Marty Henderson drove her there in his old diner van, because Diane had asked him to, and because Reaper had offered the truck and Diane had thanked him and said no, kindly and firmly, to that particular offer. She wanted this visit to be ordinary. She wanted to walk in as a worker, not as a woman escorted by a legend. Marty understood that without needing it explained. He parked in the visitors' row, turned off the engine, and sat with his hands on the wheel for a moment, giving her the silence to gather herself.
You don't have to decide anything today, he said at last. "You can listen. You can ask. You can walk out and think about it over coffee."
Diane nodded. "I know. That's why I can do it at all."
Reaper was not there, and that, too, was by her choice. He had said, the night before, sitting at her kitchen table with his mug held carefully in both hands, that he would wait at the diner if she wanted him near, and that he would stay away entirely if she wanted that instead. Diane had thought about it while she washed the mugs, and then she had said, "Wait at the diner, Reaper. That's close enough, and far enough." He had nodded as if she had given him an order worth obeying. This was her working life, and she would step back into it on her own feet, at her own pace, with her own voice doing the talking.
Inside, the front office smelled of paper and cleaning fluid, and a young woman at the desk looked up, smiled in recognition, and said, "Diane! It's good to see you." Diane smiled back, and the smile felt real on her face, not practiced. She gave her name, she asked for the floor supervisor, and she sat in the waiting chair with her hands folded in her lap, listening to the muffled hum from the floor beyond the wall. She thought about the trailer, about Leo wiping tables after school, about the receipt taped to the fridge that said PAID, and about the weeks of rest and soup and clinic visits that had brought her here. She was not the woman she had been in July, thin and breathless and frightened behind a thin wall. She was not yet the woman she had been before the illness, either. She was somewhere in between, and she intended to be honest about that.
The supervisor, Ana Ruiz, came out with a file folder under her arm and a careful, professional warmth in her manner. She was a woman in her fifties with gray at her temples and a pencil tucked behind her ear, and she shook Diane's hand and led her into a small office where a fan turned slowly overhead and a calendar hung crooked on the wall. "Sit down, Diane," she said. "I'm glad you came in. We've missed you on the floor."
Diane sat. She did not rush. She told the truth in plain sentences, the way she had learned to tell it over the summer, first to Reaper at the diner window, then to Dr. Patel at the clinic, then to herself in the quiet of the trailer at night. She had been ill with a severe respiratory infection. She had no insurance. She had rested, she had followed up at the clinic, and she was stronger now, but not yet strong for a full shift. She wanted to know whether the factory had part-time hours, reduced hours to start, work she could do well without pretending to be someone she was not yet.
Ana Ruiz listened without interrupting, and when Diane finished, she opened the folder and looked at the papers inside for a long moment. "We can do reduced hours," she said at last, and her voice carried the caution of a person responsible for a whole floor of workers, not just one. "Three days a week to start. Shorter shifts. The same kind of work you did before, nothing that asks more of you than you can give. And we will look at it again in a month, together, and see where you are. If you need to stay at reduced hours longer, we talk about it then. If you are ready for more, we talk about that too."
Diane felt something loosen in her chest that had been tight since July. It was not triumph. It was steadier than that. It was the feeling of a door opening just wide enough to walk through without having to run. "Three days," she repeated, to be sure she had heard it right. "Shorter shifts. And we look at it again in a month."
That's right, Ana Ruiz said. "And Diane — you come back when you are ready, not before. The first day is Monday, if you want it. If you need another week, the offer stands."
Diane thought about Leo, about the diner table where he did his homework, about the pantry that was full and the lights that were on. She thought about what it would mean to earn again, even a little, with her own hands, on her own hours. She thought about the long summer when other people had carried groceries into her home, and how grateful she had been, and how ready she was now to carry something herself.
I'll take Monday, she said. "Three days, shorter shifts, and we'll talk again in a month. Thank you, Ana. For saying it plainly."
Ana Ruiz smiled, a real smile this time, and wrote it down in the folder in neat, careful handwriting. She walked Diane back through the office and out to the front, and at the gate she shook her hand again and said, "Welcome back, Diane. Slowly is still back."