The Journey Home

Teddy woke up on cold linoleum, staring at the underside of a booth table he didn't recognize.

For a moment he didn't move. He just listened. There should have been the low hum of the car engine, the rhythm of tires on the highway, the sound of Mia humming along to the radio with her mouth half-open in that way she always did when she was almost asleep. Instead there was the clatter of a dishwasher somewhere behind a swinging door, the scrape of a chair, a stranger's laugh two booths over.

He was at the diner. The one with the cherry pie sign in the window and the sticky ketchup bottle shaped like a tomato. They'd stopped here for lunch — hours ago, or was it minutes? Time didn't work the same way when you were this still for this long.

He must have slid off the seat when Mia jumped up. She always jumped up fast when her dad said let's go, come on, we're losing daylight. Teddy remembered the scrape of her sneakers, the door chime, the particular blue of the sky through the window just before it swung shut.