"And the gravy?" a teenager asked once, nose wrinkled over a tasting spoon during training, November light thin on the pass-through glass. "It's kind of... weird?"
Claire smiled, hearing Mae's voice in her own, hearing Walter's spoon clink across time. She glanced at Jack across the kitchen—loose strand, white apron, bird in flight on his arm—and at Mae, who was pretending not to listen from the register while listening with her whole hairnet.
"It's perfect," Claire said. "Best ever."
Then she winked at Jack, and they both cracked up, and somewhere by the register Mae shouted that she had heard that, and the diner—warm, chrome-bright, stubbornly open on every Thanksgiving that mattered—held them all inside its light while the snow, when it came, could only press its face against the windows and watch, uninvited and harmless, while inside people ate and argued and loved and passed the gravy without correcting it too much.