Part Six: The Call

One Thursday afternoon in November, my phone rang while I was sitting in the bus barn between routes.

I didn’t recognize the number. I almost didn’t answer. Then I saw the area code was local and thought it might be the school.

“Hello?”

“Is this Megan Porter?” a woman asked. Her voice was gravelly, like she’d spent a lifetime talking over a busy kitchen. “Lily’s mother?”

“Yes,” I said. “Is everything okay?”

There was a long silence on the line. Long enough that my heart started pounding.

“My name’s Patricia Dunn,” the woman said. “I manage the Junction. Your daughter works for me.”

“Is she hurt? Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Patricia said quickly. “She’s at school, I assume. She’s not in any trouble, Mrs. Porter.”

Then she paused again.

“But I think you should come down here,” she said. “There’s something you need to see.”

My stomach dropped.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’d rather show you,” Patricia said. “Can you come now? It won’t take long.”

I looked at the clock on the bus barn wall. I had forty-five minutes before my afternoon route.

“I’ll be right there,” I said.

Part Seven: The Junction

I drove the fifteen minutes to the restaurant imagining every possible disaster.

That Lily had been stealing. That she’d been hurt and was hiding it. That she was mixed up with some older boy, a trucker, somebody dangerous. That she’d been doing something I didn’t want to name. By the time I pulled into the gravel lot under the arrow-shaped sign, my hands were shaking on the steering wheel.

Patricia met me near the entrance. She was waiting for me outside the front door in her apron, smoking a cigarette, which she stubbed out on the side of the building when she saw my truck.

She was about sixty, maybe a little older. Short and sturdy, with gray hair in a tight bun and reading glasses hanging on a beaded chain. She had tired eyes and a gentle voice, and when she shook my hand, her palm was rough with forty years of hot plates and dishwater.

“Mrs. Porter,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

“Please tell me what’s wrong,” I said.

Patricia looked at me for a long moment.

“Your daughter,” she said, “is one of the hardest-working kids I’ve ever hired. And I’ve been running this place for twenty-six years.”

“Then what’s wrong?” I said again.

Patricia didn’t answer. She just held the door open for me and nodded toward the back.