Day 16

PROMPT: This story takes place at a restaurant. Three acquaintances have gone out to dinner together. Person A has just left his/her wife/husband and family. Person B supports this decision. Person C thinks this was criminally irresponsible. write the conversation. (Suggestion: try giving each character the voice of a different person that you actually know. For example, Person A might talk like one of your coworkers, and Person B might talk like your brother or sister. Choose people who are very different from each other. Then try to express each one's unique voice so clearly that you don't need to tell the reader which character said which sentence, that the reader can "hear" the difference between who says what.)

“I’ll just have the salmon please”
“Can I get a Caesar Salad?”
“I’ll… I think I’ll also take the salmon.”
The waiter wrote down their orders, made some perky, faux-excited comment and left them to their tense silence. I would have been the likeliest candidate to speak first. But Danielle, appropriately, was the one who broke it.
“It’s so good to be home. I’ve missed it here so much.”
“Sweetie, it’s so nice to have you here.” My mom always left the possibility for a ‘but’ at the end of a sentence. It was just the right amount of self-doubt injected into us our whole lives. But Danielle was often immune to it, as was now, apparently, the case.
“I feel awful having left.”
I stayed silent. Anything I said would be held against me later. I would try my best to not be my regular sardonic self.
Our mother would overcompensate. “Baby, it’s not your fault. You can’t blame yourself.”
“I wasn’t. I just feel bad is what I meant.”
I couldn’t ignore the obvious though. We’d been silent all day, and I think the theory was that this restaurant would be neutral ground. “So what about the baby?”
I cut the rest of the question short. The Does he not need a mother? The Did you even tell him you were leaving? I couldn’t even bring myself anywhere near the Do I even get to see him?
Danielle looked stricken by the reminder. “Ian is fine with Lee.”
“It’s okay, we don’t have to worry about that right now.”
“Oh no? So we don’t have to worry about the four year old whose mother disappeared overnight. Yeah studies have shown that does no damage at all.”
Oops. Seemed like my avoidance of sarcasm was a little short-lived.