His driver, Lewis, studied him in the mirror. "Shall I pull up to the door, sir?" Daniel kept his eyes on the window. "Not yet." He had rehearsed an introduction on the flight, another in the hotel, and a third while driving through streets that seemed smaller than he remembered. But now the Whitcombs were only a few yards away, looking older and poorer than the people who had occupied his memory for four decades. He was afraid of not being remembered. More than that, he was afraid they would remember him perfectly and still wonder why he had stayed gone so long.
Maggie did not know any of that. She was back in the kitchen, where Frank Larkin, the diner's owner, was comparing the morning receipts against a handwritten list. Frank was fifty-eight, permanently tired, and worried enough about the restaurant's future to notice every slice of bread. A new gas station outside town had opened a breakfast counter, the highway had diverted through traffic, and a letter from his bank lay beneath the cash register with a red date stamped across the top. When Maggie told him she had paid for the Whitcombs' meal herself, he looked at the receipt as though it represented a much larger problem.
"You can't keep doing this," he muttered. "People see one free breakfast, they start expecting another." Maggie showed him the cash entry. "It wasn't free. The drawer balances." Frank was not interested in the distinction. "You think I don't know you're short on money? Now you're spending your tips on strangers." She wanted to remind him that he had once helped Walter paint the diner after a flood, and that he used to let Evelyn take leftover pie to the church pantry. Instead she said, "They aren't strangers, Frank. And they didn't ask."
Frank looked toward the booth and lowered his voice. "That man had three nickels and a penny on his table yesterday. I saw it. At some point somebody needs to tell them they can't afford to come here." The sentence made Maggie angrier than she expected. "They have come here longer than I've been alive," she answered. "You don't get to make them feel ashamed for sitting down." He pointed toward the kitchen door. "One more argument and you can finish your shift somewhere else." Maggie pressed her lips together, picked up the coffee pot, and returned to the dining room before she said something that would leave her son without grocery money that week.
Evelyn was eating slowly when Maggie reached them again. Walter had barely touched his eggs. "Everything all right?" Maggie asked. He nodded, then lifted his head as if he had been trying to work up the courage to speak. "Today's our anniversary," he said. "Sixty-one years. We were going to get the cinnamon pancakes, the way we used to, but Evelyn said they make her too sleepy." Evelyn gave a quiet laugh. "I said they cost too much, Walter. You heard me perfectly well." He studied his plate and admitted that he had.