According to Tyler Kessler's spreadsheet, the five old men at the round table by the window were costing his grandmother eleven dollars an hour.
He had the numbers to prove it.
They came in at 6:30 every morning. They ordered coffee. Some days, one of them ordered toast. They stayed until ten, sometimes ten-thirty, and the whole time, that table, the best one in the diner, the one with the view of Main Street, sat full of men who spent about four dollars each.
The whole town called it the Liars' Table. It had been called that since before Tyler was born.
"Gran," Tyler said, turning his laptop around on the counter. "Look at this. That's our best table. If we turned it over three times during the breakfast rush, that's another hundred and forty dollars a week. Minimum."
Dot looked at the screen over her reading glasses.
"And where would you put Floyd and them?"
"The counter. Or the back booth. They don't need the window. They're just talking."
Dot looked at him for a long moment. It was the kind of look she gave customers who sent back her pie.
"All right," she said. "One week. Your way."
Tyler couldn't believe it. "Really?"
"Really." She picked up the coffee pot. "Some things a person has to learn on their own."
Tyler had been busy since he moved home. He'd set up online ordering, so commuters could grab breakfast sandwiches on the way to work in Marietta. He'd put a tablet by the register that took cards. He'd made the diner a website with a picture of the pie case on it, and that week a food blogger from Columbus had driven out and written that it was "the best sour cream raisin in Ohio."
The numbers were going up. For the first time in years, they were going up.
On Monday morning, he put a little sign on the round table by the window. RESERVED FOR BREAKFAST GUESTS. He moved five mugs to the back booth.
Floyd Eckert was first in, like always. He was eighty-four, a retired mail carrier, a widower who wore a tie to breakfast every single day because his wife Helen had liked him in a tie.
He looked at the sign. He looked at Tyler.
"Back booth," Tyler said cheerfully. "Same coffee, though!"
Floyd didn't argue. He just nodded, went to the back booth, and sat down facing the wall.
The others came in one by one. Gus. Harlan. Two brothers named Pete and Ray Yoder. Each one read the sign. Each one went to the back booth. Nobody said a word.
By Wednesday, there were only three of them.
By Thursday, two.
Tyler told himself that was fine. The round table had turned over four times that morning. Commuters, a family on a road trip, two nurses coming off the night shift. The register was happy. The spreadsheet was very happy.
On Friday morning, the back booth was empty.
At 9:45, Dot came out of the kitchen and stood next to Tyler at the register, drying her hands on a towel.
"Floyd hasn't been in since Tuesday," she said.
"He's probably mad at me." Tyler shrugged. "He'll come back. Where else is he going to go?"
"Floyd Eckert has eaten breakfast in this diner every morning for thirty-one years," Dot said. "He came the morning after Helen's funeral. He came the morning they took out his gallbladder, with the hospital bracelet still on."
She looked at Tyler.
"Floyd lives alone, hon. And his daughter's in Florida."
Tyler stopped smiling.
Floyd's little white house was on Maple Street, four blocks away. Tyler drove it in about ninety seconds.
The porch light was on. In the daytime.
There were three newspapers piled on the front step, still in their plastic bags. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Tyler knocked. He knocked harder.
"Mr. Eckert? It's Tyler, from the diner."
Nothing.
Inside, he could hear the television. A game show, loud, the way old people play them. The same cheerful voice, asking the same questions, to nobody.
Tyler tried the door. It was locked.
He went to the front window and put his hands up against the glass and looked in.
On the living room floor, between the recliner and the coffee table, he saw a slipper.
And then he saw the hand.