When a couple walked out of the restaurant without paying their $400 bill, I cried because I knew that money would have to come out of my pocket.
At the time, it felt like the worst thing that could happen.
Instead, it became the luckiest $400 I ever lost.
Four hundred dollars was not a small amount of money to me.
It was nearly two weeks of groceries.
It could cover the electric bill and still leave enough to put something toward next semester’s tuition.
For people like the couple sitting in my section that Friday night, $400 might have been the price of a nice dinner.
For me, it was survival.
I was attending college in a neighboring state, close enough to visit home when I had money for the trip but far enough away that every family emergency felt impossible to manage.
I had been working as a waitress at a restaurant near campus for almost a year.
Most evenings were a balancing act between classes, assignments, late shifts, and sending whatever money I could spare back home.
And lately, “whatever I could spare” had become almost everything.
Because four months earlier, my mother had disappeared.
Her name was Evelyn.
