Lily stood beside her, holding the unused menu. "I'm sorry," she said. "That wasn't fair."
"You have nothing to apologize for."
"He'll think I challenged him." Lily stared down at her apron. "I probably shouldn't have said anything in front of the guests."
Margaret could hear the calculation in her voice. It was the same careful arithmetic she had heard years ago when a dishwasher explained why she could not complain about missing overtime pay. Someone whose savings were secure might call speaking up a small risk. Someone who needed every hour of work knew the cost of each word before it left her mouth.
"Do you need this job?" Margaret asked softly.
Lily looked surprised by the question. "Yes, ma'am. Very much."
"For your family?"
Lily nodded. "For my little brother and me."
"And your parents?"
The question seemed to catch Lily somewhere she kept carefully covered. She glanced at the dining room and lowered her voice so other employees would not overhear. "My mother died two years ago. It's been the two of us since then."
Margaret felt an old, familiar ache. She had lost Peter nine years earlier, and even after nearly a decade there were mornings when she still turned toward the empty half of the bed expecting him to be there. She could imagine what the death of a parent had done to a young woman who was suddenly expected to be everything for a younger child. Sympathy alone would not solve it, she knew; sympathy offered without listening sometimes became another way to tell a struggling person how to live.
"I'm sorry, Lily," she said.
Lily stared at her. "How did you know my name?"
Margaret pointed to the embroidered name on her apron, and Lily let out a small, embarrassed laugh. It was the first unguarded sound either of them had made since Margaret arrived. For a second the lobby felt less like a place where someone was being judged and more like two people sharing a quiet moment while the world moved around them.
"I need this job," Lily repeated. "There aren't many places that'll give me predictable hours and enough tips to pay the rent. My brother's in school, and he shouldn't have to worry about all the things I worry about."
"Then you have every reason to protect your job," Margaret said. "And you have every reason to be treated with dignity while you do it."
Lily looked toward Brad, now pouring wine at table twelve. "Sometimes it doesn't feel like you can have both."
"I know," Margaret replied. "I've worked for people who made me feel exactly that way."