Jodie put down her fork. She'd eaten half the stack. She wiped her mouth on the napkin and folded it and set it beside the plate, and I don't know where she learned that, I never taught her that. Then she stood up and zipped the yellow windbreaker to her chin.
She didn't pick up the duffel bag. I saw that. I saw her look at it, under the table, and not pick it up. I didn't know what it meant. I still don't know if she knew what it meant, then. Maybe she meant to come back for it. Maybe she just needed both hands.
"I'm going to tell him myself," she said. "Out there. Don't come out, Mom. Please. Let me do it."
"Jodie —"
"You can watch," she said. "You can watch from the window. Everybody can watch. That's the point." And she went up the aisle and out the door, and the bell jangled behind her, and she walked across the wet sidewalk in the rain to the driver's side of the Chevelle and stood there with her hands in her windbreaker pockets, and the window rolled down.
I stood at the counter. Eino put his paper down. Irja came out from behind the register. Toivo came out of the kitchen in his apron and stood at the end of the counter by the pie case, with his big scarred hands at his sides, not doing anything, just standing where Darrell Tolan could see him through the glass if he looked, and he looked. I saw him look. I saw his eyes go along the row of us, one after another, Toivo and Irja and Eino and me, the whole lit window of the Sandbar Cafe at seven in the morning, and stop, and come back to Jodie. I saw his face start to change, the smile going, something else coming up underneath it, and I saw my daughter take one step back from the car door. Only one. And keep talking.
I realized I still had the coffee pot in my hand. I'd been holding it the whole time, from the moment she came in. I looked at it. Then I set it down on the counter, on a napkin so it wouldn't mark, very carefully, and I wiped my hands on my apron, and I walked down the aisle past booth five, past the half-eaten pancakes and the whipped cream going soft and the blue duffel bag under the table, to the front door, and put my hand flat on the cold glass, and stood there, close enough to be seen, with both hands free.
Outside the rain came down straight and soft, and the wipers went back and forth, and my daughter stood in her yellow windbreaker beside the open window and said whatever she had decided to say. I couldn't hear it. I didn't need to. Across the river, the whole length of the bridge was showing, for once, all the way to the other side.