I reach for my water. Your eyes are wide.

“What year did you leave, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“1979,” I say.

He nods slowly. “That’s about when everything started happening. It’s strange you’ve come back now.”

“When everything started happening?” I ask.

“Out at the lake,” he says, sort of coming back from wherever his mind had escaped to. “That’s when all the drownings started. I wouldn’t go out that way if I were you.”

An Unexpected Encounter

Gerald Mills walks away, out through the door, and the cowbell rings. I turn back to see how you took the odd message, and I widen my eyes to emphasize the strangeness of the situation. You give an excited kind of grin, anticipating some new adventure.

“That was weird,” I whisper, and you lean in.

“He’s in on it too.”

“In on what?” I ask.

“He’s in cahoots with the witch queen. Except he’s been in a feud with that man over there for a long time.”

“Cahoots?” I laugh. I can’t help it. Your imagination is running wild now. “So why did he tell us, ‘We don’t get many visitors’?”

“He’s trying to warn us,” you say in a serious voice, all the joking gone. “He’s trying to tell us to get out while we still can.”

I feel it again, that sudden rush of saliva to my throat, a swelling of something in my gut, something that wants out. I think I’m going to vomit right there on the table.

“Sorry, Pearl. I need to use the restroom.”

I assume it’s where it always was, through the swinging kitchen door to the right, more of a closet than anything else. And I’m right. I catch a glance of that old kitchen before I go through the bathroom door, and it’s not changed at all. Except nothing’s quite as shiny as it used to be—the stainless steel is clouded over, and the large stove has rust patches down around the bottom corners. I doubt the health department even comes out to Nysa anymore.

I stand over the toilet and wait, but whatever it was that stirred up my stomach starts to settle. Maybe moving around was the cure. I think getting outside for some fresh air might be a good idea, so I flush the toilet, wash my hands, and walk back out.

Standing there by our table is the man from across the diner. The man from the shadows. The first things I notice are his expensive shoes and how his pants are pressed in a perfect crease. The sunlight glares off the shined leather of his belt, and the brass buckle nearly glows. Every line of his shirt is sharp, he is clean-shaven, and his eyes . . .

That’s when I realize who he is.

“Tom?” I whisper, barely able to formulate the name, and when I do, so little air escapes that it’s more me shaping his name with my mouth than actually saying it.