I looked up. My lone customer of the day, the girl, stood in front of me. My eyes immediately flicked to the dishes on her table, the way they always did. I liked knowing my customers enjoyed their meals, and there was no better proof of that than an empty plate.

But food still covered the girl’s dishes. She’d barely touched her grilled cheese sandwich, steak-cut fries, and triple chocolate milkshake. A shame, really. Because with Sophia’s sourdough bread, I made the best grilled cheese in Ashland. And the milkshake? Heaven for your taste buds.

The girl cleared her throat again and held out the ticket I’d written her order down on.

“Was there something wrong with your food?” I asked.

“Because it doesn’t look like you ate a lot of it.”

“Oh, it was fine.” She shifted on her feet. “Guess I just wasn’t as hungry as I thought I was.”

I frowned. Everybody got hungry in the Pork Pit. No true Southerner could resist the combination of spices, grease, and artery-clogging fat in the air. But the girl couldn’t be a Yankee. Not with that soft drawl that made her voice ooze like warm preserves. More than likely, she’d thought there was something off about the food, considering no one else had been brave enough to come in and try it today. I’d never met Jonah McAllister, but I already disliked the man.

I rang up her total. “That’ll be $7.97.”

The girl dug through her wallet and handed me a credit card. I raised an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I don’t have any cash on me.”

I glanced at the name on the card. Violet Fox. I swiped the card through the machine and passed the girl the paper slip to sign. Her cursive was a loopy, feminine swirl.

I tucked the slip under the corner of the battered cash register and gave her my standard, y’all-please-come-back smile. “Have a nice day.”

Then I went back to the newspaper.

But the girl didn’t move. She just stood there in front of the register, like she wanted something else but didn’t know how to ask for it. I decided to let her squirm for ignoring my grilled cheese sandwich. Ten… twenty…

I ticked off the seconds in my head. Thirty… forty—

“Um, this might sound strange, but is there an old man who works here?” she asked. “Maybe in the back or something?”

Fletcher. She was asking about Fletcher. Not unusual.

The old man and the Pork Pit had been a downtown Ashland institution for more than fifty years. Fletcher Lane had been gone two months now, and people still came in and asked about him. Where he was. How he was doing.