Naomi pushed the document across the restaurant table.
“That isn’t my signature.”
Her father barely looked at it.
“It was years ago.”
“That doesn’t make it mine.”
They had met to discuss her grandmother’s plans to sell the restaurant. Naomi had expected accounts, property details, perhaps an argument about keeping the old sign.
Instead, she found a document claiming she had given up her share of the business.
Her name appeared beneath a signature she hadn’t written.
Her grandmother stood beside a framed photograph on the wall.
“I was told you didn’t want anything to do with this place.”
Naomi turned.
“I asked to run the kitchen. Dad said you refused.”
Her father’s face tightened.
Outside, someone tried the locked restaurant door, then moved on.
He explained that Naomi had been preparing to leave for college. He had feared she would abandon her studies to work long hours in a struggling business.
“So you decided for everyone,” her grandmother said.
“I thought I was helping.”
“You signed my name,” Naomi replied.
There was nothing else to call it.
The sale stopped while they sought independent advice and corrected the records. Family conversations became brief and practical.
Naomi didn’t forgive him because he apologized.
But she noticed when he stopped asking her to.
Months later, she and her grandmother opened the restaurant for one final evening before its new owners took over.
They cooked the dishes customers had requested for decades.
Her father arrived early.
“Where do you need me?”
Naomi pointed toward the sink.
He rolled up his sleeves.
Near closing time, her grandmother removed the old photograph from the wall.
She handed it to Naomi.
“For your place.”
Naomi smiled.
She had signed the lease that morning.
This time, everyone had waited for her decision.
End of Narrative
