She served the food herself, though it was Marisol's section. Marisol was nineteen, saving for community college, and had the good sense to look relieved when Carol waved her off.
"On it," Carol said, loading the tray. "You take the counter."
Booth nine. She set the cheeseburger in front of the girl β Elena, she would learn later; at the time she was just the girl β and the fries, and the Coke, and she watched the girl look at the food the way a person looks at something they want badly and don't trust.
"Anything else I can get you?" Carol asked the table.
Vince didn't look up from his phone. "We're good."
Jesse mumbled something into his plate. The girl said nothing.
Carol refilled Walt's coffee on her way back and Walt said, without looking up from his crossword, "Nine letters. Starts with D. 'Kept against one's will.'"
Carol's hand jerked. Coffee sloshed over the rim of Walt's mug and onto the saucer.
"Sorry β sorry, Walt."
Walt looked at her then, really looked, over the top of his glasses. Sixty-one years old, forty of them on the highway, and truckers develop their own version of the waitress eye β they have to, to survive the road. "You want to tell me what's going on, Carol?"
"Nothing's going on."
"Nine letters," Walt said mildly. "Starts with D."
Detained.
She walked away before he could see her face.
The dinner rush that wasn't a rush came and went. Priya and Sam left with a to-go box and a wave. Jess and Marco never did make it in for pie β the rain, Carol thought, and then: good. Fewer people was better. Fewer people meant fewer variables. She didn't know why she was thinking in variables. She'd never thought in variables in her life.
At eight-forty she went back to booth nine with the coffee pot, though nobody had asked for coffee.
"Refill?" she said brightly.
"No," Vince said.
Jesse shook his head. The girl β Elena β looked up at Carol, and for one second their eyes met, and Carol saw it all in that second, the whole story written in a glance the way her mother had always said it would be: help me and don't let them see you helping me and I'm sorry all at once, and then the girl looked back down at her cheeseburger, from which she had taken exactly three bites.
Three bites. Carol had been counting without knowing she was counting. In forty minutes, three bites of a cheeseburger by a girl who looked like she hadn't eaten properly in a week.
Controlled, Carol thought. She's being controlled. Even her appetite isn't hers.
"Restrooms are down the hall," Carol said, too casually, wiping a spot on the table that didn't need wiping. "Past the kitchen. There's a phone by the register if you need to call anybody."
Vince's head came up. His eyes were pale gray, and they fixed on Carol with an attention that felt like a hand closing around her wrist.
"She doesn't need to call anybody," he said.
The diner went very quiet around them, or maybe that was just inside Carol's head. The rain hammered the roof. The neon buzzed. Somewhere in the kitchen, Rosa dropped a pan and swore in Spanish.
"Of course," Carol said, and smiled the professional smile, and walked away on legs that wanted to run.
She went into the walk-in cooler on the pretext of getting more creamer and stood among the hanging sides of beef and the stacked milk crates with her forehead against the cold metal door and breathed. Her heart was going like a snare drum. Get ahold of yourself. You're a waitress, not a cop. You don't know anything. Three bites of a cheeseburger isn't a crime.
But her mother's voice wouldn't leave her alone: You see it, you own it.
What did she actually know? A girl with a fading bruise, no phone, no bag, being ordered for. Two men, one cold and one scared. A look that said help me. It wasn't proof. It wasn't anything a police dispatcher would send a car for. My waitress eye says something's wrong wasn't probable cause.
She thought of Emily, sixteen, doing algebra at the kitchen table right now, probably texting that boy with the skateboard when she thought Carol wasn't looking. She thought of what she'd want β what she'd pray for β if Emily were the girl in booth nine and some waitress in some diner on some highway was watching.
She'd want that waitress to do something.
Carol pushed open the cooler door and walked to the register, picked up the phone, and dialed the number she knew by heart β not 911, not yet, because she had no proof and she knew it β but the number of the one man she knew who would understand about hands that shake and eyes that see.
The phone rang twice. A gruff voice answered, half-asleep: "Deke."
"Deke," Carol said quietly, turning her back to the dining room. "It's Carol. From the diner. I need you to listen to me, and I need you not to ask me how I know."
A pause. Then, fully awake: "Talk to me."