Desmond “Dez” Foley used to make a habit of stopping for eggs, bacon and home fries at Biggy’s Diner every Saturday morning during his work week as a cop with the local police department on Fairfield County’s “gold coast” in Connecticut. Biggy’s is just off the interstate. It tended to attract a few truckers and mostly blue-collar workers on weekday mornings – a townie on occasion. Owner Bobby Biggs and the wait staff go out of their way to be friendly to customers and quick to catch your name and remember it. The order is promptly served steaming from the kitchen, always with a smile – or a wisecrack for the regulars.

Retired now after 30 years on the force, balding fast and spreading at the waist, he still drops in for breakfast at Biggy’s two or three times a week. They’re an amiable, animated bunch, young and old and in between. They keep the conversation flowing with all things light and local, and lots of playful teasing back and forth. His kind of joint.

A good many of Biggy’s customers live outside town and work in the trades as subcontractors with renovation crews or as property caretakers of large estates. A majority of the estate owners are Wall Street brokers and investors, corporate executives, hedge fund moguls, or from old money. Biggy’s customers never run out of stories about multi-millionaire mansion owners who’ve “pissed away” their money on extravagant whims and indulgences. One of the most extreme was about a small in-ground pool for a dog next to its large doghouse, a miniature of the owner’s mansion.

Foley’s wife divorced him fifteen years ago after long litanies of complaint and resentment that he’d never had time for her, being “too distant and emotionally unavailable.” If you asked him today, he’d probably say the ex-wife might have gotten a few things right: he could have been more attentive and “lovey-dovey.” She remarried. He didn’t. Though having a few love interests over the intervening years, he backed away from longer-term commitment. Couldn’t go through a big breakup again. Besides, he’s gotten to like the “easy sleaze” of single life.

For the daughter they share, Lucy, he’d give up overtime pay and golf invitations to take her to music lessons, concerts, soccer practice, marching band and other involvements. He took her to visit colleges all over New England and paid for all four years of tuition. She made him proud.

Lucy married at 24, four years after the divorce, and followed her husband to his dream-job opportunity as an upper-level healthcare administrator in a hospital in Indianapolis. Brad was quickly promoted to CFO, and not long after, to the position of CEO. Dez loved to brag about them every now and then.

This Tuesday morning Dez decides to forego the usual order of eggs, home fries and bacon for French toast and corned beef hash. A new waitress walks to his table to take the order. She appears to be late teens or early twenties, his guess. She’s petite, shy, and makes little eye contact. Her dark-brown hair is short-cropped and uneven as if cut by an amateur. There’s something very familiar about her, he muses. Could she be someone encountered in his days on the job? Is it her voice, her face, or in her manner or mannerisms? He racks his brain trying to place her.

When she comes back to his table to ask for a refill on his coffee, he asks her name. “It’s Rory, she says, “short for Aurora.” That’s when it hits him. Got it. She’s the one, the child he’d never forget for that call she made when he was a patrol officer. It was one among many handled by fellow officers. Her mother and father were drinking, arguing and fighting all the time. She threw him out. Then it was just mother and Rory. But things didn’t get better.

Rory’s mother was a Chisholm, WASP patricians going back generations in town. The deceased parents were both corporate lawyers, town pillars and philanthropists well-known as big donors to local public projects and programs for needy and abused children They left their only child, their daughter, the stately Victorian manor, replete with a turret, cupola and wraparound porch. It wasn’t too long, about ten years, before it started to fall into disrepair, slow decay and dilapidation. Paint was peeling, porch steps rotting, porch columns tilting, and weeds growing high in the yard – and neighbors’ voices growing higher with every growing inch.

Mother’s name, what was it? oh yeah, Peg Haggerty, that’s it, Dez recalls. Peg was a passing-out, falling-down drunk. Husband was a drinker too and loved his weed. Rory was about 9 or 10 years old when he was first called to the house. It was a 911 call from her. When he arrived alone on the scene, her mother was on the floor, semi-conscious, in a puddle of her own vomit. Rory was bent over her, trying to get her to talk. He remembered lifting her up and carrying her to the bedroom, and got her to speak through the reek of booze. Rory insisted she’d be all right after sleeping it off, and when he mentioned calling social services, she pleaded with him not to. She’d be all right and had an aunt she could call if necessary. He checked the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator for stocked food. Very little.

Years later, a foreclosure sale sign appeared in the front yard as he passed by in his cruiser.

This one Tuesday, after clocking out at his new part-time security job, Dez decides to head over to Biggy’s early evening for Biggy’s touted meatloaf and gravy. He runs into Rory in the parking lot. She gives him a wide grin.

“Hi, just getting off shift,” she says.

“Hi, Rory, it all came back to me. I thought you looked familiar. You’re Peg Haggarty’s kid. I’m a retired cop in town. I remember being called to your house one time for help with your mother. She was passed out on the floor. I’ve always wondered what happened to you since then. Looks like you’re doing okay these days.”

Rory’s smile fades as she spills it out, like a dam giving way to the water’s weight.

“Oh, you were the cop who came to the house that day. That was a bad fuckin’ time in my life I’d just as soon forget. Oops, sorry about the swear! Getting my life together now. My dad’s helping me out. I’m staying with him for now, at a rooming house just outside town. He lets me have the bed. He sleeps in a sleeping bag. Would ya believe, he still screams at night from hellish nightmares from when he was in the Vietnam War. Daddy says I can stay as long as it takes to save enough for a deposit and a few months rent on my own apartment. Mom’s in a nursing home, awful sick with lung and heart problems. Hell yeah, I’m not blind, I know my dad’s got lots of issues, but he’s always helped me out when things went south. That time I ran away from my foster home, I stayed with him for three months when he was living in a tent on the cove. He gave me his tent and sleeping bag until he got other ones for himself. Taught me how to fish, bait the hook, skin, filet and fry the fish we caught. Wasn’t long before those assholes – oh, sorry – kicked him off his camping spot. Gotta say, sure as I’m standing here, it was the best damn time of my life. I know, it sounds crazy – but it really was.”

Pausing a minute or two to take it all in, Dez replies, “Rory, so glad your father is looking out for you,” and he turns toward the door.

Back home in his studio apartment, Dez plops down on the sofa and grabs the remote for a football game. During half-time, he picks up his cell phone and calls daughter Lucy in Indianapolis. After a few exchanged pleasantries, he says he misses her and would like to go out there to see her next month, and not to worry, he’d book a room in a nearby hotel. Wouldn’t be any bother. Lucy says she and Adam would love to see him and she’s sorry, but with Adam’s new position, he was putting in 10-12 hours a day during the week and extra time on weekends.

What’s more, she was just appointed to the campaign committee for the sitting governor, thanks to Adam’s influence. Again, she says she’s sorry, assuring him they’d be able to carve out time in three months or so, maybe June or July, when they should have more free time to spend with him. With goodbyes said, Dez goes back the second-half of the football game. Ten minutes into it, his mind elsewhere, he turns off the TV and goes to bed.

A week later at Biggy’s, he sees Rory waiting on tables. Her smile is glowing and the hanging shadow of sadness in her face is gone. So nice to see, he thought. He orders breakfast for the usual from the other waitress. When business slows down, Rory walks over to his table, announcing she has great news. She’ll be getting her very own apartment near Biggy’s and close to her mother’s nursing home. Her dad gave her two thousand dollars he’d gotten from a friend she doesn’t know, who finally paid back a loan. She can’t contain her excitement. Dez gets up and gives her a hug of congratulations – surprising himself at his spontaneity.

As she turns away toward the kitchen, Rory asks, “By the way, if you know the officer who left the bags of burger and fries inside the screen door lots of times way back when, please thank him.”

“Yeah, I think I might know that guy,” says Dez, “I’ll do that.”

On the drive home in his pickup, Officer Foley croons along, way off-key, to an oldie tune on the radio.