"Yeah," the broad man said. "Booth." It wasn't rude exactly. It was just a statement of how things would be. He'd already started moving toward the back before she'd answered.
Carol led them to table four, the booth nearest the restrooms, and watched the choreography of how they sat. The thin one — Roy, the broad one called him, come on, Roy — slid in first against the wall. Then the girl. Then the broad one — Frank — on the outside, effectively pinning her between the two of them with her back to the room. No easy way out of that booth except through one of them.
Carol handed out the menus and the girl didn't take hers at first. Frank took it from Carol's hand and set it on the table in front of the girl like he was doing her a favor.
"What can I get everyone to drink?" Carol asked.
"Coffee. Black," Frank said. "Roy?"
"Coke," Roy said quickly, too quickly, the way people answer when they've been thinking about anything but the question.
Frank looked at the girl. "Water," he said. "She'll have water."
Carol wrote it down — in her head, not on the pad. The girl's hands were flat on the laminate, pressed down hard, fingers spread, like she was holding the table in place. Or holding herself in place.
"Back with your drinks," Carol said, and went to the station.
She poured the coffee and the Coke and drew the water, and all the while her eyes kept drifting back to table four. Frank had opened his menu. Roy kept glancing at the door. The girl just sat there, hands flat, staring at nothing.
When Carol set the drinks down, Frank didn't look up from his menu. "Turkey sandwich, fries, coleslaw," he said. "Roy'll have the meatloaf. And she'll have the turkey sandwich and fries." He said it the same way he'd ordered her water. Carol glanced at the girl — no reaction, no nod, no small acknowledgment that she'd been spoken for. Her face had a stillness to it that Carol recognized and did not like. It was the stillness of a person conserving everything they had.
"Cheese on the turkey?" Carol asked, gently, directly to the girl.
Frank answered before the girl could open her mouth. "No cheese."
The girl's eyes flicked up to Carol's face for exactly one second. There was something in that look — a question rising, almost making it to the surface, and then drowning. She looked back down at her hands.
Carol had been a waitress for nine years and a woman for forty-three, and in that one second she understood something her body understood before her mind did: the fine hairs on her arms lifted. This wasn't a bad date or a rough patch or a family argument. This was fear — the real kind, the kind that teaches you to make yourself small and still, the kind you learn when making noise has cost you before.
She walked back to the kitchen with the ticket shaking just slightly in her hand.
"Four's a turkey sandwich no cheese, fries —" She tore the ticket off and clipped it under the wheel. Sam glanced at her.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," Carol said. "Just tired."
It was a lie and Sam knew it was a lie, but he also knew better than to press in the middle of a shift. He turned back to the grill.
Carol refilled Denise's coffee. She cleared the college kids' fries. She did her job, and her job was a kind of camouflage — it let her watch without being seen watching. From the pie case she could see table four in the mirror behind the counter. Frank was talking in a low voice, and the girl was nodding — small, quick nods, the kind you give when the right answer matters. Roy kept setting his phone face-down and picking it back up.
Then Carol saw the wrist.
The girl's sleeve had ridden up when she reached for her water glass — a gray hoodie sleeve, dark at the cuff — and there it was: a red mark circling her wrist, the unmistakable band of something that had been pulled tight. A grip. The kind of mark that blooms when someone grabs you hard and doesn't let go.
The girl saw Carol looking. Their eyes met in the mirror for a heartbeat — and the girl yanked her sleeve down and looked away so fast it was like she'd been caught stealing.
Carol's breath went shallow. She turned away, heart hammering against her ribs, and found herself standing in front of the peppermint jar by the register, staring at nothing.
It's none of your business. They're customers. People have bad nights. Don't make a story out of it.
But she couldn't unsee the wrist. She couldn't unsee the hands pressed flat on the laminate, holding the table, holding herself. She couldn't unsee the way the girl had been seated with no way out and ordered for like a child, like a possession.
Carol looked up at the clock. 9:05.
She straightened her apron and walked toward table four with the coffee pot, the way you'd walk toward a door you knew you had to open.