"I saw the plate," Ethan said. "The second plate."
And I thought whoever orders a meal for someone who isn't there, that's someone who knows what it means to miss somebody. And someone like that wouldn't hurt a kid who was hungry.
Millie stared at him. 12 Years old.
She picked up the coffee pot and stood up because she needed something to do with her hands. "That," she said, her voice coming out slightly unsteady, "was a very wise thing to notice."
Ethan just shrugged the way boys do when they've been given a compliment they don't know how to accept. "Is there more pie?"
She laughed.
It came out of her fast and genuine. And two of the other customers looked over and then looked away, smiling, and the sound of it seemed to do something to the room, loosen it slightly, let in a fraction of air.
"Yes," she said. "There is absolutely more pie."
She was cutting him a second slice when the pay phone rang.
Everyone in the diner heard it. It wasn't a busy night.
The rain had kept the usual crowd thin, and in the sudden quiet, the ring was loud and specific, and it pointed at all of them like a finger. Millie picked it up.
"Millie's," she answered. There was a pause, then Grim's voice, low and close, the way voices get on pay phones when the person on the other end is being careful about what's around them.
"They still there? Both of them?"
Grim asked. "Rosie's asleep."
Another pause, longer this time. "Millie."
The way he said her name just slightly different from how he usually said it. She gripped the receiver tighter.
"It's worse than the boy said." She turned slightly away from the room, dropping her voice.
"How much worse?" "The woman's locked in."
He's got people at the road. They've beaten her, and one of those people is wearing a badge.
Millie closed her eyes for exactly one second. "Can you get to her?"
"Working on it." His voice was flat and controlled, but she heard something underneath it.
Not fear Grim didn't do fear, but something adjacent to it. Something that sounded like fury being held on a very short leash.
"Keep the kids there. Don't call the local department.
I mean nobody local. Millie, you understand me?"
"I understand you." "I'll call back in an hour."
The line went dead. Millie stood with the receiver in her hand for a moment before she hung it up.