Heart to Heart

She joins him in the booth. Thank you for seeing me,” she says.
“Of course,” he says.
Superficial talk, awkward, while they make introductions and the waiter takes their order. She suppresses the desire to say, “Call me Mom.”
He says, “I don’t know how to thank you. And . . . your son.” The pain sucks all sound from the room. “I’m sorry,” he says.
She is looking at his chest. She raises her grieving hand. “May I?”
“Yes.”
She touches his chest. There, beneath the flesh and breastbone of this stranger: the beating of her dead son’s heart.