Chapter 10 - The Table by the Window
One year later.
New Year’s Eve in Chicago was cold again, a fine dusting of white powder blowing across the asphalt of Milwaukee Avenue.
Inside the Bellweather Grill, the air smelled of fried chicken, roasted coffee, and damp wool coats. Silver balloons bounced against the ceiling, and children in paper hats were already practicing with their plastic noisemakers near the front counter.
The hostess behind the iPad looked up as the front door chimed.
I walked in, wearing my old charcoal coat—the one with the small, expertly repaired tear near the hem where a crowbar had caught it eleven months ago.
“Name?” she asked briskly.
“Mercer,” I said softly. “Table for three.”
She glanced at her screen, tapped a button, and grabbed three laminated menus. “Right this way, Mr. Mercer.”
She led us toward the back, past the dusty artificial ficus plant, to a small corner booth pushed right beside a frosted window overlooking the snowy street outside.
Maya slid into the booth first, wearing a simple burgundy sweater, her hair falling softly over her shoulders. Beside her, Lily—now eight years old, with a bright, complete set of adult front teeth—scrambled onto the vinyl seat, immediately reaching for the crayon box left in the center of the table.
I sat down across from them, setting my plain stainless steel watch face-down on the table before sliding my phone into my coat pocket and leaving it there.
“Ethan,” Lily said, tapping her blue crayon against my menu. “Do you know what happens at midnight?”
“The ball drops in Times Square?” I offered.
“No,” she said seriously. “We get to eat the chocolate cake with the gold sprinkles that Mom made us buy at the bakery.”
“That sounds like a much better tradition,” I said, smiling.
The waiter arrived, dropping three glasses of ice water onto the table. “Can I get you folks started with some drinks?”
“Coffee for both of us,” Maya said, looking across the table at me with a warm, quiet gaze that made the cold night outside feel a thousand miles away. “And a milk for Lily.”
“You got it.”
When the waiter walked away, Maya reached across the formica table, resting her hand over mine. Her skin was warm, familiar, and grounded—the anchor that had kept me steady through a year of corporate transitions, media speculation, and the slow, deliberate process of learning how to live a real life.
I hadn't sold Mercer Dynamics, but I had stepped down as CEO six months ago, handing the operational reigns over to Marcus Vance while keeping a simple position as Chairman of the Board. My work week had dropped from eighty hours to twenty. My time spent sitting in a small frame house in Logan Square, helping an eight-year-old with her spelling homework, had increased exponentially.
My phone buzzed once in my coat pocket. A notification from the board. A market report.
I didn't even twitch.
Lily was busy drawing a elaborate picture of a four-story house with a giant yellow sun hovering over the roof.
“Ethan?” Maya asked softly, leaning forward over her coffee cup.
“Yeah?”
“What are you thinking about?”
I looked out the window at the snow drifting down past the streetlamps of Milwaukee Avenue, then back at the woman sitting across from me, and the little girl coloring with her blue crayon.
“I was just thinking,” I said, tightening my fingers gently around hers, “that six billion dollars is a lot of money.”
Maya raised one eyebrow, a faint, teasing smirk catching the corner of her mouth. “Is that so, Mr. Mercer?”
“It is,” I said, smiling from the very bottom of my heart. “But it still doesn't come close to buying a chair at this table.”
May you like
Lily looked up from her drawing, her eyes bright and clear. “You don't need to buy it, Ethan. It’s your chair.”
And as the family countdown echoed through the crowded dining room, surrounded by cheap silver balloons and plastic horns, I knew that for the first time in my life, I was finally, completely home.
