At the diner, we caught up on what we had been doing over the years.

He had gone to college at the University of North Texas, and when he graduated, he came back home. He met his wife at college, they had one child, and were still happily married.

I asked him about the girl, whom I have decided to name Carla, whose funeral we just attended.

“Yeah,” he said. “Kind of a sad story.”

“The funeral wasn’t the sad part?” I asked.

He laughed and shook his head. “No, she dropped out of high school around the same time she started working at the restaurant.”

He started folding his napkin into squares and then started pushing it back and forth between his fingers.

“She was having some kind of trouble with her parents. They fought a lot,” he said. “She never really told me all of what happened at home, just that they were very controlling.”

He sighed and started twisting the napkin. “We hung out a lot and talked on the phone, then I went to college, and she stayed here.”

“That first year of college, since I wasn’t far away, I came home almost every weekend, so I saw her a lot. Then the next year is when I met my wife and started coming home less.” He held the handle of his mug and stared into the distance.

“Then things started to get weird.” He said, looking into his mug.

“Weird how?” I asked.

“This strange man started following me everywhere,” he said, looking directly at me, and I almost fell off my chair.