Walter reached into his pocket and spread four coins beside the coffee cup. There was also a folded five-dollar bill, a receipt from the pharmacy, and a bus ticket with a torn corner. He moved the money into a neat row, as if arranging it differently could somehow make it worth more. Evelyn placed her hand gently over his wrist. "We can split the toast," she said, not looking at Maggie. "It's plenty for me." For the first time that morning, the waitress stopped pretending she did not understand.
"Breakfast is taken care of," Maggie said quietly. "You two just eat while it's hot." Walter shook his head at once. "No, ma'am. We pay our way." There was no anger in his voice, only the fear of becoming a burden after a lifetime spent carrying other people's weight. Maggie crouched beside the booth so neither of them had to look up at her. "Then let me pay you back for fixing that cabinet," she said. "You saved us from having the whole shelf fall into the pie case. Frank would've charged me for the broken dishes."
"That was a screw and ten minutes of work," Walter protested. "And this is two plates of food," Maggie answered. "Sounds like a fair trade to me." She placed the bill under her order pad and walked away before he could refuse again. At the counter she took money from the tips in her apron, added it to the five-dollar bill, and rang the entire meal through the register. She made a point of printing the receipt, because she wanted no one to be able to say that Walter and Evelyn had stolen something they could not afford.
Through the front windows, a long black limousine rolled slowly past the diner, its dark glass reflecting the orange leaves along the sidewalk. It continued for half a block, then turned around and parked opposite the entrance. Maggie glanced at it once while refilling a truck driver's mug. Expensive cars occasionally appeared in Bell Creek when someone was headed to the golf resort thirty miles north, and she assumed this was another lost visitor. She did not see the man behind the tinted window lean forward when Walter lifted his shaking hand toward Evelyn's face.
Inside the limousine, Daniel Mercer had been waiting for the right moment to open the door for nearly twenty minutes. He was fifty-four, silver at the temples, and dressed in a charcoal suit that cost more than Walter's last monthly pension payment. His transportation company operated distribution centers in six states, and he had spent the previous evening speaking at a business dinner where people praised him for building a fortune from almost nothing. The compliments had left him cold. On the seat beside him was an envelope containing a photograph of a skinny, dark-haired thirteen-year-old boy standing between a younger Walter and Evelyn Whitcomb on the steps of a small white house.