I could have called the high school. I could have had them pull her out of fourth period and put her on the phone in the office, and I could have said — what? Your boyfriend broke a girl's jaw in Longview. His grandmother says so. His grandmother who everybody says is losing her mind. Come home right now. She was mine all the way through, and I knew what I'd have said at seventeen if my mother had called me out of class to tell me that about Keith Hakala. I'd have hung up. I'd have gone to him. I'd have told him everything, and he'd have held me and told me exactly what I wanted to hear, and I'd have believed him because believing him was so much easier than the alternative, which was believing I'd been a fool.
Your mother's a hard woman, Jodie. Your mother would turn you out in the rain.
He'd built it already. That's what I understood, standing at the pay phone with my forehead against the wall. He'd built it before I ever got there. Whatever I did, he'd already told her I'd do it, and why. And the harder I did it, the truer he'd be.
When I came back down the aisle, Toivo was sitting in booth five across from Edna Tolan.
I had never in twenty years seen Toivo Huhta sit down in his own dining room. He ate his lunch standing up at the steam table at three in the afternoon. But there he was, in his apron, with his big scarred hands folded on the table, and Edna was talking to him low and fast, and he was nodding. When he saw me he got up, slow, and stood at the end of the booth.
"I remember the boy," he said to me. Just that. He looked at Edna. "Cowlick. Wanted to see the grill. I let him flip one once. He was maybe seven. Burned it." He paused. "He cried. Not because he burned it. Because he thought he was going to get in trouble. Scared to death of getting in trouble, that kid. I remember thinking somebody'd scared him plenty, somewhere."
"His mother," Edna said, very quietly. "When she was home. She was a mean drunk."
Toivo nodded, as if that was about what he'd figured. Then he said to me, "You'll want to get her out of here before the afternoon. He'll be looking."
"How do you know?"
"Because if it was me," Toivo said, "and I had what he's got riding on Friday, and my gramma went missing on Tuesday with a milk truck, I'd be looking." And he went back into the kitchen.
We worked it out between us that afternoon, in pieces, in between customers. Irja got involved, because Irja was going to get involved whether anybody asked her or not; she came and sat down with Edna during the slow part around two and held her hand and talked to her