Chapter 4 - The Diner on Route 18
The wedding happened on a humid Saturday in August. I didn't sit in the third row; I didn't go at all.
Instead, I took Norb’s oldest rig—a 1998 Freightliner with a five-speed transmission that ground like gravel in second gear—and drove eighty miles out to the turkey farms south of Belmond, checking relief valves on commercial storage units in ninety-degree heat. By the time I headed back toward Clear Lake, my undershirt was black with grease, my neck was burned red, and the dashboard clock read 9:15 PM.
The reception was happening at the country club. I knew that because every road within three miles was dotted with farm trucks and sedans heading out toward the golf course.
I didn't want to go back to my empty two-bedroom rental. I pulled the Freightliner into the gravel lot of the Rusty Anchor Diner out on Route 18. It was a greasy spoon that stayed open twenty-four hours for the grain haulers and the late-shift highway workers. The yellow neon sign flickered through the bugs swarming the sodium lamps outside.
I sat down at the far end of the counter, three stools away from an old farmer drinking black coffee.
""Evenin',"" the waitress said, sliding a laminated menu across the grease-stained Formica.
Her name was Maeve. She was wearing a faded green apron with a yellow sunflower embroidered over the left pocket, her dark hair pulled back into a messy knot held together by a pencil. She had high cheekbones, dark, tired eyes, and a pencil smudge right along the bridge of her nose. I’d seen her before—she was new in town, started working the swing shift maybe two months back, renting a small cottage near the lake access.
""Just coffee,"" I said. ""And whatever pie isn't crust on the bottom.""
""Pecan’s fresh,"" she said, her voice low and scratchy, like she’d spent the last six hours yelling ticket orders over a fryer vent. ""Brought it out twenty minutes ago. Still warm if you don't mind the steam.""
""Pecan works.""
She set the mug down, poured the coffee without spilling a drop, and stood there for a second, watching me rub the grime off my thumbs with a paper napkin.
""You look like you lost a dog,"" she said simply.
I gave a short, bitter laugh, staring into the black pool of coffee. ""No dog. Just family business.""
""Ah,"" Maeve nodded, leaning her hip against the stainless steel prep counter. ""The kind where nobody talks, but everybody screams.""
""Something like that."" I looked up at her. She had a small scar just under her jawline, thin as a thread, and her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, showing forearms that looked like they knew what carrying heavy trays through a crowded dining room felt like. ""My brother got married tonight.""
Maeve cocked an eyebrow. ""And you’re celebrating with a twenty-ton propane bomb parked outside my front door?""
""I wasn't invited to the fun part,"" I said. ""Or maybe I was, and I just preferred the smell of butane to the smell of my mother’s perfume.""
She snorted, a genuine, unpolished sound that made her shoulders drop. She vanished behind the pie case and came back with a plate carrying a slice of pecan pie that was twice the size of the normal cut, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream already melting into the crust.
""On the house,"" she said, sliding it over. ""For the guy who didn't want to wear a tuxedo.""
I stayed on that stool until midnight. We didn't talk about Jared. We didn't talk about Alyssa. Maeve told me she’d moved up from Cedar Rapids after her mother passed, looking for somewhere quiet where the water didn't taste like chemical runoff and people didn't tailgate you on the two-lane roads. She told me she worked forty hours at the diner and another fifteen cleaning cabins for summer folks on the north shore.
""Hard work,"" I said.
""It's just hours,"" she answered, wiping down the coffee pots with a clean rag. ""The hours pass whether you spend them crying or spend them carrying plates. Might as well get five bucks an hour for your trouble.""
I liked the way she said it. No self-pity. No performance.
When I laid down a twenty-dollar bill on the counter to cover my two-dollar coffee, she pushed it back. ""I told you the pie was on the house, Dane.""
""I know,"" I said. ""The twenty isn't for the pie. It's for the company.""
""Take your ten back,"" she said firmly, sliding two five-dollar bills into my palm and closing my fingers over them. Her skin was warm, slightly roughened by dishwater, but her grip was steady. ""You don't buy conversation here. Come back on Tuesday if you want more coffee.""
May you like
I walked out to my Freightliner feeling the cold night air hit my lungs like clean water. For three years, Jared had owned every memory I had in this county.
As the diesel engine turned over with a deep, rattling roar, I realized I hadn't thought about table fourteen at the Brass Lantern for four straight hours.
