He hadn't meant to kill the child, of course. Even now, twenty years later, despite the hypnotic effect time has on the mind -- brushing over the hardest edges, replacing cold fact with warmer rationalization -- he is confident of that much.

And yet, as Wendell Stillman gazes back at the reflection in the rearview mirror of his battered Oldsmobile, he also realizes no amount of time can fully erase the fact that his daughter's death had been avoidable.

Wendell's eyes flicker from the mirror to the highway in front of him. In the distance a truck stop wavers in the heat like sun-dappled water. He frowns. It has been a few years since he's been on this route, but he does not recall this particular greasy spoon. Then again he knows they are all the same. He looks at the tarnished watch gripping his wrist. It is just after five o'clock. Dinner time. Boredom has long ago swallowed hungry. But a cursory glance at the fuel gauge confirms the need for gas. And he smoked his last cigarette over three counties ago, at an identical truck stop on the outskirts of another equally forgettable town. Wendell sighs at the irony, air whistling through his nostrils. The only memorable aspect of his travels through the slow death that is middle America are the names of the towns themselves: Climax, Fertile, Bonesteel.

The diner, upon closer inspection, is hovering near dilapidation. The side of the building has the pocked look of war, the ground littered with poker chip flakes of white paint.

Wendell steps from the car and exhales into the blistering afternoon. The engine ticks under the hood, a panting dog. His Olds, long without air, has been stifling despite the fact he's had the windows rolled down since just after sunup. His shirt sticks to his back, wet fabric bunched in long furrows across his wide shoulders. Wendell glances back inside his car. On the backseat are his coat and tie, neatly folded on the vinyl. Too hot for that, he decides. He pats his rear pocket and feels for the molded lump of his wallet. He heads inside.

The diner has the standard, sterile layout. A high school athletic calendar from nearly two decades ago is still fastened to the inside of the glass door, tape yellow from the sun. Hand-scrawled Ws and Ls chronicle mostly failure in everything but girls' volleyball. Inside stands a worn Formica counter, periodically interrupted by ketchup dispensers and porcelain cups. These nestle sugar packets complete with inane trivia questions about the state's various tourist attractions. Giant balls of string and palaces made of corn. The thought billows in his mind like a roadside dust devil -- there and gone. Wendell continues his mental inventory of the restaurant. Red upholstered stools stand permanent sentry below the counter. In the background, neatly stacked glasses; a two-pot coffee machine; a see-through vat of orange drink, recycling itself in a burbling waterfall. Along the window are booths, draped in the same obnoxious red as the counter stools. The room reeks of old grease, diesel fuel, and something he cannot place. Something herbal.

"Howdy, mister," comes a voice, high and cheerful.

Wendell brings his attention back to the counter. A waitress now stands behind it, the double doors to the kitchen swishing closed behind her.

"Table, booth, or counter?" she asks. Her voice washes over him -- the hours on the road, the oppressive heat, suddenly gone.

"Uh...counter," Wendell says. He always eats alone.

"Are you sure? Not like you'll be putting anybody out," she answers, sweeping her hand forward in a gesture that takes in the entire diner.

Wendell looks around. Emptiness greets him. He peers out the window and realizes through the dust whispering across the glass that his is the only vehicle in the lot. "Whatever's most convenient," he finally offers, contemplating the odds. Roadside diners inevitably cater to a number of regulars: local farmers who gather to complain about the lack of rain; pimple-faced kids released from the afternoon boredom of the area high school; the elderly, who are pulled to cafés by the same mysterious attraction that draws moths to flame.

"A booth will be fine," he says.

"So which will it be?" The waitress has blonde hair that falls across her shoulders in soft piles, framing her pink face.

"Lead the way," he answers, taking a step backwards.

"Making me earn my tip, huh?" she says, and laughs, her voice sweet as spring rain.

Wendell follows her to the far corner of the diner, to the last booth. She weaves, serpentine, through the tables. He watches her hips move beneath her knee-length skirt and notes with a slight smile the way her apron strings ride above the crescent shape of her bottom. Her legs, white and bare, suggest athleticism. Pink socks curl daintily over the tops of an expensive pair of running shoes.

"How's this?" she asks.

"Just fine," Wendell says, squeezing past her and into the seat facing the wall. He blushes as the seat groans in protest. Wendell closes his eyes. He considers pre-paying for the gas and leaving, but when he looks up she is still smiling down at him and he realizes in that moment that he loves her. The certainty is as sharp as the sun glaring off the roof of his car. It is not sexual. Instead, he loves her for the way her smile accepts him without judgment. Most women view him with equal portions of pity and contempt. Years of working his tri-state sales route have turned his thick frame into something soft and lumpy. Door-to-door ass, the other salespeople in his home office jokingly call it. In Wendell's case, it is inching past the figurative. And since Charlene left all those years ago, he's lived alone -- his life predetermined.

"You okay, mister?" she asks. Not waiting for an answer, she continues. "I have a feeling. Suppose it's the nature of the work. You get to be pretty perceptive about people, working in a diner." She pauses to tap her pencil against her flat, white teeth. "That, and I'm five credits shy of my associate's degree down at River Valley Community College. I had a psychology class."

"That so?" Wendell asks, desperately wishing he had a menu to keep him preoccupied. His tongue feels like the tip of an eraser. His eyes focus on her blouse, the way her small breasts move beneath the thin sheen of fabric when she inhales.

"Yup. Mr. Gabriel--that's my Psych instructor's name--he said I had the potential to go on to University. Of course that'll never happen. Not that I don't think I have potential, and all. But I just don't see myself living in a dormitory. Pretty silly, huh?"

"Silly?" Wendell asks, despite himself.

"Yeah. That I'd let the thought of living in the dorms affect my decision to go to college. I mean, I know I could get along. Once you've worked as a waitress, you can get a job anywhere." Here, the waitress laughs again. It sounds more reserved, defeated. "Oh well, it just goes to show how the little things can turn out to have the biggest effects in your life."

Wendell raises his eyebrows in silent agreement. The waitress is searching the ample pocket of her apron, looking for her order pad, and has stopped talking. Or at least he isn't aware of her voice. He is thinking about his ex-wife, Charlene.

When she'd left him, she had been taking classes at a community college herself. Creative writing, Wendell remembers. He'd come home from the road and find heavy literature anthologies spread across the kitchen table, their onion-skin pages whispering as he shut the door behind him. Notebooks full of Charlene's tight, square cursive accompanied the larger books. Once, out of curiosity, Wendell had picked up some of her writing and scanned through the white, lined paper. The first page contained a short poem, in strained rhyme, that discussed the death of a lamb. Wendell flipped past this. Deeper in the notebook, some ten or so pages past the last entry, he came across a note, addressed to him, in the same blocky handwriting. It had been crossed out with a sweeping X that began in the top of each corner and knifed down at an angle ending in the opposite corner. Wendell stared at the writing, noting the small blobs of ink where his wife must have paused in thought. The letter itself was terse, taking up three-quarters of a page: She didn't love him, wasn't sure if she ever had. But whatever had been there had slowly drained away since Margaret's death. She thought he'd changed. Grown cold over the years. Removed. She felt as if she'd lost two family members. She was different too. Needed to move on. Was thinking of getting her teacher's license.

It had all seemed so considered. So determined. Wendell closed the notebook, running his fingers over the spiraled wire of the spine.

Two weeks later, she told him over dinner. Wendell didn't argue. He just sat there staring down at his scalloped potatoes, at the random pattern of pepper gracing the melted cheese. "Say something," she'd pleaded, voice thick with emotion. Wendell hadn't ever mentioned the notebook, but had been considering the letter for the past fourteen days, creating his own extensive list of arguments, rehearsing them in the Oldsmobile as he swept across the barren winter of the Heartland.

But his mind was blank. When he finally looked up from his potatoes, Charlene's chair was empty. He left on a four-day sales trip the next morning. When he returned, she was gone. That was eighteen years ago.

"So what's your pleasure?" the waitress asks, bringing him back to the empty diner.

"Could I see a menu?" he asks.

"I'm sorry. I swear my head is nothing more than a place to hang my ears. You sit tight, and I'll fetch you one."

"I really need a cigarette, too," Wendell adds as she makes her way back through the tables. "Couple packs of Marlboro if you have them." Cranking his neck, he again searches the diner for other customers. Five square tables -- each complete with four empty chairs -- sit behind him, spaced out on top of the chipped tile like awkward dancers at a high school prom.

She returns with the cigarettes, a packet of matches, and a menu. After ordering a chicken basket, Wendell tears into the cellophane, taps the box against the table top, and lights up. The waitress returns with a glass of water and a plastic bottle of ketchup from the counter.

"I never even asked. What brings you out this way? Most folks use the interstate now."

Wendell exhales through his mouth, blue smoke jettisoning out to hang in front of the window. "I'm in sales. Miss too many opportunities on the interstate; it's too fast. Life blood is on the back roads."

"Right. Life blood. So, what do you sell?"

Wendell glances around. Still alone. "Um...jewelry."

She stares at him a moment before asking, "A traveling jewelry salesman?"

Noting the disbelief in her voice, Wendell nods for emphasis. "Yup. You'd be surprised what people sell. Pre-matted picture frames. Those plastic rings you hang shower curtains on. Hell, I know a guy who makes a living selling pet dictionaries."

"Pet dictionaries?" the waitress asks, crinkling her nose. She slides down into the booth across from him.

It is Wendell's turn to laugh. "Sure. Two barks means Fido's hungry; three, and he is about to shit all over the living room carpet." He takes another drag and peers at her through narrowed eyes.

"But jewelry? Like real gold and pearls and stuff?"

"Actually, I sell class rings to high school seniors. Full men's and women's selection. Pins for varsity letter jackets. Necklaces. You name it."

"Sure," the waitress agrees, drumming her fingers on the table. "I always thought that was a waste of money. God, who wants to remember high school?"

"I tend to paint a different picture," Wendell says behind a thin smile. There is something so familiar about her, about the way rings of her hair twist just in front of her ears.

"But you agree with me, right?" she asks.

"Personally? I couldn't even tell you the name of my high school."

"I notice you're not wearing any rings, either," she adds.

"Not for some time," Wendell says, staring down at his empty fingers.

"Have you spoken with her lately? I mean, is she doing okay?"

"Excuse me?" Wendall asks. He throat feels suddenly tight, achey.

Her face blossoms red. "God, me and my mouth! I didn't --"

"It's no trouble," Wendell says, holding his hand up, palm out.

"I should leave you alone. It's just when you came in it looked like you could use a friend."

"How's that?" Wendell is interested. He pushes the open pack across the table. A small pile of ash drops from his cigarette and lies smoldering between them.

The waitress selects a cigarette and rolls it between her fingers for a moment before answering. "Well...."

"Really, I want to know."

"Okay. It's like I said, you learn a lot working in a diner."

"So what else have you learned about me?" Wendell asks.

"Hmm...Quiet thinker. Good at pitching a line. Travel alone. I'd say you're running from something."

Wendell snorts, smoke blasting from his flared nostrils. "Who isn't?"

"Difference is, I think you're ready to confront it." The waitress flips the cigarette to her lips and lights a match. Now her eyes narrow, the watery blue hardening into steel.

"And I'm gonna tell you?" Wendell asks, voice cracking under a sudden wave of the inevitable.

"Not yet. First I have to ask you something." The waitress inhales deeply before snubbing her cigarette out on the underside of the table. She leans in close. "You wanna get high?"

"Excuse me?" Wendell says, his broad face etched with surprise.

"It's no big deal if you say no. It's just you're the only paying customer we've had in here in ages. I mean, it's not like we'd get caught, if that's the problem. Terry don't mind, either. Hell, he's the one who sold me the grass. So it's up to you."

Wendell tries to remember the last time he's been high. It was before he and Charlene had married, he knows that much. He had been reading from Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums and drinking peach schnapps. Someone had accidentally sat on a bag of pretzels.

"What do you say?" the waitress asks again.

"I'm dreaming," is the best Wendell can muster.

"I'll take that as a yes," she says and slips out of the booth, heading back for the kitchen.

The waitress returns with her purse, spilling its contents on to the table top. A lighter. Lipstick. Visine. Two and a half sticks of Juicy Fruit. Car keys. Change. And the dope.

"Christ!" Wendell exclaims, staring down at the nearly full sandwich bag.

"I buy everything in bulk," she says, laughing.

"What the hell am I doing," Wendell asks, running a hand through his graying hair as he scans the parking lot for any sign of life.

"Don't worry," the waitress says as she unzips the baggie. "The sheriff stopped eating here when we took the corned hash off the menu."

She digs in the yawning maw of her purse and retrieves a small book of unrolled cigarette paper. Within minutes, she passes the deftly rolled joint to Wendell for inspection. Rigid as a cotter pin.

"True craftsmanship," he says, studying the tapered ends between shaky fingers.

"Why, thank you," the waitress says. Scooping a hand around the clutter, she pours everything back into her purse. "Blaze away."

Wendell runs his tongue over his lips. "Really, I shouldn't." He sets the joint on the table and pushes it back toward her with his index finger. "I mean, I still have a ways to go before I stop for the night."

"You sure? If you're worried about the high, I can vouch for the quality -- good buzz will do wonders for you."

"I'm sure. I have an appointment with a vice principal and the president of the student council at 8:45 tomorrow morning."

"Just say no, huh?" the waitress asks.

"If you want to, please go ahead," Wendell says. "I'm just going to go use the restroom quickly before my food gets here."

The whir of the hand dryer echoes off the bathroom walls as Wendell returns to his table. The waitress leans against the window of his booth beneath a sharp haze of marijuana smoke. Her legs are stretched across the seat, bare feet dangling off the end of the upholstered cushion. Wendell watches as she wiggles her brightly painted toes -- a silver ring gracing each pinkie. His plate of food sits on the table. Terry had delivered Wendell's chicken basket in exchange for the last two hits off the joint, which he'd taken back to the kitchen to enjoy.

"Smells divine," the waitress says behind closed eyes. She is methodically chewing on one of his French fries.

"Help yourself," Wendell says. "Jesus, now I know why no one comes in here."

"Why's that?" she asks, opening her eyes.

"Because the waitresses get high and steal the food," Wendell says.

"Oh, please," she laughs. "I had two fries, tops!"

"Well, at least you didn't sit on the pretzels." Seeing her puzzled look, he taps the edge of the table with a finger. "Skip it. Inside joke."

Her slim hand reaches out and she touches his arm. Wendell does not move. The waitress drops her feet to the floor and leans across the table, kissing him on the mouth. His nostrils flare, and he breathes a mixture of pot and fried food.

"Again with the mystery," she says when they part. "So? Are you ready?"

"Ready?" Wendell croaks, feeling the word worm its way around his teeth.

"To tell me what you're running from? Remember?" She is resting on her forearms now, so that she hovers over the table.

Wendell squeezes his eyes shut, but she is still there, levitating in front of him in the blackness like some roadside magician's assistant. Ah, but what rabbits will pop out of your hat? he asks himself. Wendell knows all about magic. About how when it really counts, there is no such thing. That no slight of hand is fast enough to bring back dead little girls. No amount of hocus pocus can change the fact that nineteen years ago he'd lost Margaret.

Killed.

Smothered beneath his sleep, she'd been unable to make him feel her weak struggles until they were merely uneasy memories seeping into his subconscious. When he'd risen, there was simply a sensation similar to sitting on his wallet too long; a restless feeling of misplacement. Then he remembered.

He remembered putting her down on the bed for her afternoon nap, ignoring his wife's advice to the contrary as she left to visit her mother. But the baby wouldn't sleep in the crib; Charlene knew that. Not without constant attention, anyway. And Wendell was tired too. Had just returned from a road trip, the last 600 miles bearing down on his eyelids with all the force of runaway steel.

He remembered Maggie's last whimpers, distant and lulling, not quite able to penetrate his lumbering exhaustion.

He'd closed his heart to these facts as he carried his two-month-old daughter down the cold hallway to her room and placed her in the crib before calling the ambulance. Closed his eyes as the doctors attempted to assuage their grief with textbook consolation. Crib death. Tragic, they had told Charlene. Unexplainable. But blameless. Closed his mouth on the truth. Pulled it off for all these years. Fooled them all. But still, there is no magic. No secret potion. No abracadabra. No mystic chant that will make him forget the heaviness: the limp burden, awkward in his arms. Just the ugly truth, a black snake that wound up his sleeve and has struck at his heart for twenty years. Wendell opens his eyes, surprised at the long shadows creeping across the floor. "I'm just looking for something I lost, I guess."

The waitress holds him in her gaze for a moment. Wendell has a sense she is waiting for him to continue. When he doesn't, she simply says, "Sometimes the things we've lost are with us the whole time, you know?"

A sad smile touches the corners of Wendell's lips. "Yes, I do."

Their conversation is broken by a sweeping flash: headlights from a car pulling off the road.

"Crap. That's Tina. My shift is over. Look, you're a sweet guy. Whatever's eating at you, I'm sure it's not as bad as you think it is."

"Thanks," Wendell says, reaching for his wallet.

"Put that away," the waitress argues. "And I mean it, stop beating yourself up. You deserve better."

They slide out of the booth as a young woman pushes through the diner's front door. She carries her uniform on a coat hanger, hooked over her shoulder with her finger. "Christ! Not again, girl! You're gonna get fired one of these days!" Waving the air in front of her face, she makes her way around the long counter and disappears into the kitchen, shouting, "Terry, turn on a fan, will you?"

Wendell still hasn't replaced his wallet, and digs in it for a twenty. "Here, I do need to fill up with gas."

The waitress takes the worn bill. As he turns to leave, she grabs him by the wrist and pulls him into her arms. "You're forgiven," she whispers and kisses his cheek.

Outside, the day's heat still plays across the horizon in liquid radiance. Above, a whisper of moon hangs white as a toenail clipping. Wendell unscrews his gas cap and reaches up to trace the kiss lingering on his cheek. From behind the café comes the rumble of an engine turning over. As he squeezes the nozzle, the waitress pulls around front. She lets the car idle and lights a cigarette. Wendell stares at her pink face. The blonde hair. He releases the pump from his grip.

She begins to ease the car forward, gravel crunching beneath the weight of the vehicle. Wendell stumbles over the hose as he struggles to catch her.

"Wait!" he shouts, racing after the vehicle.

Red brake lights flash. Her head pokes out of the open window. "Excuse me?" Something between a smile and a frown shadows her face.

"Uh..." Wendell stammers, suddenly unsure of what to say. "Your name. I never got your name."

"It's Maggie."

Wendell is resting his hand on the roof of her car, and it begins to shake. He peers across into the approaching darkness.

"I didn't get yours, either," she says.

He looks back into the car. "Wendell. Wendell Stillman." They stare at each other in silence. He feels his mouth working like a koi laying amid the pieces of a shattered bowl.

"Well, Wendell, I have to get going, but it was nice visiting with you."

"Yeah. Nice," he says as she puts the car in gear. In desparation, he begins, "Hey, I was thinking about what you said earlier."

"What's that?" the waitress asks.

"About how we let the little things have the biggest effects."

"Yeah?"

"Well, it --" Wendell pauses, his heart hammering away inside his chest. There is so much to say. To admit. Salvation along the roadside. Just enough time, before the sun sinks into the distant hills, for some truck stop contrition.

"Wendell? What is it?" she asks.

Somewhere in the gathering darkness, a coyote yips.

"Why not live in an apartment? I mean, if you can't see yourself living in the dormitory, just rent."

She lets the car idle for nearly a minute, her eyes studying his. "Come here," she whispers, her voice hoarse.

Wendell leans into the car. She places her hands on his cheeks, fingers hot and soft, and kisses him again on the mouth. "Thank you."

He steps back as she pulls onto the road and drives away. Wendell watches until her taillights blink out in the distance. He stands in the dusk, hands deep in his pockets, listening to the growing susurrus of crickets at the road's edge.