I pay for my trip to Tampa. I feel a strange sense of comfort as the agent presses the paper ticket into my hand. This is it. I’m finally officially on my way to find my dad.

On my way out of the station, I pass several uniformed police officers, who are glancing around at the crowd. I duck my head, just in case they’re looking for me, but none of them gives me a second glance. Clearly, I’m being paranoid.

I walk across the street to the first restaurant I see, a place called Mel’s Diner, careful to keep my hat pulled low. I slink into a corner booth and sit down, breathing in the strangely comforting smells of fried food and freshly brewed coffee.

The diner is only half full, and the odds that anyone in here would recognize me are slim. There are four construction workers at one of the tables. One of them is still wearing his hard hat. At another table, a pleasant-looking couple peer at the menu through their bifocals. There’s a tired-looking mother at another table tending to two toddlers and a screaming infant in a stroller. And at the counter, there are a couple of middle-aged men. I relax a bit. Definitely not the typical Star Beck audience, thank goodness.

“You alone today, hon?” asks the plump, middle-aged waitress who approaches my table after I’ve been sitting there for a moment, gazing around. She has glasses hanging from a multicolored string around her neck and gray hair pulled back into a wispy pony tail.

“Yes, I am,” I say, looking up a bit so as not to be rude but still being careful to keep my face concealed under the hat.

“Sorry, hon,” she says apologetically, “but singles have to sit at the counter. We keep the booths for groups. It’ll start getting crowded in here in about thirty minutes when the eight o’clock buses come in.”

“Oh,” I say, my heart starting to race. In the corner booth, I can hunch down and escape being noticed. But can I do that at the counter, surrounded by people? The men at the counter are chatting with one another, sipping coffee, flipping through newspapers and watching the two TVs mounted overhead.

The waitress pats me on the back as I stand up.

“Sorry, hon,” she says again, leading me to an empty stool and placing a laminated menu in front of me. “I’ll buy you a Coke to make it up to you. Okay?”

I force a nervous smile. “Thanks.” But my nerves are on full alert now. What if someone recognizes me?