Page 6 of Shatter

She laughs against his mouth.

Heat floods up the back of my throat, sour and fast, and the coffee pot rattles against the rim of the trucker's mug.

"Whoa there," he says, lifting his cup out of the way. "You all right, hon?"

"Sorry." I set the pot down on the counter before I drop it. "Long night."

The boy's thumb moves in a lazy circle under her hairline.

My own scalp prickles in the same spot, hot and crawling, like the skin there remembers.

The seamstress had pins in her mouth.

I was standing on a velvet box in the bridal suite at the Fairmont, in forty thousand dollars of ivory silk, and she was kneeling at my feet pinning the hem while my mother sipped champagne in a wingback chair and said the neckline was a little much.

My father stood behind me.

He didn't say anything.

He rested his hand on the back of my neck, warm and dry, with his thumb pressed into the soft place under my skull, and he smiled at me in the mirror while the seamstress worked.

Every few seconds, his thumb pressed a little harder.

Nobody else could see it.

Nobody was ever supposed to.

"Katie." Dale bangs the bell. "Order up."

I blink, and the Fairmont is gone.

My hand is on the back of my own neck, pressed flat, like I can wipe his thumbprint off nine months too late.

I drop it and wipe my palm on my apron.

The prospect's plate is sitting in the window, steam curling off the pancakes.

When I set it in front of him, his eyes are on my face, not the food.

He doesn't ask.

He picks up his fork, says thank you, and starts to eat, and I walk away with the backs of my knees buzzing, sure he saw every second of it.

At a quarter after one, I take my break in the back booth, the one with a clear view of the front door and the kitchen pass, and I count my tips.

Forty-two dollars in singles and fives, plus a ten from the trucker.

I count it again.

Fifty-two.

Same as the first time.

A year ago, I closed out quarterly reconciliations for a company moving nine figures of freight through the Port of Seattle.

Now I count wrinkled five-dollar bills twice because I can't stop my hands from doing it.

My thumb keeps riffling the edges of the stack even after I've stopped counting.