Page 74 of Haunt Me

“Same as yesterday?” Marge asks, pen already poised over her pad.

I glance toward the counter where someone is cutting into a stack of pancakes. “Just coffee and toast today.”

She looks disappointed on behalf of breakfast everywhere.

“I’m still recovering from yesterday.”

“Fine. But I’m adding eggs.”

“Is that negotiable?”

“No.”

She walks away before I can argue.

I open the laptop and pick up where I left off. For the next hour, I study road signs while the diner slowly fills around me. Marge brings toast, eggs, and another coffee, then leaves me mostly alone. Every so often, she passes the booth and looks over my shoulder at what I’m reading.

I learn that a triangular sign means yield, a pentagon marks a school zone, and a circular sign warns of a railroad crossing.

I also learn that the man at the counter takes his coffee black but adds enough sugar to make that detail meaningless. The woman in the red scarf orders one blueberry muffin and spends forty minutes pretending not to listen to everyone else’s conversations. A little girl in a purple coat insists her hot chocolate needs exactly seven miniature marshmallows, and Marge counts each one before sliding the mug toward her.

The diner has a rhythm. The bell rings and people enter carrying cold air with them. Coats come off. Coffee pours. Plates leave the kitchen and return empty.

Names move through the room as easily as the scent of bacon.

I’m beginning to understand why I came back.

Around eleven, the rhythm falters.

The front door opens, then opens again before it has time to close—a family of five claims the large booth by the window. Three men in heavy work jackets take seats at the counter. An older couple waits near the entrance while Marge clears a table, and another group crowds behind them, rubbing their hands together against the cold.

The kitchen bell rings twice.

“Marge,” someone calls through the opening behind the counter. “I need those orders.”

“I only have two hands, Eddie.”

“You had two hands yesterday and somehow managed.”

“Yesterday I didn’t have half the county deciding they needed lunch at the same time.”

A teenage boy pokes his head out from the kitchen doorway, takes one look at the room, and shrugs out of his apron. “Marge, I gotta go.”

“Don’t you dare,” Marge warns.

“I have a chemistry test.”

“You also have a shift to finish.”

“My mother said school comes first.”

“That sounds more like a convenient excuse.”

He disappears anyway. Marge closes her eyes for half a second. I look down at the laptop screen. The right-of-way diagram stares back at me.

Another customer enters.

Marge grabs two menus, pours coffee at the counter, and nearly collides with a woman trying to remove a toddler from a puffy snowsuit.