Some people dream of diner life, others are born into it. It was my dad’s vision to own a little breakfast-and-lunch place. He bought the original Worcester Lunch Car Company diner #723 the year I was born and lovingly restored it to its original glory. Sparkly aqua Formica counters and tables were paired with oxblood Naugahyde stools and benches. Buffalo china cups and plates stamped with the Miss Guthrie logo were special ordered. He lovingly polished the hand‑stamped chrome splashback that lined the wall separating the counter from the kitchen until it gleamed. He even managed to find replacement tiles for the black‑and‑white basket‑weave-patterned floor. It was my mom’s idea to add on the dining room out back, and then to extend our hours to include dinner so we could serve enough customers to actually make a living. Together my parents created a successful business and a place for themselves in the heart of the community of Guthrie, Vermont.

I was born into it.

As a baby, I was placed in a high chair next to the stack of Styrofoam take‑out containers so my mom could work the hostess stand. When I was steady enough to sit on a stool, I spent my days at the counter drawing pictures with crayons on the back of paper place mats. During my middle‑school years I ate cereal in a little two‑seater booth in the back, cramming for math tests and finishing assigned reading before the regional bus honked its horn outside. When I turned twelve, my dad finally relented and allowed me to work the cash register on weekends and school vacations. I took over my mom’s hostess shift when I was thirteen, the year she started treatment for breast cancer, and have been behind the counter ever since.

Every day at the diner was pretty much the same, until Peggy the cake lady died.

It was the first week of August, the Wednesday after the Coventry County Fair. July had been a brutal month of sticky heat that had the folks of Guthrie escaping to the glacial waters of Lake Willoughby every chance they could get. But when August arrived it brought with it the kind of dry, sunny days and crisp nights that made everyone’s heart ache with the desire to stop time. The corn was tall and heavy. Glossy red and purple heirloom tomatoes were piled high on the farmer’s market tables. The late summer days were the ones we all lived for, the reason we endured the long, snowy winters and the damp, muddy springs.

I arrived early that morning as I always do, before the bread man delivered his plastic pallets of English muffins and loaves of sliced sandwich bread. I got there even before Charlie, the breakfast cook, who sleepily pushed through the back door and into the kitchen to heat up the griddle and crack the first flats of eggs. I propped the door open behind me so the fresh air could chase away the lingering scent of last night’s dinner special. That hour before anything begins is my favorite time of day in the Miss Guthrie Diner. Don’t get me wrong—I love the hustle of a busy breakfast shift when every Naugahyde stool is filled and the line for one of the booths stretches out the door. But there is a magic to that hour when it’s just me, wiping down the counter, placing napkin‑wrapped cutlery and paper place mats at every seat. There’s a stillness that reminds me of being in the woods, where everything feels right in the world.

The quiet lasts only an hour, of course, usually less. On that day it had taken just five minutes from the moment I had switched...