“IS DOG FOOD BAD FOR KIDS?”

Andie stopped in her tracks and stared at the two women in the booth. They were both youngish women, clad in jeans and sweaters, hair pulled back in ponytails, and with almost identical harried expressions. They looked nothing alike, but they were the same in their situations: young mothers, multiple children, impossible schedules. That they were here in Glenn’s at three p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon suggested they were grabbing some time for themselves while the kids were either at day care or grandma’s.

“Don’t mind me,” she said, shamelessly eavesdropping. Waitresses overheard a lot of interesting conversational tidbits, but this one made her want to laugh.

The woman picked up a fry and swabbed it in ketchup before heaving a sigh. “My youngest is a year old. Since he started walking, every time I feed the dog he comes running and tries to eat the dog’s food. I keep him away when I can, but if I turn my back he’s right back in the dog’s food bowl. He really likes Iams,” she finished helplessly.

“At least it’s not a cheap brand,” the other woman said, shrugging. “My kids eat dirt. Count your blessings.”

Laughing, Andie continued to the counter with her loaded tray of dirty plates and cutlery. The television mounted on the wall was muted, but as she passed by one of the truckers seated at the long counter said, “Hey, turn up the TV. That’s a weather bulletin.”

Shifting the weight of the heavy tray to her hip, Andie picked up the remote and hit the volume button. Immediately the voice of one of the local meteorologists filled the room, and the din of conversation died down as everyone turned to look at the screen.

“-Weather Service has issued a tornado watch until nine p.m. for the following counties in east Kansas. This watch does include the Kansas City area. The dynamics of this storm have been impressive-”

She took the tray on to the pass-through where the waitresses left the dirty dishes to be collected by the kitchen staff. She hadn’t dealt with any tornado watches when she’d been living in New York, but now that she was back in the Midwest the whole drill had quickly become as familiar as if she’d never left. Spring was welcome, with its longer days and warm relief from the bitter cold and blowing snow, but spring weather was volatile: warm one day, cold the next, with warring air masses chasing each other back and forth. Just last week they’d had another three inches of snow. Now the weather was warm and humid, and giant thunderheads were building high into the sky.

Keeping an eye on the weather was second nature to everyone in the Midwest and the South. “Tornado watch until nine tonight,” she sang out to the kitchen crew.

“Lord,” another of the waitresses, Denise, said as she wiped her hands before reaching into her pocket for her cell phone. “Joshua was going to spend the night with one of his buddies. I’d better make sure he lets the cats in the house before he leaves.”

“The cats will be fine,” Andie said absently. “Just tell him to make sure he turns off the stove.”

“Stove? Joshua doesn’t cook-Oh!” Her eyes went round as she realized Andie had kind of drifted off, mentally, which they’d learned was a signal. Cassie had shot off her mouth, telling some of her trucker pals about Andie’s near-death experience, and some of those pals had asked the other waitresses about it, and even though some of them had considered her slightly psychic before, now they were really paying attention to what she said.

Furiously Denise punched the buttons on her cell phone. “Voice mail!” she muttered with annoyed frustration. Instead of leaving a voice message, she texted her son; teenagers found it almost impossible to resist reading a text message, whereas they could ignore voice mail with ease.

Her phone rang within two minutes. “No, I don’t have a spy camera set up at home,” she said after listening to an outraged teenager squawking so loud Andie could hear the tone of it from ten feet away. “But it’s a good idea, thank you for giving it to me. Now go home immediately and make sure the stove is off, do you hear me? Immediately! Joshua, if you say one more word, you’ll not only go home, you’ll stay at home. Is that understood? You may say ‘yes.’”

With an air of satisfaction, Denise disconnected the call and winked at Andie. “Thanks. Now he thinks I either have spy cameras all over the place, or I’m psychic. Either way, he’ll think twice before he does something he shouldn’t be doing.”

“Glad to be of service.”

With a little start of inner surprise, Andie realized that she felt good. She liked being able to help people even in small ways, though preventing a kitchen fire that could have burned down Denise’s house probably didn’t qualify as “small,” certainly not to Denise. She liked working and paying her bills. Physically, she felt damn good, not just for someone who had been impaled and died, but better than she’d felt in years. She was active, she had plenty to eat, she slept well. If she could see her way clear to using that two million dollars for her own benefit, well, life would be better, but her conscience wouldn’t let her do it.

Whoever said money corrupted had had it the wrong way around. Money was okay; money was good. Having it was way better than not having it. The corruption came from the person, not the money itself. She would love to use at least part of the two million to buy herself a nice house and a new car, but every time she had herself halfway talked into doing it some bitchy little inner voice would say “Nope, can’t do it.”

But the money was sitting in her bank account, tempting her every day, and she knew she had to get rid of it before a weak moment caught her when the bitchy little inner voice was on a coffee break or something. She just wished that this one time, doing what she wanted to do and what was right had both happened to be the same thing.

Ah well. She still had her jewelry, and she hadn’t stolen it, so selling it and using that money shouldn’t be any problem. The amount wouldn’t be anywhere close to two million, but she’d still have a nest egg-unless the inner voice told her to repay what she’d used of the two million, in which case she was shit out of luck. Doing right definitely wasn’t easy.

A thunderstorm rolled overhead about five p.m.; that was usually a busy time at the truck stop, with people getting off work, but the heavy sheets of rain kept people in their cars, inching along the interstates and surface streets. Stopping might have been the better option, but no one wanted to get out and get soaked. Even the big rigs kept rolling past. The customers who were already in the truck stop stayed put, lingering over a last cup of coffee or deciding to have a slice of pie after all, but overall both the kitchen staff and waitresses had time to catch their collective breaths.

Business remained slow. Storm after storm marched across the city, and though they dodged the bullet regarding tornadoes, the thunderstorms were magnificent. Huge sheets of lightning flashed overhead, and straight-line winds blew trash like missiles across the parking lot. Andie had always kind of liked thunderstorms, so when she could she’d go to the windows and watch.

Around dark the storms eased and the rain lessened, and business picked up a little. Mother Nature wasn’t finished with the fireworks, though; the last line of storms marched through, providing a little more drama even though this one wasn’t nearly as intense as the earlier storms had been. One particularly brilliant and long-lasting flash of lightning lit the sky, and automatically Andie looked out the windows.

If the man had been walking toward the restaurant, she wouldn’t have paid any attention to him. But he wasn’t walking; he was just standing there as motionless as a rock, while the lightning flashed around him. She couldn’t make out any of his features, he was wearing a long rain slicker and was nothing but a dark shape, but the bottom dropped out of her stomach and her breath caught, and she knew. She had this reaction to one man, and one man only.