The first thing Ruby Shaw noticed about the elderly man was not his worn coat or the brown suitcase resting against his leg. It was the way he counted his money, smoothing each dollar bill against the table as though the paper might tear if he hurried.
Outside the Silver Star Diner, a cold October wind pushed dead leaves across the empty parking spaces, and inside, the lunchtime crowd was thinning to a few truck drivers and a woman waiting for her laundry to finish next door.
Ruby had worked enough long shifts to recognize a customer trying to make a small amount of money stretch, but the old man was different. He kept looking at the booth across from him, where no one sat, as if he had promised someone he would save that seat.
"Can I get you something hot?" Ruby asked, setting a menu beside his hand. Her pink waitress uniform was freshly washed but fading at the seams, and a pencil held her thick auburn hair in a hurried knot.
The man looked up with brown eyes that were tired without being unfriendly, then folded the bills before answering. "Coffee, please. And two ham biscuits, wrapped separately, if that isn't too much trouble."
Ruby told him it was no trouble at all, then asked whether he was expecting someone. He glanced at the empty booth seat, and the smallest smile appeared. "I surely hope so," he said.
Ruby wrote down the order, but she did not move away immediately. The suitcase was an old-fashioned hard-sided case with brass clasps, its corners polished smooth by decades of handling, and one strip of faded red cloth had been tied around the handle. The man's fingers rested on the cloth for a moment before he tucked his money away. He looked almost eighty, Black, neatly shaved, with close-cropped white hair and a charcoal cardigan buttoned over a brown shirt. Ruby was saving money for nursing classes. Nothing about his appearance suggested trouble, yet there was something in the careful way he sat that made Ruby think he had spent many years being told where he was allowed to wait. She promised to bring the coffee first.
When she returned with the coffee, the man was studying an envelope so creased that its corners had gone soft. There was an address on it, written in neat blue ink: Silver Star Diner, Millstone, Georgia. Beneath the address were five words, carefully underlined: Please come if you can. He folded the envelope quickly when he realized she had seen it, but Ruby had no desire to pry. She set down the cup, filled a small bowl with sugar packets, and asked whether he wanted the biscuits plain. "One with strawberry jam," he answered. "The other with nothing but butter. At least, that's how she used to like them. People change their minds about food in thirty-eight years, I expect."