I grew up in Carver Falls, Indiana. Population two thousand one hundred. One stoplight. One school. One grocery store.

The grocery store was a Lakeshore. It sat on Main Street, right across from my grandmother's café, the Corner Cup.

Grandma Dot opened the Corner Cup in 1979. She makes the best cinnamon rolls in Indiana. That's not my opinion. It's printed on a sign in the window, from a newspaper review in 1994.

She raised me after my parents split up. I did my homework at the end of her counter every day after school. I learned math by counting her till.

Nobody in my family had ever worked in an office. My mom cleans houses. My uncle drives a truck.

I went to community college for two years, then got a scholarship to Indiana State. I studied business and worked nights at a pizza place.

When I got a summer internship at Lakeshore's head office in Chicago, Grandma Dot closed the café for an hour and threw me a party. The whole town came.

“Our Abby,” she told everyone, “is going to work in a skyscraper.”

She said it like I'd been elected president.

I was terrified.