He pulled along the curb in front of the Main Street Cafe. He’d cut his teeth on the basics of cooking here. It was here he’d fallen in love with the creativity of cooking, and found the drive to want to not only cook, but also build menus and define his own tastes and recipes through hours and hours together with Kelly. Mr. McIntyre had given him a chance when he’d been barely old enough to bus tables. There were times when he’d felt closer to the McIntyre family than his own.

Andrew’s rental car was the only one on the block. He shut down the engine and got out.

He walked over to the big front window of the diner and peered inside. Cupping his hands beside his eyes, he could see the tables were still set up in the same way they always had been. Even the old cash register with the NC GROWN sticker on the side of it, and the red-and-white checkered tablecloths were the same. A glass domed cake plate sat at the edge of the counter. A couple of slices of a seven-layer cake were all that was left. Kelly had probably baked it. When they’d worked here together, for her parents, she’d baked all of the desserts early each morning, and waited tables every night.

After closing, they’d clean up, close out the till, and then share a snack and wind down for the night. It wasn’t often that she’d make a seven-layer chocolate cake that there’d be a piece left, but if there ever was, he’d bargain anything for it. He could almost taste it now.

They had the same work ethic. Aside from how beautiful she was, it had been one of the first things that had attracted him to her.

Back then, the night air hadn’t been filled with the smell of fresh-baked goods though. The whir of equipment carried into the night.

He meandered over toward The Cake Factory. The cafe might look like time had stood still, but this building was a whole other story. It had been a crumbling, dirty brick building when he’d lived here. Grandpa had worked in the ribbon factory, and a Christmas didn’t go by that Mom didn’t repeat the stories about how she used to be able to buy a whole spool of wide ribbon for just a quarter to make Christmas bows. He didn’t even really know how good a deal that was, but Mom had spoken of it like it was the best memory ever.

Lights shone through the second-floor windows of the building now. Kelly had mentioned that she ran two shifts.

The pillars that flanked the front door were welcoming, so much so that he couldn’t stop himself from walking over. A whimsical sign hung in the front window. CLOSED in curly black letters with hot-pink polka dots.