Seventeen Minutes on Route 18 Wrecked an Eighteen-Million-Dollar Corporate Buyout

I sat in the cracked red booth by the window.

“I got fired this morning.”

“Honey, I know.

You looked like a man carrying his own headstone at noon.” She poured coffee.

“You want the meatloaf or the truth?”

“Both.”

She wrote it on her pad.

“The truth costs extra.”