Josie walked back to her dorm slowly that first night, taking the long way past the small stone church at the edge of campus with its lit windows and its bulletin board out front announcing a Sunday service she hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to attend. Her roommate, a cheerful business major named Grace, was already asleep by the time she got back. Headphones still in, laptop glowing faintly on the desk.
Josie undressed quietly in the dark, careful not to wake her, and lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a long while. She thought about the boy who dropped her father’s napkin on the floor. Not with anger, with a kind of tired familiarity, the sort of feeling that comes from having met people like that before. Smaller versions in her hometown, in the hallways of her old high school.
Her father used to have a name for it. Small cruelty dressed up as confidence. He’d say some people never learn where the line is because nobody in their life has ever made them stop and look for it. She wondered, drifting toward sleep, whether Dalton Reeve had ever once been told no and made it stick. She decided it probably didn’t matter much either way. What mattered was who she chose to be in the meantime. That was the only part of any of it she could actually control.
Three days passed before she saw Walter again. Josie came in Tuesday. Same booth, same order. This time she brought a chemistry textbook, studying quietly while she ate. Walter found himself glancing over more than usual. It was Dorothy who put a name to what he was feeling.
Dorothy Aldridge had been coming into the Lantern every Tuesday and Friday for as long as Walter could remember. Eighty-two years old, a retired school teacher who taught half this town its multiplication tables. Coffee black, one sugar, same stool every time. She still ran into former students constantly, grown men and women with their own children now, who called her Mrs. Aldridge without thinking twice. The way you never quite stop calling a teacher by anything else, no matter how many decades passed.
“You keep looking at that girl like you’ve seen a ghost,” Dorothy said. “Maybe I have.” “Who does she remind you of?” Walter wiped a glass that was already clean. “There was a young trooper,” he said finally. “Used to come in here twenty-some years back, right after he made the force. Quiet fellow, polite, always tipped more than he needed to.”
“And one night, a couple of men came in here with a gun, looking to rob the register. I was behind this same counter, not fast enough to stop what was starting.” His voice dropped, remembering. “That trooper was sitting right where she’s sitting now. Talked them down, calm as anything. Nobody got hurt because of him.” Dorothy set her cup down slowly. “You never told me that story.” “Not one I tell much. Man like that doesn’t want the attention. He just wanted people safe.”
“What was his name?” Walter looked over at Josie, back straight, focused entirely on her notes. “Callaway,” he said quietly. “Daniel Callaway.” Dorothy followed his gaze. “She signed the receipt the other night,” Walter said. “J. Callaway.” Neither of them said anything for a long moment. The diner hummed with its usual soft noise, the hiss of the fryer, a country song low on the radio. Small towns have a way of bringing things back around.