So even though it was expensive and my bank account was turning from pink to crimson, I kept driving until I couldn’t anymore, until I was choking on the tears and I couldn’t see. Then I’d park the car on a street and put my head down on my steering wheel and sob for a few minutes.

That was how Lou found me, shuddering all over and parked next to bushes sprouting tubed white flowers, beer cans clustered near the roots like mulch. Heaving sobs into the air like questions.

Two fingernail taps on my window. “Everything okay in there?”

“Go away,” I wailed. I waved my fingers in the direction of the Good Samaritan.

“It’s just that”—the voice was soft and low, the way you speak to a startled pony—“you’ve blocked me in.”

I looked up. I was blocking a driveway. The tubey little flowers belonged to someone’s garden. Amazing how fast even heartbreak gives way to embarrassment. I scrambled for my keys, spewing apologies and snot all over my dashboard.

Another fingernail tick at the window. I looked up, finally. The Lou I didn’t know yet, coiled auburn hair and bright friendly eyes, smiled back at me, a pretty crooked grin, the unevenness making it all the more special since the rest of her face was so symmetrical. She bent down and leaned her folded arms against my side mirror, so we were face-to-face.

“My name’s Lou. I think I could be a little late to work, if you wanted to grab breakfast or something. Maybe talk?”

And then I was crying again for another reason, because there were still good people left in the world, because I was still a person in the world and someone had seen that. I unlocked the passenger door and she climbed in. Still crying, I let her guide me two miles down the road, left, right, right, parking lot, to a stop in front of a hot-pink neon sign that blinked Paulette’s Slices 24/7.

“I hope you like pie,” Lou said. “It’s my favorite breakfast.”

I did not. Especially for breakfast. “That sounds great,” I said, hiccuping.

I followed Lou into the diner, smoothing out my jeans to have something to do with my hands. Lou looked fresh and cool in checked-plaid culottes and a swingy cashmere cardigan, no makeup on her face. She had a loop to her hips somewhere between a sashay and a hula dance. When I sat across from her in the booth, she smiled at me and darted a quick look up to my eyes before she pressed a menu into my hands.

“Apple cheddar,” she said, like she was telling me a secret. “Can’t go wrong with it.” Then she swiped at her face, beneath her eyes. “A little smudge, there and there.”