They still came in together every Friday.

And they still communicated through me.

“Bev, tell Bonnie she’s got lipstick on her teeth.”

“Bev, tell Marlene to mind her own business.”

I passed along their messages.

Even when neither had lipstick on her teeth.

Then there was Ed Kessler.

***

Ed was seventy-four.

A retired farmer with neatly combed white hair, a weathered face, and a habit of counting out exact change.

Every morning at 6:15, he sat on stool three.

Black coffee.

Two slices of wheat toast.

No butter.

He’d followed that routine since 1998.

And for twenty-eight years, he had never allowed anyone except me to pour his coffee.

If I was sick, he’d eat the toast without drinking anything.

People thought he was stubborn.

But I knew there was a reason.

A reason nobody else understood.

At least, I thought nobody else did.

Gus died that January.

He was eighty-one.