The boy under stool number six was eating somebody else's pumpkin pie, crust first, and he did not belong to anyone Dot Kessler could see.
It was twenty past ten on Thanksgiving morning. The pie rush had just ended. For three hours, the bell over the door had not stopped ringing. Sixty-three pies had gone out in white boxes tied with string, and the counter looked like a flock of geese had come through it.
The boy looked up at her with whipped cream on his chin. He was about five. He had on a black and gold knit hat two sizes too big and one red mitten.
"Well, hello, hon," Dot said. "Who do you belong to?"
He thought about it seriously. "Mommy."
"That's a good start. Where's Mommy?"
"In the van."
Dot looked out the front window at Main Street. There was no van. There was nothing but the stoplight at Main and Elm, swinging a little in the cold wind, and a few leaves blowing across the road.
Dot was seventy-one years old. She had run the diner since 1978. She had seen a lot of things come through that door, but she had never had somebody leave a child behind with the pies.
She set the boy on the stool, wiped his chin, and called the sheriff's office before she did anything else.
Earl Whitaker picked up on the second ring. He was out on Creek Road, where a big sycamore had come down across both lanes. "Thirty minutes, Dot. Maybe forty. Keep him there and keep him warm. I'll put it out on the radio."
"I've got him. Don't you rush on that road."
Tyler came out of the kitchen with an armload of empty pie tins and stopped dead. "Grandma. Whose kid is that?"
"That," Dot said, "is what we are about to find out."
The boy's name was Benny. He was five. He knew that much for sure.
He did not know his last name, or rather he knew it the way children do, as a sound that did not quite come out right. He did not know the name of the town he was in. He knew his grandpa's house had a dog named Pickle and a big red truck.
"Mommy went in the van with the babies," Benny said. "Daddy went with Grandpa in the big red truck. I was supposed to go with Daddy."
"Or with Mommy," Dot said.
Benny nodded, very serious. "Or with Mommy."
Tyler let out a breath. "Two cars. Each one thinks he's in the other."
"Happens every holiday somewhere, hon. Just not usually in my diner."
Dot went to the old gas range in the kitchen. It was the same one she had bought used in 1978, and it still had to be lit with a kitchen match. She struck one, turned the burner on low, and warmed a little pan of milk. She stirred in a spoonful of cocoa. Some things a child needs before he can answer questions.
Tyler had his phone out. "I'll post it on the town page. Somebody will see it."
"Post it," Dot said. "And go through the pie book."
The pie book was a spiral notebook on the counter. Every order since September was written in it, in Dot's hand. Name, phone number, kind of pie. Sixty-three orders. Half of them were families coming home for the holiday.
Tyler started calling. Most of the numbers rang and rang. People were basting turkeys or driving or standing at Panther Field for the alumni game. Two went to voicemail. One was a man in Athens who said he had three sons and all of them were present and accounted for, thank you.
Dot sat across from Benny and let him drink his cocoa.
Floyd Eckert had been the last customer before the rush ended. He had come for his usual slice and stayed to complain about the cold. Dot thought back to the faces that had come through that door since seven. She could see the line in her head. The Yoders. The Hales with little Owen. A woman with a baby on each hip and a tall man behind her. A gray-haired fellow in a sale barn jacket who had stood in the doorway jingling his keys.
Floyd had said something about the sale barn. Holidays don't count to cows, he'd said. Somebody has to feed the ones held over.
Dot had been ringing up a pecan at the time and had not paid it any mind.
By eleven, Tyler's post had been shared two hundred times. Not one call came.
Earl called back instead. "No missing child reports anywhere in the county, Dot. Not a soul's looking for him yet."
"That's the trouble," Dot said. "They don't know to."
She hung up and looked at the boy. He had finished his cocoa. His lip was starting to go. He was trying hard to be brave, the way small boys do right before they stop managing it.
"Benny, hon. Does your grandpa live by a church? By a creek? By the school?"
Benny shook his head to all of it. Then he said, "The train says goodnight."
"The train?"
"When I go to bed. It goes whooo. Grandpa says it's saying goodnight."
Dot looked at Tyler. The eleven o'clock freight. It crossed roads in only three places in the whole county. Feed Mill Road. Hollow Creek Road. Lutz Hollow Road. A child could hear that horn from a mile on either side of any of them.
That was still a lot of houses.
Benny slid off the stool and went to the front window. He put both hands flat on the glass.
A big red pickup had stopped at the light at Main and Elm.
"That's Grandpa's truck," Benny said.
Dot was around the counter faster than she had moved in ten years. She got the door open, the bell jangling over her head, just as the light turned green.
The red pickup rolled through the light and down Main toward Route 9, and Benny's breath fogged the glass where he was still pointing.