I’ve been a waitress at a small-town diner for two years, and every Sunday, the same man walks in—late sixties, quiet, plaid shirt, black coffee, apple pie—and leaves me a $100 tip. Every week. No explanation.
One Sunday, on a whim, I snapped a photo of him and posted it online with a thank-you note. Minutes later, my mom called in a panic. “Emma… that’s your father.”
I froze. My dad had walked out when I was a baby. I’d never seen a photo, never heard from him—until now. My mom admitted he’d come back, sick with cancer, and she’d told him where I worked. He’d been sitting in my section every Sunday for months, tipping me quietly instead of speaking to me.
The next week, I confronted him. “A hundred dollars doesn’t fix years of being gone.”
“I know,” he said. “I just wanted to be close. Even from a distance.”
He left without eating. That day, there was no tip—just a folded napkin with one word:
“Sorry.”