The next morning, I went to the Maple Leaf Diner for breakfast.

It was the same diner. Red booths. Pie in a glass case. A bell over the door.

Behind the counter was Kristen Shaw.

We'd dated for two years in high school. She was the smartest girl in our class. She'd wanted to be a teacher. When I left, she stayed to look after her mom.

She looked up when the bell rang. For a second she didn't recognize me. Then she did. “Wyatt Harlan,” she said softly. “Well, I'll be.”

She poured me a coffee without asking. Black. She remembered.

She didn't ask about the truck. She didn't ask what happened in North Carolina. She just looked at me with her clear gray eyes and said, “Are you okay? Really?”

“I'm good, Kris. Really.”

“Good,” she said. And she meant it.

She owned the diner now. Her mom had left it to her. She had a seven-year-old son called Noah, who was coloring at the end of the counter.

She told me about the town. The shops that had closed on Main Street. The young people who'd moved away. Her own brother, who'd gone to Texas for work.

“The diner's hanging on,” she said. “Barely. When the Works was open, I'd do a hundred lunches a day. Now it's twenty.”

She wiped the counter.

“This town lost its heart when that factory closed,” she said. “I don't think it's ever getting it back.”