Where was Franklin? I looked about me, at the strollers lined up outside the door, their wheels resting in loose slush. In a stroller very like ours, a child swaddled very like ours reached out a fist and beat at the air. I leaned toward him, ready to lift him and carry him into the café’s warm air, but it was not Franklin. I turned. Elsa was looking down now, speaking softly. She had Franklin at her side, I guessed, just out of sight.

I began to lean my weight against the door. I paused.

That man at the next table, staring at Elsa. His entire being was directed at my wife. I took a step into the shadows, amused. How could he be so obvious? For a time, Elsa did not seem to notice him. Then she looked up, met his gaze, dismissed him with a half smile.

I smiled too. Not a chance, friend.

Elsa turned the page of the newspaper. But something had caught her off balance. She took a sip of her coffee, and this time—I could see it—she forced herself not to wince at the flavor. Every time she looked up, there was the man, all eyes. His hair was disheveled, his movements staccato, but his clothes were clean and his trousers pressed.

The man leaned across, rapped twice on Elsa’s table. I noticed his shoes now, leather-soled, highly polished, not a salt mark to be seen. He spoke a word that looked like Hello.

Elsa looked up. This time she did not smile. The man spoke again. His fingers hovered by the pocket of his jeans, then by his breast pocket. Elsa’s brow knotted in annoyance. From beside her she picked up Franklin, asleep in his car seat, put him gently down on the table.

You see? I thought. My wife. My son.

Now the man was on his feet. As I watched, he walked to the end of the counter, where he stood by the coffee machine. He exchanged words with the girl behind the machine. The girl smiled.

Around me the babies slept peacefully in their strollers. Footsteps crunched heavily on gritted paths. Car wheels spun on ice. The man laughed gently with the girl behind the machine. In a concrete gym across the parking lot blonde women in leotards danced to a beat I could not hear. Soon they too would be making their way to the café, to detoxify their bodies with wheatgrass and ginger.

The man was walking toward Elsa carrying two cups of coffee. He slid one carefully to Elsa’s side of the table. Surely now she would ask him to let her be?

But no. She nodded politely. The man sat down at her table, his back to me.