Rob: There are four places at the table. Is there another guest?
Catherine: Oh, no . . . we never talk about the empty place.
Rob: The empty place? What do you mean?
Catherine: Well, that used to be my father’s place.
Rob: ‘Used to be’? I don’t understand.
Catherine: My father was a fisherman. Three years ago he went out in his boat, and he never returned.
Rob: What happened to him?
Catherine: Nobody knows. They searched everywhere,
but they found nothing. My mother always keeps that place for him, and
she makes his breakfast every morning. She thinks he’ll come back.
That’s a photograph of him . . . over there, on the wall. My mother’s
been waiting for him for three years.