3. The Return
The Return
Monika
The bullet sits on my nightstand for three nights before I throw it away.
I don't know why I kept it. Sentiment, maybe.
Or proof. Or something else entirely—something I don't have a name for, something that makes me pick it up every morning and turn it over in my fingers before I start my day.
It's small. Smaller than I expected. A misshapen lump of metal, cold now, inert, nothing like the hot thing I pulled from his side.
On the fourth morning, I drop it into the trash bag with the coffee grounds and the empty cans of beans and I don't look back.
The diner feels different after that night.
Not the building—the building is the same tired collection of vinyl and fluorescent light and the faint smell of bacon grease that never quite comes out of the upholstery.
But the air inside it has changed. Charged.
Like the moment before a thunderstorm, when the sky goes green and the birds go quiet and every hair on your arms stands up.
I tell myself it's nothing. I tell myself I imagined the whole thing—the blood, the bullet, the grey eyes that looked at me like I was something worth looking at.
I tell myself that the stack of hundreds in my apron pocket is just money, and money doesn't mean anything, and I should spend it on something practical like rent or groceries or the electric bill that's been sitting on my kitchen counter for two weeks.
I don't spend it. I fold the bills into a neat rectangle and tuck them under my mattress, and I tell myself it's an emergency fund, and I try very hard not to think about whose blood is on them.
The first night he comes back, I'm not ready.
It's 1:17 AM. Del is in the back again—he's always in the back now, like he's given up on pretending to stay awake—and I'm rearranging the pie case because there's nothing else to do.
Apple, cherry, pecan, chocolate silk. The chocolate silk has been there since Monday and no one has ordered a single slice, but Del refuses to throw it away because "someone might want it," and I've learned not to argue with him about food waste.
The door chimes.
I don't look up. I've trained myself not to look up when the door chimes, because looking up means making eye contact, and making eye contact means inviting conversation, and conversation at this hour is never about anything good.
I keep my hands on the pie case and my eyes on the chocolate silk and I wait for the customer to sit down or leave or do whatever they're going to do.
They don't sit. They don't leave.
I feel them watching me. A presence at the edge of my peripheral vision, solid and still and patient. The hair on my arms stands up—that same thunderstorm feeling, that same electric charge—and I know who it is before I turn around.
He's standing by the counter, three feet from the stool he sat on last time.
Same suit, different color. Dark grey, almost black, with a tie that matches exactly.
His shirt is white and crisp and expensive-looking, and there's no blood on any of it.
No bandage visible beneath the fabric. No sign that anything happened to him at all.
His hand isn't pressed to his side this time. It's resting on the counter, fingers spread, casual. Like he owns the place.
Maybe he does. I wouldn't know.
"Good evening, Monika."
His voice is the same. Low. Rough. The kind of voice that's used to being listened to. It slides under my skin before I can stop it, settles somewhere in my chest, and I hate how much I don't hate it.
"The diner's not a good place for convalescence," I say. "You should be in bed."
"I am fully recovered." He tilts his head, and something flickers across his face—amusement, maybe, or curiosity. "Your work was exceptional."
"My work was a first aid kit and a bottle of vodka. Any idiot with steady hands could have done it."
"But they didn't." He pulls out the stool and sits, crossing his arms on the counter. "You did."
I don't know what to say to that. So I do what I always do when I don't know what to say: I reach for the coffee pot.
"Coffee?"
"Please."
"Black?"
"You remember."
I pour. The coffee is fresh—I made it at midnight, out of boredom, and it's still hot enough to steam. He wraps his hands around the mug and doesn't drink. Just holds it. Like the warmth is what he wanted, not the caffeine.
"You're not going to ask," he says.
"Ask what?"
"Who I am. What I do. Why someone shot me."
"No." I set the pot down and lean against the counter across from him. "I'm not."
"Why not?"
I think about it. The answer comes easier than I expect.
"Because you wouldn't tell me the truth. And I don't want to hear the lie."
He smiles. It's the same small twitch as before, barely a movement of the lips, but it changes everything. Softens the sharp edges of his face. Makes him look almost approachable, almost human, almost like someone I could imagine sitting across from in a different context.
"You're perceptive," he says.
"I'm a farm girl. We learn to read animals. Same skill set."
"Am I an animal?"
I hold his gaze. The grey of his eyes is deeper tonight—storm clouds, not winter ice. There's something behind them that I can't name, something that makes me want to look away and lean closer at the same time.
"Aren't we all?"
He doesn't answer. He takes a sip of his coffee, and I watch his throat move when he swallows, and I tell myself I'm not watching anything.
I'm just standing here. Doing my job. Existing in the same space as a man who happens to be handsome in a way that makes my stomach do something I don't want to analyze.
"Pie," I say, because I need to say something, and pie is safe.
"Excuse me?"
"Pie. You need to order something, or Del will complain that I'm letting loiterers take up space. What kind do you want?"
He looks at the pie case like he's never seen one before. Like he's never had to make a decision this small, this inconsequential, in his entire life.
"What do you recommend?"
"Apple's the freshest. Cherry's too sweet. Pecan is good if you like nuts. The chocolate silk has been here since Monday and I wouldn't feed it to a stray dog."
"The apple, then."
I cut him a slice—generous, because I'm not a monster—and slide it across the counter on a chipped plate. He picks up the fork and takes a bite, and I watch his face change. Just slightly. The way a person's face changes when they taste something that reminds them of something else.
"Good?" I ask.
"Yes." He takes another bite. "Very good."
"You sound surprised."
"I'm not used to eating food that isn't prepared by a private chef."
I laugh. I don't mean to—it just comes out, a short, startled sound that echoes off the tile and makes Del stir in the back booth. "A private chef. Of course. I should have known."
"Known what?"
"That you're one of those people."
"What people?"
"The ones who live in a different world. The ones who don't have to think about how much milk costs or whether the landlord is going to fix the heat before winter. The ones who walk into diners at two in the morning because they're bored, not because they're hungry."
He sets down his fork. "I'm not bored."
"Then why are you here?"
He doesn't answer. He just looks at me—that same steady, unreadable gaze—and I feel the air between us change. Thicken. Become something that has weight and texture and a temperature all its own.
"Tell me about veterinary school," he says.
I blink. "What?"
"Last time, you mentioned it. You wanted to be a veterinarian. You said you had the hands for it." He glances down at my hands—just a flicker, just a moment—and then back up to my face. "What happened?"
The question lands somewhere soft. Somewhere I've been protecting.
"The farm failed," I say. "My father sold the animals. Sold the equipment. Sold most of the furniture, honestly. He moved into a small apartment in Scranton, and I moved here, and veterinary school stopped being an option when I couldn't afford the application fees."
"That's unfortunate."
"It's life."
"It's a waste."
I feel my jaw tighten. "I didn't ask for your opinion."
"No," he agrees. "You didn't. But you have a gift, Monika. Steady hands. A steady mind. The ability to stay calm when someone else is falling apart. Those aren't common qualities. And watching you pour coffee in a diner at two in the morning feels like watching a surgeon scrape dishes."
I should be offended. Part of me is offended. But another part of me—a smaller part, a younger part, the part that still remembers the barn and my mother's voice and the way it felt to pull Mercy into the world—wants to cry.
Instead, I pick up the coffee pot and refill his mug.
"My father is doing okay," I say. "He's lonely, but he won't admit it. My sisters call him every Sunday, and he tells them he's fine, and they pretend to believe him. I send money when I can. It's not enough, but it's something."
"Your sisters," he says, like he's filing the information away. "What do they do?"
I tell him. About Elena, the oldest, who married a contractor and lives in Ohio and has three kids she posts about on social media every hour.
About Mira, the second, who lives in Florida and works as a dental hygienist and sends me postcards of beaches I'll never see.
About Lena, the third, who stayed in our hometown and married the boy she dated in high school and works at the hardware store and seems perfectly content to never leave a twenty-mile radius for the rest of her life.
He listens. Really listens—not the way most people listen, waiting for their turn to speak, but the way you listen when you want to understand. When you're building a map of someone in your head, and every detail matters.
I don't know why that makes me nervous. But it does.
"What about you?" I ask, when I've run out of sisters. "Do you have siblings?"
"No."
"Parents?"
"Dead."
"Wife?"
His eyes flicker. Just for a second—a crack in the grey—and then it's gone.
"Also dead."