Page 4 of Shatter

She doesn't limp. She walks straight and tall, the way she used to, like nothing inside her is broken.

She doesn't look back.

I wait for her to look back.

The blue scarf lady takes my hand. It's the wrong hand, too soft and too warm, and I pull against it, but she doesn't let go.

Mamma's red coat moves through the crowd by the big doors.

The doors slide open.

Then she's gone.

She told me to forget her face.

I stare at the doors until my eyes burn, and I don't.

I won't. Not ever.

CHAPTER ONE

Anni

The man in the corner booth orders scrapple at one in the morning, which means he isn't from around here.

Nobody in Tallahassee eats scrapple.

Dale only keeps it on the menu because he grew up outside Wilmington, and he swears a diner without scrapple is a Waffle House with delusions.

"Pancakes and a side of scrapple." The man doesn't look up from the laminated menu he never reads. "Eggs over hard."

"Coffee?" I'm already tipping the pot over his mug before he answers.

"Please." He slides the mug an inch closer to my side of the table, so I don't have to reach.

Every time he comes in, he moves the mug for me.

Every time, I notice.

He's been coming in three or four nights a week for almost two months now, always late and always alone, in the corner booth with his back against the wall and the front door in his sightline.

It's the seat I'd take if I were a customer.

It's the seat I take on my breaks.

I write his order on my pad even though I could recite it in my sleep, because writing gives my hands something to do while I look at him without looking at him.

Dark hair, pushed back like he runs his fingers through it when nobody's watching, and a day or two of stubble along a hard jaw.

Pale gray eyes, so light they look almost silver under the fluorescent tubes, and they move the way mine do.

Door. Window. Kitchen. Me.

Back to the door.

He's wearing a leather vest over a black T-shirt, and when he stood to take off his jacket the first night, I saw the back of it.

A Viking helmet over crossed axes with a shield behind them, and Raiders of Valhalla stitched in an arc across his shoulders.