She had no idea, wiping down the counter a few minutes later, just how right she was.
Two blocks away, Grant Colton woke up in a mood he couldn't fully explain to himself.
He told himself it was nothing. Told himself Monday had gone fine. That watching the quiet girl swallow another round of humiliation without a word had felt exactly as satisfying as it always did.
But some small, unexamined part of him had noticed something Monday morning that he didn't like thinking about. A flicker. Half a second where her hand had come up off her knee, fast, sharp, controlled, and then folded itself back down like nothing had happened at all.
He didn't have a name for what he'd seen. He only knew it had bothered him. The way an unlocked door bothers a man who likes believing every door in his life stays shut unless he opens it himself.
So on Tuesday morning, without quite deciding to, Grant decided to push harder. Not because Monday hadn't worked. Because some small animal part of him wanted to see that flicker again. Wanted to know if he could make it happen on command.
He gathered Chase and Dylan outside their usual corner, and the three of them walked to the stop a block early, the way boys walk when they've already decided the morning is going to belong to them.
The 8:40 bus was fuller than usual. A dozen regulars, briefcases and lunch bags, the low murmur of a town heading into its day.
Norah Fenwick sat near the front this time, two rows behind the driver, one hand resting on her stomach as always, a bag from the pharmacy in her lap. She'd had a checkup that morning. Everything fine. She was humming something under her breath, some tune only she could hear.
Frank sat further back, cane hooked over the seat in front of him, newspaper folded but unread on his knee.
Ren wasn't on this bus. She'd already left for the bakery an hour earlier.
It was Norah and Frank riding it now. Ordinary people on an ordinary Tuesday, with no idea that the morning was about to ask something of them neither one had signed up for.
Grant and his friends got on three stops in. Loud, already laughing, already scanning the aisle, out of pure habit, for someone smaller than themselves to aim the morning at.
They found Frank first.
"Hey, old-timer," Grant said, dropping into the seat across the aisle, kicking one boot up onto the cane hooked in front of Frank's row. "This thing yours? Looks like it's seen better decades."
"It's mine," Frank said evenly. "And I'd appreciate you keeping your boot off it."
"Or what?" Grant said, grinning at Chase and Dylan. The same grin he'd used on Ren the day before. The grin of a man who had never once had that question answered in a way he didn't like.
"Or nothing," Frank said. "I'm 71 years old, son. I've got nothing left to prove to you. Just keep your boot off my cane."
Something about the calm in Frank's voice needled Grant worse than fear would have.