- Hope and her aunt Addie stop by the boarded-up Blue Box Diner where they worked for the past year and a half. Addie had been cook and part-owner and Hope was a waitress.
- That was until Addie's business partner, Gleason Beal, emptied the diner's bank account and ran off with the night waitress.
- Hope leaves her trademark signature—HOPE WAS HERE—on a board covering one of the windows. It's the same way she's said "goodbye" to every other place she's had to leave.
- She and Addie hop into their old Buick and head for Mulhoney, Wisconsin, where new jobs await them.
- Flashback to the beginning of Hope's life. Deena, a waitress, gives birth to a premature little girl she names Tulip.
- Deena decides that she can't handle being a parent and leaves the baby with her older sister Addie. Deena skips town.
- Addie raises Tulip and allows her to change her name to Hope when she turns 12.