Chapter 70

The morning dragged on as the locals seemed to fill the diner in shifts. The five in the morning early birds were done with their breakfast by seven, then came the ones who worked locally who emptied out by nine and then the late sleepers who were mostly the older and younger age groups who had nothing else to do on a cold winter morning than to sit around in a warm establishment that also served hot tea and coffee for free. They were around and I would leave them there after my shift ended at twelve. The conversations were always the same- the weather, their kids and grandkids, their school holiday jobs how much they hated their bosses and my least favorite topic, the new people in town.

I was still the small town gossip as people wondered where I came from and who I was and how amazingly strange it was that no one had gotten the low down on me yet. A family who had moved in the same time I had were already a topic exhausted as the town had all their information, down to the