He nudged the cane. Slow, deliberate, until it slid off the seatback and clattered to the floor of the bus.
A few passengers looked over. Nobody moved.
Frank bent to pick it up. And as he did, his knee, the one that had been complaining since Sunday, buckled slightly under him, and he had to grab the seat rail to keep from going down entirely.
Grant laughed, a short bark of a sound. And Dylan laughed with him.
And for one terrible second, the whole bus felt like it was holding its breath, waiting to see if that was going to be the worst of it.
It wasn't.
Norah had turned around at the sound, at the small commotion of an old man nearly falling. And without thinking, without any plan beyond simple decency, she got up.
"Hey," she said, moving back a row, steadying Frank's elbow with one hand. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, dear," Frank said, embarrassed more than hurt, straightening up with his cane back in hand. "Just an old knee having its say."
"You should be more careful," Norah said, turning to Grant. 7 months pregnant, and apparently unbothered by the size difference between them. The particular fearlessness some people find only when someone smaller than them is being hurt. "He's 71 years old. What is wrong with you?"
Grant's grin faltered for half a second, caught off guard by the fact that someone had actually spoken up. Then it came back. Uglier this time.
"Nobody asked the pregnant lady for her opinion," he said.
"I'm giving it anyway," Norah said, voice steady despite the color rising in her cheeks. "Leave him alone."
"Or what?" Grant said again.
And this time, he stood. Closing the distance. Close enough that Norah instinctively put a hand up. Not to strike him. Just to create space. A small defensive motion any mother would make without thinking.
Grant caught her wrist.
It wasn't hard. It wasn't, by itself, enough to leave a mark. But it was enough, in a moving bus, with a woman 7 months pregnant already off balance from standing, to send a jolt of real fear through the whole vehicle.
Norah stumbled back a step, one hand flying to her stomach, the other still caught in Grant's grip.
And for one heartbeat, one terrible, swaying heartbeat as the bus took a turn, it looked like she might go down entirely.
"Grant," Chase said, suddenly nervous. Suddenly aware that something had shifted from cruel joke into something with a shape he didn't like. "Man, let her go. She's pregnant."
Grant let go, more startled by his own hand than anything else. And Norah caught the seatback, breathing hard. Safe, but shaken, in a way that had nothing to do with drama and everything to do with how close a small, careless thing had come to being much worse.
The bus driver, a substitute filling in for Earl's day off, had no idea what to do. He pulled to the curb, hands shaking slightly on the wheel, and called toward the back.
"Everybody all right?"
"We're fine," Frank said, though his voice wasn't quite steady either.