I was sure my father was ruining every first date he went on. I had no idea my mother had been planning them for eight years, from the grave, and that one name on her list had been crossed out so hard the pen went through the paper.
Part 1: Six Women, One Restaurant
My mother died eight years ago.
For a long time after that, my father didn’t so much as glance at another woman. He kept her reading glasses on the nightstand. He kept buying the brand of coffee she liked, even though he’d always said it tasted like burnt toast. When friends from church tried to set him up, he’d smile politely and change the subject, and eventually they stopped trying.
So when Dad told me, at sixty-eight, that he’d started dating, I was thrilled for him. I really was. I’d been telling him for years that Mom wouldn’t want him sitting alone in that house with the television on, eating dinner standing up at the kitchen counter.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Her name is Anna,” he said. “She likes old movies.”
He said it like he was reading it off a card. I didn’t think much of it at the time.
Anna lasted one dinner.
Then there was Beth. Then Lydia. Then three more whose names I only half caught over the phone. Six women in eighteen months. Every one of them seemed lovely, according to Dad. Every one of them agreed to a first date.
And every one of them vanished afterward.
No second date. No explanation. Most of them wouldn’t even return his calls.
At first I joked about it. “Dad, what are you doing to these poor women? Talking about your cholesterol the whole time?”
He’d laugh, but not really.
Then I noticed the pattern that made me stop joking. Every single first date happened at the same place: a small Italian restaurant across town called Lucia’s, with red-checked tablecloths and strings of lights along the ceiling. Not a new place. Not a trendy one. The same restaurant, every time.
When I asked him why, he just said, “I like it there.”
When the seventh woman canceled their second date, I’d had enough. Dad called me that night sounding so tired that I barely recognized his voice. He didn’t say much. He just said, “Well, that’s that,” and hung up before I could ask anything else.
The next evening, I drove to Lucia’s by myself.
