The coffee in her cup had gone cold twenty minutes ago. She drank it anyway.
The diner sat at the edge of Charming like it knew better than to get too close. Fluorescent light buzzed overhead, catching the dust in the air, turning everything the color of old photographs. A man in a trucker cap nursed burnt coffee at the counter, two booths over, not looking at her. She was good at noticing the ones who pretended not to look.
Outside, the highway was empty. The sky was doing that thing it did before dawn—going gray around the edges, holding its breath.
Peggy
from behind the counter, wiping the same spot on the counter she'd been wiping for ten minutesYou waiting on somebody, hon?
The question hung there. Easy to deflect, easier to lie. But Peggy had been working this shift for twenty years, and she'd seen enough people pass through to know the difference between waiting and hiding.