Mel's Wife Ruby
It's called Mel and Ruby's Café, Mel is about 50 years old, and Alice tells her son "Ruby's been dead for 14 years; the place killed her".
Dying from overwork in your 30's, assuming his wife was around his age?
I never even once assumed that Ruby was Mel's wife. For all we know, Ruby could be his mother, in which case "Mel and Ruby's Cafe" would make sense.
Or it could be that working in a diner is more difficult than we ever thought. After all, the place killed her.