It's autumn 1995, a little before two in the morning, on a stretch of Route 9 that most people only drive through on their way somewhere else. The diner is a speck of light between cornfields. I'm wiping down the counter when a man walks in—not a trucker, not a local, not anyone I've ever seen. He orders black coffee and a slice of cherry pie, then sits in booth two, staring at his hands. Over the next hour, he tells me things that don't add up. He says he's been driving for days, but his car is clean and the plates are from a state that doesn't exist anymore. He says he's looking for a town called Morrow, but the map he shows me has no roads, no rivers, no county lines—just that one name, handwritten in pencil. I tell him I've never heard of it. He looks at me like I've just told him he's dead. And then he asks me to remember him. Not remember his face or his name, but to remember him—like a fact, like a date, like something that happened. I said yes because I didn't know what else to do. And now, three weeks later, I'm still trying to figure out what I agreed to.