“We’ve been serving the same classic dishes for a long time, Leo,” Aunt Loretta called from the kitchen. The same ones that his mom had helped create many years ago.

Uncle Cosmo pitched in. “People love them.”

Leo believed that was true of their regulars, but it wasn’t enough. The restaurant needed a big sales driver—something to make people line up on the street, like in the days when his mom was alive. “We have to give people a reason to eat here and not drive into Bloomington or Indianapolis for a chain-restaurant experience.” And to attract people under the age of sixty.

“It’s just a little downturn right now.” His dad gathered the menus and tapped them definitively on the table.

The downturn was more like a circling-the-toilet-bowl-and-plunging-into-the-abyss kind of situation, but Leo held his tongue.

His dad, sitting across from him in the old red leather booth, crossed his muscular arms and set his jaw. He used to laugh a lot more when his mom was around. But she’d been gone for nearly seventeen years now.

They still used the same menu design his mom had created, reprinting them when they became too worn to read anymore. The giant fresco in the dining room of a balustrade patio overlooking the Mediterranean had been there forever, as had the made-to-look-ancient vases and the small-scale Michelangelo’s Pietà right next to the cash register.

All these things gave him a pang in the chest. Yes, his mom was still everywhere. Like she was going to come bursting in from the kitchen at any moment, full of sunshine and laughter. I swear, Mom, I’ll do my best, he vowed. But it’s not going to be easy.

“Have you thought about my idea for the farm-to-table options with full takeout service?” And delivery, too, but he didn’t dare mention that. Not right away. Saying the word “delivery” was as bad as dropping an f-bomb at the kitchen table.

“Takeout?” His dad said it with disgust, as if Leo had said pestilence or locusts or the plague. “Eating in a restaurant is a social thing,” he went on, talking expressively with his hands as usual. “People get dressed up a little, they bring their friends, they sit out on the patio and drink wine and look at the pretty flowers and celebrate occasions. Food bonds people.”

Leo couldn’t argue with that. But his father was missing the point.

“Yeah but, Dad,” Leo said, “maybe it’s okay for a family to order takeout one night when they’re too exhausted and stressed to leave the house. And maybe it comes as a full-course dinner with all fresh, locally sourced ingredients and homemade pasta. Wine, too. Same food, but with a different spin. I think there’s a market for that. It would attract younger customers—”