At the far end of the counter, the plastic tub of silverware hit the floor with a crash like the end of the world.
Knives and forks went everywhere, skittering across the linoleum, spinning under the stools. Tom flinched, and coffee slopped over the rim of the mug onto his wrist, and he swore and put it down. The girl, Wren, was already on her knees on the floor, gathering silverware with both hands, and she was looking straight at him across the diner, and her face was white as paper under the sunburn.
From the kitchen, Curtis's voice: "Wren? What the hell was that?"
"I dropped the tub!" she called back. Her voice was perfectly normal. "Sorry! I got it!"
But her eyes did not leave Tom's face. And as she knelt there among the scattered knives, she mouthed something at him, slowly and very clearly, so that there was no mistaking it.
Don't drink that coffee.
Then she said it out loud, not a whisper, not a shout, just three hard flat words that cut across the noise of the radio and the window unit like a blade, so fast he almost thought he had imagined them.
"Don't drink that."
And she bent her head and went back to picking up forks as if she had never said anything at all.
For a long moment Tom did not move.
He sat in the booth with the coffee steaming in front of him and the burn on his wrist going red, and he looked at the mug, and then at the girl on the floor, and then at the swinging door to the kitchen, where the sound of the spatula on the grill had started up again, steady and unhurried. The radio played a song about a man whose dog had run off. The window unit rattled. Outside, the heat shimmered over the gravel.
Twenty-two years in the Army had taught him a number of things, and one of them was this: when somebody who has every reason to keep their mouth shut decides to open it, you listen. You do not ask them to explain themselves first. You do not ask whether they are sure. You listen, and you move, and you sort out the why later.
He pushed the mug six inches away from him, slowly, as if he were simply making room on the table. Then he picked up the menu and pretended to read it, and over the top of the laminated page, he looked out the window again.
The man in the gray pickup had gotten out.