“I’m fine,” I said.
He glanced down at my shoes.
“No, you’re not.”
I smiled politely.
“I’m working.”
“I can see that.”
He looked toward the ballroom.
Then back at me.
“How long have you been standing?”
I hesitated.
“Most of the evening.”
“Your feet must hurt.”
It was such a simple question.
But no man had asked whether I was tired in years.
I don’t know why that stayed with me.
Maybe because I had become so used to people needing something from me that I had forgotten what it felt like for someone to simply notice that I was exhausted.
“I’m okay,” I said again.
He smiled.
“You’re a terrible liar.”
Then he walked away.
I assumed that was the end of it.
It wasn’t.
His name was Richard Hale.
He was one of the men who had helped fund the charity that evening.
And over the next few weeks, I discovered that Richard had remembered me.
He came back to another event.
Then another.
Sometimes he spoke to me for only five minutes.
Sometimes twenty.
He never treated me like staff.
He asked about my life.
He remembered small details.
When I told him I had a younger brother who lived several hours away, he remembered his name.
