By the time the clock above the counter crept past one in the afternoon, the restaurant had emptied into something resembling calm. The lunch crowd was gone, leaving behind only the scent of hot oil, salt, and syrupy soda that clung to the air long after trays were wiped clean. Outside, Riverbend City baked under a relentless sun, its sidewalks fractured by time and neglect, its storefronts faded by years of promises that never quite arrived.
Inside the restaurant, a woman sat with her two children at a table near the back wall, far from the windows and even farther from attention.
Her name was Rebecca Sloan.
She was forty three years old, though the weight in her shoulders and the lines around her eyes suggested more than the calendar admitted. Her hair was pulled back with care rather than style, and her clothes were clean but tired, softened by countless washes that had erased any hint of newness long ago. Across from her sat her son Jonah, who had woken up that morning officially nine years old, and beside him sat his younger sister Paige, whose feet barely brushed the floor as she swung them under the table.
They had been walking since sunrise.