Walter had been waiting for a very long time. Every Saturday he went to this same diner, settled into this same booth, and waited over a cup of coffee and a book.

Well—except for the first Saturday. The first Saturday he hadn’t brought a book. He hadn’t expected to need one. That day he’d taken extra care with his outfit, and whistled as he walked the three blocks to the diner, and greeted the hostess with a chipper hello, and straightened the silverware on the table until everything was just so, and checked to make sure the table didn’t have a wobble, and wondered if the pendant light overhead was too bright, and carefully set a yellow daffodil on the placemat across the booth. Then he’d ripped his napkin to shreds and glanced over anxiously every time the bell over the door jangled at someone’s entrance.

He sat there through breakfast, then lunch. About mid-afternoon he finally stood up, sloshing from all the coffee he’d drunk, and walked home.

The following Saturday he lay in bed, determined not to go back. So he was extremely surprised to find his limbs clothing themselves of their own accord, his shoes jumping onto his feet, his legs carrying him to the same booth in the same diner. Once he was there, he figured he might as well stay. After all, it was possible one of them had gotten the date wrong.

It was this thought niggling at the back of his mind that drove him back to the diner every Saturday. For forty years. He turned down weddings invitations, vacation plans, job opportunities that would take him away from the area. He told himself it was because he was comfortable where he was. He didn’t like change or travel. He preferred that to the truth: that he was frozen. Stuck. The woman he’d hoped to meet there had become his religion, and he would remain devout as long as he was alive. He would never miss a service.

He was so entrenched in his routine that he didn’t even notice when a small girl, about eight or nine, with a stiff yellow braid sticking out from under each ear, slid into the booth across from him. She folded her hands on the table and stared at him.

He glanced around the restaurant, hoping to catch the eye of anyone who might be missing a child. “Are you lost?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “My name’s Bean. What’s yours?”

“Your parents named you Bean?”

“It’s short for Verbena,” she said, as if that were obvious.

“Silly me,” he muttered. “That’s a completely normal name.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“My name’s Walter Abram,” he said. “It’s been very nice meeting you.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too.” She picked up a menu and disappeared behind it.

“Where’re your parents at?” He meant to add her name at the end, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to call a little girl Bean.

“At home.”

“They just let you come to the diner by yourself?”

“We only live down the street. Plus my brother works here.”

“What’s his name? Cilantro?”

“Matthew.”

“Of course.”

“He told me he sees you here a lot.”

Walter shifted in his seat. “Did he.”

“Yes,” she said. “He said you always come for breakfast, and I thought maybe you might not know how to make your own breakfast, and that you might want someone to teach you. So that’s why I came over here. I’m very good at breakfast. I can make pancakes.”

“I prefer waffles.”

“I can’t make those. Well, I probably could. But we don’t have a waffle maker at home.”

 He turned a page in his book, hoping she would take the hint and move along. He wasn’t certain how well children picked up on nuance.

“What do you do?” she asked.

“I used to be a professor.”

“What do you do now?”

“Now I’m retired. I don’t go to work anymore.”

“Do you have any kids?”

“No.”

“Grandkids?”

“If I don’t have children, I can’t have grandchildren.”

She thought about that for a moment. “You could adopt a grandkid. Or you could pretend. I don’t have any grandparents. I used to, but I don’t anymore. We could pretend you’re my grandpa.”

“No, thanks,” he said. “I think that’d be too much responsibility for me.” He glanced up to see her crestfallen face. “Just that—I don’t have any practice. I might not be any good at it.”

She shrugged as if to acknowledge that as a distinct possibility. “So why are you waiting here?”

He swept another look around the restaurant, trying to plead with his eyes for someone to come and rescue him. “I’m not going to explain myself to you.”

“Okay. Do you want to play a game?”

Walter was taken aback. This felt like a trick, like reverse psychology. “I’m not going to talk about it. I mean it.”

“I heard you.” She turned her placemat over to the blank side and plucked a crayon out of the little cup by the napkin dispenser. “I’ll be Xs, you be Os,” she said as she drew out a large purple hash mark. She placed an X in the center square.

He picked out an orange crayon and set an O in a corner. “Alright,” he said. “I’m waiting for a friend.”

“What’s your friend’s name?”

“Abigail.”

“How old is she?”

“She’s about my age,” he said.

“Is she pretty?”

“I don’t know.” The answer slipped out. It was true, but the fact disturbed him. She used to be pretty, but he had no idea what she looked like now. Or whether she was alive at all. She might not be. She might have been dead for decades. He let the thought scrape through his brain and took a deep breath when it was gone.

“I bet she is.” Bean drew a curved line through the Xs. “Cat’s game. How long have you been waiting for her?”

His mouth twitched. “A long time.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why’ve you been waiting for her? Do you love her or something?”

His chest felt tight, and again he spoke without meaning to. “We were in love a long time ago.” He didn’t know why he was saying all this to a child. He hadn’t told anyone else about it. His friends had slowly drifted away after he started his weekly routine, after he refused to be set up with any of the single women they knew. He could have explained to them why his behavior had grown so erratic. But he didn’t.

She picked out a green crayon and drew a circle in the top corner of the placemat. “Matthew has a girlfriend.”

“Good for him.”

“Not really. She’s kind of mean. She’s always making fun of him and laughing at the way he looks and dresses and stuff. It sounds pretty weird to me, but he doesn’t seem to mind very much. Maybe your friend would have been mean to you. Maybe you’re lucky she didn’t show up.”

He laughed. “You don’t know my friend.”

“That’s true.” The circle turned into a green sun wearing sunglasses. She moved on to the landscape below. “So then why do you think she didn’t show up?”

He didn’t answer right away. His fear was that she’d simply forgotten about him. Fallen in love with someone else. It was a realistic fear. That was what people did. They fell out of love with one person and in love with another. They got married, raised families, forgot about people they once knew. But like with most fears, it was closely attended by the stubborn hope that he was wrong, that Abigail had merely been delayed by something. Every weekend. For the past forty years.

“Maybe she thought you were too grumpy,” Bean said.

“I’m not grumpy.”

She pursed her lips and tilted her head as if to say, Coulda fooled me.

Their server came to check on them and dropped off a bowl of whipped cream and three maraschino cherries in front of Bean.

“Thanks, Maureen!” she called as the server whizzed away.

Before she could take a bite, something hit the window with such force that the glass shook.

“What was that?” Walter said.

Bean scrambled over to the window and mashed her face against it so she could swivel her eyeballs to see down to the grass directly next to the building. Walter had the overwhelming urge to laugh at the sight of her, but he refrained.

“It’s a bird!” she cried. “Two birds! They ran into the window!” She looked at Walter, stricken. “Do you think they’re hurt?”

“I’m sure they’re fine.”

“We have to check!” She dashed toward the door. “Come on, Walter!”

He considered ignoring her and returning to his breakfast in peace. But by now, people were looking at him, no doubt wondering why he wasn’t going outside to help this little girl who was clearly upset.

Catching a server’s eye, he asked, “Hey, do you know Matthew?” The server gave him a confused sneer, so Walter wiped his mouth, took a sip of coffee, and followed after Bean.

He rounded the building and found her squatting over two small lumps in the grass. As he got closer, he heard her murmuring, “No no no no no no no—” He could see that they were alright—probably in shock, but alive.

“Please be okay,” Bean whispered.

He bent down next to her. “How’re the patients, doctor?”

“I don’t know,” came her small reply. “This one’s trying to get up. Should I touch it? I heard that if you touch a bird in the wild, its mother won’t let it back in the nest.”

“I think that’s only for baby birds,” Walter said. “These are great, big birds.” But he still used a sturdy piece of bark to raise the birds to their feet. They shook themselves and hopped around a bit.

“They’re okay!” she shouted.

He smiled and pointed to the smaller bird. “That one’s a brown house sparrow.”

“What’s the other one?”

“That’s a starling.”

She crooked a finger and held it out. The birds bobbed at it cautiously before flying off, one after the other. Bean watched them until they were out of sight.

“You saved those birds,” Walter said.

She sighed. “I like animals.”

“Do you know how starlings came to be in this country?”

She shook her head.

“Would you like to know?”

“I should go home,” she said.

“Oh. Okay, then.”

She looked up at him. “But my brother works again next Saturday morning. You could tell me about it then.”

His throat felt curiously tight. He coughed to clear it. “That…that’d probably be fine. Since I’ll be here, anyway. It’s a pretty good story.”

“Okay. Bye, Walter.” She wound up and took off with a tremendously energetic skip down the block.

“Bye, Verbena,” he called after her.

He returned to the booth, picked up his book, left some money on the table, and walked home.