Then Amy was three and Jeanette was alone. Her father had died, a heart attack they told her, or else a stroke. It wasn’t the kind of thing anyone needed to check. Whatever it was, it hit him early one winter morning as he was walking to his truck to drive to work at the elevator; he had just enough time to put down his coffee on the fender before he fell over and died, never spilling a drop. She still had her job at the Box, but the money wasn’t enough now, not for Amy or any of it, and her brother, in the Navy somewhere, didn’t answer her letters. God invented Iowa, he always said, so people could leave it and never come back. She wondered what she would do.

Then one day a man came into the diner. It was Bill Reynolds. He was different, somehow, and the change was no good. The Bill Reynolds she remembered—and she had to admit she still thought of him from time to time, about little things mostly, like the way his sandy hair flopped over his forehead when he talked, or how he blew over his coffee before he sipped it, even when it wasn’t hot anymore—there was something about him, a kind of warm light from inside that you wanted to be near. It reminded her of those little plastic sticks that you snapped so the liquid inside made them glow. This was the same man, but the glow was gone. He looked older, thinner. She saw he hadn’t shaved or combed his hair, which was greasy and standing all whichaway, and he wasn’t wearing a pressed polo like before but just an ordinary work shirt like the ones her father had worn, untucked and stained under the arms. He looked like he’d spent all night out in the weather, or in a car somewhere. He caught her eye at the door and she followed him to a booth in back.

—What are you doing here?

—I left her, he said, and as he looked at where she stood, she smelled beer on his breath, and sweat, and dirty clothes. I’ve gone and done it, Jeanette. I left my wife. I’m a free man.

—You drove all this way to tell me that?

—I’ve thought about you. He cleared his throat. A lot. I’ve thought about us.

—What us? There ain’t no us. You can’t come in like you’re doing and say you’ve been thinking about us.

He sat up straight. —Well, I’m doing it. I’m doing it right now.

—It’s busy in here, can’t you see that? I can’t be talking to you like this. You’ll have to order something.

—Fine, he answered, but he didn’t look at the menu on the wall, just kept his eyes on her. I’ll have a cheeseburger. A cheeseburger and a Coke.