“Tony.”

“Crap.” Dad will eat Tony alive, spit out the bone fragments, and ask for a refund.

With each step toward the door, my heart pounds harder. That laugh comes again. I don’t know how I didn’t recognize it before. That sound is so, very obviously, my father’s laugh. The one he uses when he wants people to know that the room belongs to him.

He sits at a four-top with three other men in expensive suits. Their faces are shiny, sweaty, and red. Drunk and it’s only eight o’clock.

I intercept Tony and the two-hundred-dollar bottle of red in his hands. “I’ll take care of them.” I nod at Dad.

Relief flashes over his face. “You sure, boss?”

Not at all. “I’m sure.”

He presses the corkscrew into my hand. “I owe you,” he whispers.

With a deep breath, I approach the table. “Good evening, gentlemen. We’re having the cab sauv tonight?”

Dad glances up at me with the same disdain he gives all service workers. His tie, the knot loosened, is one that Wes and I got for him years ago. Some Father’s Day or birthday gift I was positive he’d never wear, and, for a moment, my heart softens for him.

“This is my daughter,” he says, flinging his hand in my direction but not looking at me, like I’m an attraction on a tour, but not one important enough to stop for.

Never mind. Moment over.

The other men smile but when it becomes obvious that he’s not going to go any further, I introduce myself.

“Amy,” I say.

“The Amy in Amy and May’s?” asks one of his guests, the youngest-looking one at the table by at least a decade.

“The one and only.” I present the bottle of wine to Dad and he waves it away with a nod.

“Where’s the May?”

They all laugh at the dumb joke, except for Dad and me.

I pause, the corkscrew stuck into the top of the bottle. “May was my mom’s middle name.”

The table stills as they register my use of past tense.

They address their quiet condolences to my father, instead of me, even though he doesn’t wear a wedding ring. Even though he wasn’t there when she died. I let the muscles in my arms burn as I twist and twist the corkscrew. He grunts and nods and I pull out the cork with a pop when I want to scream that he doesn’t deserve their kind words, she died of a broken heart as much as she died of cancer.

Dad taps the base of his wineglass impatiently, a familiar, quiet tick that makes me want to do a kind of impotent, unidentifiable violence. I pull the cork the rest of the way out. Splash a mouthful of wine into his glass. He throws it back like it’s a shot. It’s meant to be a taste. You’re meant to let it sit on your palate, to assess the quality of the wine as well as your enjoyment of it.