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“It’ll take two minutes.”

“I’m savoring the coffee.”

“You’re savoring cold coffee.”

“It’s good coffee.”

Mormor gives me a look, but she takes the clipboard back, because Mormor knows — she’s one of the five people on earth who knows — and she covers it the way she always covers it, smooth, no fuss, like it was never a thing. “Fine. Sloane, can you check the order when you’ve got a minute?”

“Sure,” Sloane says, from the shelves.

And I catch Sloane glance at me. Just a flick. A half-second. Her eyes go from the clipboard to me and back, fast, and something moves behind them — not understanding, not yet, but the start of a question, the way you notice a gap before you know what’s missing.

I look at my hands.

She goes back to shelving.

But she clocked it. She clocked something. I don’t know how much, and I’m not going to find out by staring at her, so I drink the last of the cold coffee and let the moment close over itself.

She catches things. She told me that herself, on the walk. I observe a lot.

I’m going to have to be careful.

I leave around five-thirty, when the after-class rush picks up and the shop fills with students and Mormor stops having time to interrogate me. I hug her at the counter — she comes up to my sternum, all silver hair and reading glasses and surprising strength in her arms — and she holds on a second longer than usual.

“Come back,” she says. “And not just to move boxes.”

“I will.”

“And see the trainer about the shoulder.”

“Mormor.”

“I’ll know if you don’t. I have my ways.”

She does. I don’t doubt it for a second.

I’m at the door, hand on it, the off-key bell already starting to sound, when Sloane’s voice comes from behind me.

“Sorensen.”

I turn.

She’s at the counter now, ringing up a stack of books for a kid in a Whitmore hoodie, not looking at me, her attention on the register. For a second I think I imagined it.

Then she says, still not looking up: “Wednesday. There’s a hockey thing, right? A game?”

“Friday. Home opener’s not for a few weeks but there’s a preseason exhibition Friday.”

“Friday.” She hands the kid his change. “I’ll think about it. The —” she glances at the customer, recalibrates, lowers her voice a notch “— the thing. I’ll have an answer by Friday.”

“Friday,” I say.

“Don’t read into it.”

“I’m not reading into anything.”

“You’re doing a face.”