Summary

Chapter 5, “Spiro’s Pancake House” (27), introduces Elliot Strick, who was eating lunch in Spiro’s Pancake House, a local diner, and talking to Olympia, who ran the restaurant and who had babysat Elliot when he was a child. Olympia had witnessed Barbara Baker being hit by the school bus earlier. The narrator noted that Elliot often had breakfast at Spiro’s to avoid the loud and chaotic behavior of his two young twin sons, whom he believed his wife, Wendy, was better equipped to deal with than he was. Sometimes he thought about what his life would be like without his family.

Elliot thought that his mother could have died in Barbara’s place; he considered that it would have been a tragedy if his mother had died before seeing him accomplish more in life. Elliot was the secret owner of the empty...