The waiter looked down at her phone for maybe two seconds and immediately straightened up.
Then he nodded and said, “Understood, ma’am.”
That’s it.
My sister-in-law was still doing the whole purse act. Digging through receipts. Sighing loudly. Her husband still nowhere near the table.
Mom just sat there sipping iced tea.
A minute later the manager walked over carrying a small black folder and asked my sister-in-law quietly, “Would you prefer we use the card ending in 4421 like the last three reservations?”
You could actually see the color leave her face.
Turns out Mom had finally gotten tired of the bills showing up at her house and called the restaurant a month earlier after the last birthday dinner.
The manager apparently went back through old reservations and figured out what was happening pretty fast.
Every single reservation had been made with my sister-in-law’s card attached for “incidentals,” but the unpaid balance notices kept getting mailed to Mom because her address was listed for the booking.
Mom told them if it happened again, she wanted the actual cardholder charged directly before anybody left the restaurant.
Which, apparently, is exactly what they did.
My sister-in-law kept insisting there had been “some misunderstanding,” but nobody really jumped in to rescue her this time because suddenly everybody was remembering all those expensive dinners Mom mysteriously ended up paying for.
Her husband stayed outside so long valet finally brought the car around twice.
The weirdest part was Mom though.
She never yelled. Never embarrassed her back. Didn’t do some big speech.
When we got to the parking lot, she just said, “I’m too old to keep financing people’s performances.”
Then she asked if I wanted to stop for ice cream on the drive home.My Sister-In-Law Loved Playing The Generous One In Public