Work Text:
"You have no immediate family."
There's a diner in San Fransisco that has seen Dr. Ryland Grace every single Thursday for the past several years. He orders the same meal every time, sits at the same table, chats with the same woman. She is variable, she tries new things, but Ryland Grace does not.
It becomes common amongst the diner staff to vie for the section that the table sits in. Grace is polite, he's never rude to staff and he's always content with what he gets. His table is always the easiest of the night, no matter what his friend's order is, because she follows his lead, and they tip well. They're the easiest table anyone sees all Thursday. It's set before the two even walk in, ready to go for predictable Ryland Grace.
The first week he doesn't show, the staff make a passing comment or two to each other.
"Have you seen Dr. Grace?"
"He isn't in yet?"
"No... seems like his friend isn't around either."
"Maybe they're busy?"
The second week he doesn't show, the kitchen hears about it.
"You don't think he's sick, do you?"
"Mr. Predictable didn't pop in again?"
"That's Dr. Predictable to you... and no, he did not."
"Weird."
The third week he doesn't show, the waiters are practically panicking. It's all management can do to keep them from trying to find out if Ryland Grace's phone number is on file in the rewards program to check in on him.
"You have no immediate family."
There's a classroom at Grover Cleveland Middle School that feels empty without Mr. Ryland Grace. A classroom strewn with posters that have silly science puns on them, displaying a model of the solar system hanging from the roof, and housing a group of very quiet and discouraged students.
No one likes the sub, especially when it becomes clear that the sub is not a sub, she's a replacement. She's funny, sure, and a little bit wild in the eyes, but she's not Mr. Grace. She doesn't play the same games as him, she doesn't engage with them the way he did, she doesn't know them.
"When is Mr. Grace coming back?"
"I can't give you an answer to that right now."
"Because you don't know? Or because he's not coming back?"
A gold-star classroom slowly devolves into chaos. The kids are surly, they're upset that no one will tell them where their teacher is. Parents hear about it, parents reach out to the school, no answers are offered.
"We cannot share that information at the current moment."
"And why not? My daughter's grades are reflecting this!"
"There is no information to share. Mr. Grace is away, that is all we can say."
"Away? What kind of teacher just up and disappears halfway through a school year?"
By the end of the school year, the kids are absolutely uncontrollable. There's no shortage of frustration at the realization that Mr. Grace is not going to be at graduation, even though he promised he'd let each of them wear his favorite cardigan for a picture in their graduation robes. Even though he promised he'd come to every graduation party. Even though he jokingly made them agree that if any one of them were valedictorian, they would mention him by name in their speech.
Abby does just that.
"Dr. Ryland Grace is the reason I want to be a scientist. He is my favorite teacher here, I loved his class more than anything else at this school. I wish he could be here... I wish I knew where he was, what he was doing, that he couldn't come back. He doesn't make promises for no reason, and he promised." She doesn't cry, but the break in her voice makes the point moot. "He promised we could do great things, and I'm going to. For Mr. Grace."
"You have no immediate family."
"Honey, have you seen that guy who's always wearing the bright yellow raincoat biking to work recently?"
"You know, I was just thinking about that... I don't think I have."
"D'you think he moved?"
"I wouldn't think so, isn't he a teacher? I feel like I've seen his bike at the middle school."
There are dozens of people every day who used to see Ryland Grace. He was 'coffee, one sugar, extra hot' to the baristas at the place on the corner. He was 'Mr. Grace, the science teacher down the hall' to his colleagues. He was even 'that lunatic who was yelling at the one UNESCO conference' to the academic world.
When the Hail Mary is launched, Marissa finds out he was on the crew from the news graphic. She and Ryland Grace have seen each other every week for dinner since grad school, and he didn't even say goodbye? She's crushed, not even having realized they had their last meal together when they did.
One of the waitresses at the diner breaks down on her next Thursday shift, when she passes the table Ryland Grace used to sit at and nearly reaches out to take a cup that doesn't exist to get a man who's long gone a refill. The other waitstaff gather around the empty booth, huddling close to her as they all take a moment of silence to remember their regular, the one they'll never see again.
Dozens of students, present and past, fish out yearbooks and old assignments that have a familiar scribble on them somewhere or another. Abby screams in her room until she nearly passes out, sobbing and devastated and clutching a paper that Mr. Grace had written 'A+, when you discover your first new life form will you name it after me?' on.
People who only saw Ryland Grace in passing finally have a name to put to the face, to the fox cardigan, to the biker that nearly faceplanted in the same pothole nearly once a week for several years on the way to work. He was a staple of life, almost unnoticeable... until he was gone.
"You don't even have a dog."