Daddy, I Saved This Bread For Mommy While The Champagne Kept Flowing...

The pickup disappeared around the corner, but Daddy stayed standing beside the booth.

Mara watched the window until the red taillights blended with the traffic on County Road Six. Then she looked at Daddy.

"She could have been leaving the diner," she said. "That doesn't mean she was following us."

Daddy's hand tightened around the folded meal sheet. "She was at the ballroom."

Mara didn't argue. She only reached for her coffee and took a careful sip.

I kept looking at the window. The glass showed my face over the dark parking lot. My hair had come loose from its tie, and there was still dirt near my cheek. I wiped at it, but the dirt only spread.

Daddy sat down again. "Nora, we're going to the fountain. You said your mom would be there."

I nodded.

"Do you know how long she's been waiting?"

I looked at the spoon beside my bowl. "She said she would come back before it got dark."

Outside, the diner sign buzzed and clicked. It had been dark for a long time.

Mara lowered her voice. "I can drive you."

Daddy shook his head.

"I know." She put a few bills beneath the sugar jar. "You can follow me. My car is parked behind the restaurant."

He studied her face. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because your daughter is six, it's cold outside, and you have a document that may explain why the gala failed seventeen people." She paused. "Also because I saw the west-room doors locked before the dinner began."

Daddy's expression changed. Not much. His eyes moved to the table, and his thumb pressed along the paper's folded edge.

"What did you see?" he asked.

"A catering cart. Full trays. Beatrice told the kitchen staff to take them somewhere else."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

That answer seemed to satisfy him more than a guess would have.

Mara led us to a small gray sedan. Daddy put me in the back seat and buckled me in himself. He checked the latch twice. The bread stayed wrapped in the napkin on my lap.

The fountain was three blocks from the diner, beside a closed bus shelter and a pharmacy with its lights off. The fountain didn't run anymore. Brown leaves had collected in the empty basin, and one of the stone birds had lost its beak.

Daddy got out first. He looked down the sidewalk, then behind the shelter.

"Mommy?" I called.

My voice sounded small against the traffic.

No one answered.

There was a paper bag tucked beneath the bench. I slid out of the car before Daddy could stop me and grabbed it.

Inside was a sweater, a plastic comb, and a folded receipt from a grocery store. The sweater smelled like rain and the soap Mommy used when we had enough hot water.

Daddy took the bag from me. His face went still.

"She was here," I said.

Mara stood several feet away, giving us room. "How long ago?"

I touched the sweater. "Today."

Daddy turned the receipt over. On the back, somebody had written a number in blue ink.

He held it under the parking-lot light.

"It could be a phone number," Mara said.

"It could be anything."

A bus groaned at the far end of the street. I stared at it, expecting Mommy to step down. The doors opened. Two people got off. Neither was her.

Daddy pulled me close when the bus moved away.

"I told her to wait here," I whispered.

His arms tightened. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"But I went inside."

"You were hungry."

"I saved the bread."

He closed his eyes for one second. "I know."

Mara took out her phone. "I can call the number."

Daddy hesitated.

It was the same hesitation he had shown in the diner when she asked about Mommy. He didn't want a stranger stepping into the part of our life that had already broken.

Then he handed Mara the receipt.

The call rang four times. A man's recorded voice answered, asking people to leave a message for a county transportation office.

Mara ended the call.

Daddy looked toward the road. "Why would she have this number?"

Mara turned the receipt over again. "Maybe she was trying to find a ride."

A car passed slowly. Its headlights swept over us and moved on.

I remembered the woman with the blue scarf saying Mommy's name near the ballroom kitchen. I remembered how she had looked at the bread in my hands.

Daddy noticed my silence. "Nora?"

I pressed the napkin tighter around the bread.

"I don't want to go back," I said.

"Back where?"

I looked at the dark fountain. "The west room."