Her cuff dripped.
A third vehicle, a truck, slowed as if the driver were considering pie and then sped up, unwilling to interrupt whatever the awning was doing. The lot went dark again except for the diner’s sign, half the letters stronger than the others, the N in DINER flickering the way it had since 2018. Vince was going to fix it. Vince was always going to fix it.
Linda had planned to work until her knee gave out and then sit in the one-bedroom and watch the tax shop’s lights go on and off with the seasons. That plan was a kind of peace. The key punched a hole in it.
She thought of the shoebox. The stub. The photograph. Two faces close. The house a smear. If she opened the box tonight after her shift, if she went home instead of to a motel, the picture would still be two people she could not deny. Going home would not be safety. It would be the box and the fridge calendar and the rest of her life knowing a room had been rented for her arrival.
Going to the room would not be safety either.
There was no safe side of the awning.
Only the side with the pot and the side with the key.
She stood on the seam.
Doreen came to the door, peered out, and saw Linda’s back.
“You all right?”
Linda did not turn.
“Need a minute.”
Doreen looked at the man, looked at Linda’s hand, and nodded the way she nodded at weather.
“Pot’s on the counter.”
The door eased shut. A minute granted. A minute is not thirty years. It is what a coworker can give without being told the plot.
Linda used the minute to breathe.
She remembered a Sunday on Mason Street when they had walked to a bakery and bought one cinnamon roll because it was all they could split. They ate it on a low wall. Sugar on Linda’s lip. A dog hoping for crumbs. The other person said, “We could do this every week.”
Linda said, “Don’t plan me.”
She had thought she was protecting her freedom. She was protecting her exit. The cinnamon roll was still the best thing she had eaten that month. She can taste the cheap icing when the rain hits her mouth.
She remembered the note. She had written it twice. The first version said forgive me. She threw that one away because forgive me asked for a reply. The second said I need air. I will call. The second was a coward’s note and it was the one she weighted with salt.
She did not call.
If she takes the key she will have to say that out loud to a face.
If she does not take the key she will have to say it to the rain for the rest of her shifts.
The man said nothing more. He had spent his last line. Someone who has waited thirty years to see if you’d come. The sentence did not repeat. It did not need to.