What none of them could see were the carefully counted quarters and dimes the girl brought each morning, smoothed flat and arranged in her small palm like something precious. What they couldn’t see was how she always chose the farthest booth. How she watched the door with those wide, frightened eyes while she ate.
How she never once asked for anything beyond the egg sandwich, never took extra napkins, never lingered. What they couldn’t see was the note Vera had found slipped beneath the empty milk glass the previous morning, written in large, uneven handwriting on a torn corner of notebook paper. But Vera hadn’t read it yet.
She would read it later, alone, standing at her kitchen counter with her coat still on. And when she did, her hands would shake. For now, she was just standing in the middle of the diner with thirty people watching her, her face burning, Rick’s voice still echoing off the walls.
Vera’s name is Vera Sullivan. She is twenty-seven years old. She has been a waitress at Waverly Diner for three years, arriving every morning at five o’clock to prep for the rush, taking night classes at the community college two evenings a week, paying her own rent and her own student loans with the money she earns on her feet.
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