Claire did not sleep much. The booth vinyl stuck to her cheek. She listened to Peter's occasional shifts and coughs and hated how familiar even his restless sounds were. Near dawn she heard Mae in the kitchen, quiet as snowfall on a roof, and smelled coffee blooming bitter and hopeful. She slipped from her blanket and found Mae alone at the back burner, stirring a small saucepan with the tin marked W open beside her.
"Couldn't sleep either," Mae whispered. "Old women and storms and fools with suitcases keep the same hours."
Claire stood beside her in sock feet, rust turtleneck wrinkled from sleep, strawberry-blonde hair flattened on one side. In the pot, gravy warmed—Walter's spoonful and Mae's corrections, brown and imperfect and loved into being again. The smell was the same as Claire's first disastrous bite, and somehow entirely different now that she knew what the wrongness meant.
"He doesn't deserve your best china face," Mae said, not looking up from the swirl of the ladle. "That fiancé. Ex. Whatever stamp you put on him."