“Well, you never know, someone might recognize him,” Amir says, putting his pencil down.
My mouth goes dry staring at the picture. It’s a person, even if I’m not sure where some of the details came from. I imagine some deranged psychopath with this face coming after me, then Gretchen. I want to will it to come to life just so the sheriff can make an arrest.
Amir finishes his coffee and picks up his sketchpad, but I stop him before he slides out of the booth.
“Amir . . . did Kip really see it happen?” This isn’t quite what I was told at school, but it gets his attention.
He glances uncomfortably at the door. “Look, Sonia, I’m not supposed to talk about the investigation.”
“Please.” A lump rises in my throat, but I force myself to talk around it. “I just keep thinking—what if he could’ve stopped it?”
“He couldn’t have.” He sets his things back down, training sad dark eyes on me. “The kid must’ve passed through the woods right after you escaped and right before they attacked Gretchen. He saw her sitting alone at the top of the falls about the time we were here at the diner, trying to figure out what happened to you.”
I lower my head, letting out a long breath.
“I wish it could’ve been different, Sonia. I’m truly sorry.”
“Does that make Kip a suspect, then?” I look up and it’s clear I’ve caught him off guard, but it seems like an obvious question.
He rises quickly, avoiding my eyes. “I can’t discuss that with you, kiddo.” He holds up the composite drawing and thanks me for my time. “The sheriff will give you an update once we know a little more.”
The dinner rush is still going strong when he leaves, and I hustle to help Uncle Noah catch up while trying to wrap my head around everything Amir said. And didn’t say.
Around nine o’clock I’m coming out of the kitchen with a couple of slices of peach pie when I notice a figure slumped in the booth at the far corner of my section. I’m not sure how the guy ended up there. Dina just got in from her business class at the community college, but she knows I’m about to clock out for the evening. I retie my apron and dutifully shuffle over. He has a dark hoodie pulled over his head, despite the warm night. I pull out my order pad, trying to catch Dina’s eye, but she’s busy with the book club that meets here every month.
“Hi, can I get you something to drink?”
“Think I’ll go with coffee.”
I almost drop my pencil at the familiar, gravelly voice.
Marcus looks up from under his hood. “Better make it black.”
SEVEN
MARCUS’S EYES ARE A DARK, impenetrable brown. It’s been so long since they were trained on me, I’d almost forgotten the intensity of his gaze. His hood falls back, revealing black hair mussed like he’s been running his hands through it for hours. His brows are straight, his full mouth pressed thin. He’s unshaven, which gives him an appealing rugged look, but enhances the exhaustion in the sharp lines of his face. He rests his arms on the table in front of him, tapping his right index finger to a rapid beat only he can hear. For a moment it looks like his hands are bruised, but then I realize it’s just traces of green and purple paint.
I swallow, trying to keep my voice steady. “What do you want?”
“Coffee?” he says again.
For six months Marcus has gone out of his way to avoid me like I was something he didn’t want to step in, and now he wants me to bring him coffee? I look over his shoulder to Dina hovering over the book club. She hasn’t noticed him yet.
“I think you’d better leave.”
He leans forward. “Can’t I just talk to you for a second?”
I grip my order pad in one hand and my pencil in the other, but I can’t seem to keep them still. If he’d asked me to talk two years ago, I would’ve stumbled over my own sentences and then called Gretchen, giggling. But he didn’t talk to me then. We’d shared a look here, a smile there, and every time butterflies would freak out inside my stomach. But after he registered on Gretchen’s radar that was the end of that. I kept my distance, hid my crush. Gretchen got bored with boys easily, so I thought I’d wait it out. Everything seemed normal—I ceased to exist to either of them for a little while. But for whatever reason, as Gretchen’s infatuation started to wane, Marcus began acting like he wished I didn’t exist. At first I tried to fix it, or at least figure out why, but after a few encounters where he complained openly about my presence, it hurt less to steer clear of him altogether.
I was thrilled when they broke up last month.