat like a sip of wine.
Across the ocean, Caius was filming in a small coastal town where the power flickered every few hours. The sea was wild, gray-green, and the people kinder than they needed to be. He carried the same camera but used it differently now, less as a shield, more as a bridge. Every shot felt like a conversation with her—unspoken, patient, true.
On the seventh night, the storm came.
It was the kind that turned windows into mirrors and streets into memory. The crew scattered for cover, cables coiled like frightened snakes. Caius stayed behind in the rain, protecting his camera beneath his coat, watching the sea collapse against the rocks. The sound reminded him of her voice when she tried not to cry—steady, defiant, refusing to give up.
When the wind knocked out the power, the only light left was from the lanterns of nearby boats. He lifted the camera anyway, filming nothing but darkness, knowing she’d understand. Sometimes the absence itself was the story.
Back in the city, the same storm arrived two days later. The sky broke open just after sunset, flooding the streets and pressing against the restaurant’s old windows. The lights flickered once, twice, then went out completely. Mira swore softly. Finn grabbed candles. Jamie cheered, thinking it was an adventure.
“Stay calm,” Daphne said, her voice even. “We know this dance.”
They lit the candles one by one, each flame catching like a small confession. The restaurant filled with soft gold and shadow. Outside, thunder rolled like an argument too big to end. Water slipped under the door in thin lines. Finn and Mira worked together, pushing towels against the threshold, laughing despite themselves.
Daphne stood at the counter, heart steady but loud. The air smelled like rain and lemon wax. For a moment, she felt the same weight she’d described to Mira—the weight of holding a house made of air. Only this time, she didn’t resist it. She let it sit inside her ribs and found she could still breathe.
“Are we okay?” Jamie asked, voice small but sure.
“We are,” she said. “We always are.”
The words seemed to settle the room. The candles flickered, the storm eased its voice, and the hum of the fridge returning was the softest triumph she’d ever heard.
When the power returned fully, a single email arrived on her phone—a video attachment, timestamped the same night his storm hit. She pressed play.
The screen showed darkness at first, then a brief flash: waves, wind, and Caius’s voice, low but calm.
> “You were right. Light waits. Sometimes it waits inside people. I kept thinking about how we build things just to see if they can survive us. I think this one can. I think we can.”
The video ended abruptly. No signature. Just the sound of the ocean breathing after thunder.
Daphne closed her eyes, listening. The restaurant was quiet again, but not empty. Every corner seemed to hum with something shared. Mira poured wine into chipped glasses. Finn toasted “to staying.” Jamie added, “and to Tuesday.” Everyone laughed, even the walls.
Later that night, Daphne wrote him back—not with a reply email, but on the back of a receipt, just as she’d promised.
> “We didn’t break,” she wrote. “We bent. The lights went out, but the air kept singing. I think that means you can come home.”
She slipped the note between two postcards behind the counter, as if distance were just another kind of envelope. Then she turned off the last light, leaving one candle burning in the window.
Outside, the storm was already leaving town. The streets shimmered under puddles of reflected signs. She stood there for a while, watching the city breathe again.
When she finally walked home, the candle still burned behind her, a single gold pulse in the dark. She didn’t look back; she didn’t need to. The house would remember. The light would wait.
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