Nia shook the memory away as Hannah finished half the soup. Elsie stirred, making a small unhappy sound, and Hannah pulled her closer. "She hasn't been sick," Hannah said quickly, perhaps afraid Nia would misunderstand. "Just cold and tired. I changed her before we left, but the spare clothes are in the car."
"We'll get them," Nia promised. "First, let me see if Mr. Flores is still here. He knows every mechanic between here and the state line."
At the counter, a retired bus driver named Henry Flores had been nursing one cup of coffee for an hour while waiting for the storm to pass. He listened to Nia's explanation, took out his phone, and called a garage that stayed open for truck emergencies. Within minutes, they had arranged for someone to reach Hannah's car when the flooded service road became passable. None of them knew whether the repair would be simple, but at least the car would not remain forgotten in the rain.
When Nia came back, Hannah was watching her with an expression she couldn't decipher. "You make people feel safe," Hannah said. "You did that before you even knew my name."
Nia shrugged. "Mrs. Ortiz taught me half of it. The other half I learned from somebody a long time ago."
"Was her name Evelyn?" Hannah asked.
The words landed more sharply than thunder. Nia stopped beside the booth, one hand on the back of the seat. For a moment she heard nothing but the rattle of the window and Elsie's sleepy breathing. Hannah had gone very still, and her eyes were fixed on Nia's face as though she had taken a terrible risk by speaking.
"What did you say?" Nia asked.
Hannah drew something from beneath the collar of her wet coat. It was a small round gold locket on a worn chain, warm from the skin beneath it. With trembling fingers she opened it and held it out across the pink tabletop. Nia saw two tiny birds engraved above a crooked line, and below them, the barely legible letters N and H.
She knew that locket. She knew the uneven mark between the birds, because she had made it herself with the end of a bent paper clip while Evelyn laughed and told her that jewelers probably had better tools. The mark had scratched the gold, and young Nia had cried because she thought she had ruined Hannah's birthday gift. Evelyn had said that the scratch made it theirs, then placed the chain around Hannah's neck.
Nia's hand rose to her mouth. "Hannah?" she whispered.
The mother nodded once, tears gathering again. "Nini," she said, using the nickname no one had spoken to Nia in nineteen years. "I've been looking for you."
For a full minute Nia could not move. She had imagined this meeting in grocery stores, train stations, church pews, and the faces of strangers walking past her on the street. In those imagined meetings she always knew what to say, and the little girl she had lost always knew her. Now a grown woman sat before her with a child of her own, and Nia felt twelve years old again.