put on my good dress, and drove down to Ruthanne’s, the little breakfast place on the other side of the river. Ruthanne had been after me for years to come work her counter. She took one look at me in the doorway and said, “Tell me you finally quit that place.” I told her what happened. She poured me coffee, slid a fresh apron across the counter, and said, “Start Monday. And honey — bring your people with you.”
I didn’t have to bring them. They came. Word travels fast in a town where I’d fed half the funerals and every graduation breakfast for thirty-two years. By that Friday, Ruthanne’s was so full the widowers were sharing tables, and the young manager’s “new concept” across the river was serving eggs to empty booths. He’d bought the building. He hadn’t understood that he’d never bought the reason folks walked through the door.
The regional owner came down from Atlanta to see why one location had cratered while a diner two miles away had a line out to the parking lot. It didn’t take him long to find out. Every regular he stopped told him the same thing — that the woman who remembered their orders and asked after their grandkids was pouring coffee at Ruthanne’s now. He offered me my old job back at nearly double the pay, and I turned him down without a second’s thought.
I’m sixty-one years old. My feet ache by noon and my hands aren’t as quick as they were. But every morning I tie on Ruthanne’s apron, and every morning that counter is full of people who know my name. A tired old waitress, he called me. Turns out this town wasn’t tired of me at all.