He arrives like a rumor, the kind that curls through a small town and lingers: Roy Stuart, mid-thirties, face weathered by too many late nights and the sun of places he won’t name. In the doorway of the diner he looks like someone who’s learned to carry silence as a tool — not empty, but precise, the sort of quiet that measures people before it speaks. The instant he orders black coffee, the room tightens; stories rearrange themselves around him as if trying to fit.