Chapter 4
The carafe sat empty on the drainboard where I'd left it. Coffee had dried in a dark ring around the base and a thinner spill line across the red laminate where I'd wiped it too fast. The lunch rush had thinned to two truckers at the far booth and the dishwasher humming against the back wall. Through the blinds, the same truck was still there. Not running. Just parked at the edge of the lot where the asphalt met the weed grass, nose out toward the highway.
I could see the olive jacket through the slats when he shifted his weight. Still watching.
Mona tapped the time clock by the kitchen door. "You good to clock? I'm cutting you early, hon. You look wiped."
My hands wouldn't stop shaking when I tried to untie my apron. I nodded and pulled my card from the rack. The clock stamped 2:17 with a hard punch. Behind me, the kitchen door swung and the biker came through. He didn't look at Mona. He looked at me.
"Don't go out front," he said, quiet.
Mona glanced between us. I gave her what I hoped was a normal smile and said I'd be out the back. She didn't ask. She'd seen me play his daughter for ten minutes straight and then clean a spill like my life depended on it. She just tucked my time card back in and said, "See you tomorrow, sweetie."
The back room was narrow cinder block and mop buckets and a shelf of ketchup refills. It smelled like fryer oil and wet cardboard. I pushed through and he followed, close enough that the door didn't have time to swing shut between us.
"You need to stay," he said. "Until they leave."
"They're not leaving," I said. I folded my apron and didn't look at him. My voice came out thinner than I wanted. "And my shift's over."
"They watched you work a full hour without ordering anything else. They're not here for pie."
I turned. He was standing between me and the hallway that led to the front, his vest catching on the door frame. Up close his beard was more gray than I'd seen under the diner lights, his eyes red at the edges like he hadn't slept.
"You said you'd explain," I said. "You said he didn't leave. So prove it."
He didn't answer right away. He reached into the inside pocket of his vest and pulled out a folded piece of plastic, the kind people used to keep a photo from cracking. It was creased down the middle and yellow at the seams.
"You want proof," he said. "That's fair."
He handed it to me. It was a faded print, maybe three by five, colors washed out to that pink-orange of old drugstore film. Two men on motorcycles, arms over each other's shoulders, grinning at the camera. The one on the left was younger, his hair dark, his beard trimmed short. The biker. The one on the right had my mouth. Not similar. The same. Same full lower lip, same crooked left incisor when he smiled, same dark hair cut short on the sides. He looked about my age now. Twenty-four, twenty-five. He had his hand up in a half-wave and a tattoo on his forearm I couldn't make out.
My breath caught. I tried to keep it quiet and didn't.
"Who is that," I said. It wasn't a question the way I meant it to sound.
"Your father," he said. "Michael. We rode together out of Fort Leonard Wood. That was '99, summer before you were born."
I stared at the photo until the edges blurred. My mom kept one picture of him on the dresser in her room, the one she said was his high school senior photo. Different angle, younger, no beard. She'd told me he left when she told him she was pregnant. Packed his duffel and didn't look back. I had grown up hating a guy who couldn't even wait for me to be born.
This man had my father's nose. My chin.
"Anyone could have this," I said, but my hand tightened on the plastic. "That doesn't prove anything."
"It proves I knew him," he said. "It proves I didn't make up his name. The rest — the police report, the county records — I can show you. Not here. Not with them out there."
I looked past him toward the small window over the mop sink. Through the dirty glass I could see the corner of the parking lot and the tailgate of that truck. Still there.
"I'm going home," I said. "I have to. My mom—" I stopped. I didn't know what my mom had to do with any of this anymore except lie.
"I know you want to ask her," he said. "But you can't go home alone. Not tonight. They followed you here for a reason. They think you know something."
"I don't know anything," I said. My voice broke on the last word.
"I know."
I refolded the photo with careful fingers and handed it back. He slipped it into his vest like it was fragile.
"I'm going out the kitchen door," I said. "Through the alley. You don't need to come."
He didn't move at first. Then he stepped aside.
"I'll be behind you," he said. "Not with you. Behind you. At a distance. So they have to choose who to follow."
That was the moment I should have said no. I should have told him to leave me alone and called Mona back and waited inside until the truck left. But the blinds in the dining room were still turned wrong, watching me, and the empty carafe on the counter felt like a warning I hadn't understood fast enough.
"Fine," I said. "Alley. But you stay back."
He nodded once.
The kitchen was empty, the fryers off, the line cook already gone. I pushed the metal back door with my shoulder. It stuck in the humidity and then gave with a shriek. Late August air hit me, hot and still smelling like dumpster and cut grass. The alley was narrow, concrete cracked with weeds, opening on one end to the street and on the other to the lot where the truck was parked.
I stepped out and didn't look over my shoulder. I heard his boots on the concrete behind me, not close, just enough to know he kept his word.
May you like
Halfway to the street, the truck engine started.
The sound carried over the block, low and uneven, and then caught. I kept walking. I didn't run. My keys were already in my hand, and the alley felt too long.
