As in the Hartley group, the people whose fundraiser this was. Evan is 26, just finished his MBA, and his father and my father have apparently been discussing a merger for the past 8 months. She stopped. Evan shook my hand. He already knew my middle name.
He already knew I graduated from Duke. He'd clearly been briefed and my father stood there with this this look he gets like everything is settled. Was it not by me? Daniel put the truck in drive but he didn't pull back toward the estate. He sat there for a second thinking.
There's a diner. He said about 6 mi from here. It's open late. It's quiet. Nobody who knows your family goes there.
She looked at him. You do that? I'll do that. He said. But I want to be clear about something.
Okay. I'm driving you to a diner so you can drink some coffee and think. That's it. I'm not. He stopped, searched for the right word.
I'm not trying to make anything out of this. You're my boss's daughter and I'd like to keep my job. Something moved across her face. Not offense, something else. That's the most honest thing anyone has said to me all night.
She said. He pulled out of the parking lot. The diner was called Patties, which told you everything you needed to know about it. It had been there since 1987, according to the laminated sign near the register, and it had clearly not changed a single thing since 1994. Vinyl booths the color of old mustard, a counter with round stools, a jukebox in the corner that nobody used because it still charged 50 cents a song, and nobody carried change anymore.
The coffee was bad in a way that had become beloved. The pie was good in a way that needed no explanation. Three tables were occupied. Two men at the counter talking to the woman behind it about something involving a football team. An older couple in the back sharing a piece of pie and not talking at all, which meant they'd been married long enough that silence was its own conversation.
Daniel and Lauren took a booth near the window. The waitress, a woman in her 50s with a name tag that said Gloria and reading glasses pushed up on her head, came over, looked at the two of them with complete professional disinterest and said, "Coffee. " "Please," Lauren said. "Yeah," Daniel said. Gloria left. Lauren looked around the diner, not with the look of someone who found it beneath her, with the look of someone who was genuinely taking it in.
I used to eat at places like this, she said. Before college, my mom used to take me to this diner near our old apartment when my dad worked late. Where was that? Durham. We moved to Charlotte when I was 12.
After the company got big enough, she wrapped her hands around the coffee mug Gloria had dropped off with the speed and efficiency of a person who had done this motion approximately 40,000 times. Before that, we were just regular people. My dad had a small trucking operation. Three trucks. My mom kept the books.