CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Mae was opening up.
The diner lights were half on. The grill was warming. Mae was filling the coffee maker. She didn't look up when Jackson came in. She'd heard the truck.
"Coffee's almost," she said.
"Yeah."
"Booth or counter?"
"Booth."
"She'll want the booth."
"Yes."
Jackson sat in the booth in the back, the one by the window that looked out at the lot and, beyond it, at the slope of trees that climbed toward Pine Ridge in the dark.
Mae brought him a coffee.
She set it down. She didn't sit.
"I'm going to be here," Mae said. "If she wants me. I'm not going to be at the booth. You and her need the booth."
"Yes, Mae."
"There's eggs when you want eggs."
"Thank you."
Mae went back behind the counter.
Sarah arrived at 0511.
She'd been awake all night. Jackson could tell. Her eyes were dry now. The wet animal grief had moved through her and left behind something quieter and steelier, and Jackson recognized it because he'd felt the same thing in his own chest, in different shapes, twice in his life.
She slid into the booth across from him.
Mae brought a second coffee. Brought eggs without asking. Set the plate between them. Brought toast. Left them alone.
Sarah looked at the eggs.
She hadn't eaten in a long time. She picked up the fork. Took a small bite. Set the fork down.
Jackson waited.
He hadn't come with a script.
He'd come to do one thing.
He looked at her. Said, "I want you to teach me what I missed."
Sarah's face did something.
She was silent a long beat.
Then she said, "What you missed?"
Jackson said, "I have been head of pack security for thirteen years.
My job is to watch for the shape of what could hurt us.
I missed this. You knew Daniel for months.
You said his name in this diner. You felt happy.
I did not see what was happening to you.
I want to learn how it happened so I can see it next time. "
Sarah's face did something else.
The steeliness softened.
Not into the grief from yesterday.
Into something Jackson didn't have a word for.
She picked up the fork again.
Took a bite.
Chewed slowly.
Set the fork down.
"Okay," she said.
She drank some coffee.
She started.
She started small.
"He had reasons not to video-chat," Sarah said.
"And they were always plausible. His camera was broken.
He had bad signal at the cabin. He wasn't comfortable on camera because his pack had been weird about online stuff and he was working through it.
Each one made sense. None of them, by themselves, was a flag. "
Jackson took a napkin from the dispenser. Took a pen out of his coat. Wrote.
Sarah watched him write.
"You're taking notes," she said.
"Yes."
"On a napkin."
"Yes."
She almost smiled. She didn't quite. But the corner of her mouth went up by an eighth of an inch, and Jackson noted, internally, that the corner of her mouth had moved, and that this was a mile-marker.
"Keep going," he said.
She kept going.
She told him about the pacing. The way Daniel had escalated affection at exactly the speed that felt like a real relationship deepening.
Slow enough that there was no sense of being pushed.
Fast enough that Sarah had felt swept, and being swept, in Sarah's experience, had been a feeling she hadn't had in a long time and hadn't realized she missed.
"He never asked for anything inappropriate," Sarah said. "That's the part I keep coming back to. He never asked for a photo. He never asked for money. He never crossed the line I'd been told to watch for. I'd been told to watch for the line. He never crossed it."
"Yes," Jackson said.
He wrote.
"He asked questions," Sarah said. "About my life.
About the pack. About what I did at the diner, who came in, what Dominic was like, what your job was.
I thought he was interested in me because the people in my life mattered to me.
Now I think he was interested in the people in my life, and I was the door. "
Jackson wrote.
He didn't say anything yet. He wanted her to keep going.
She kept going.
She told him about the way Daniel had built her into an idea of herself.
The way he'd told her, repeatedly, that she was insightful, that she was the only person who really understood him, that he'd never connected with anyone the way he connected with her, that his small private pack would love her if only the timing were right.
"I knew I shouldn't trust those things," Sarah said.
"I knew people could say those things. I knew.
And it didn't matter. It didn't matter, Jackson.
I wanted to believe them. I was lonely. I'm forty-three years old.
I've been at this counter sixteen years.
I love it here. I love all of you. And I was lonely.
The two things were both true. And he found the lonely. "
Jackson wrote. He didn't look up.
He said, quietly, "Yes."
Sarah was silent a moment.
Then she said, "You don't have to do this. I'm not your job."
Jackson set the pen down.
He looked at her.
He said, "You are exactly my job, Sarah. I just had a wrong understanding of the job for thirteen years."
Sarah's eyes filled and emptied in the space of three seconds. She didn't let the tears go. She breathed once, deeply. Picked up the fork. Ate three bites of eggs in a row.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay."
"I'll keep teaching."
"Please."
She kept teaching.
She taught him for an hour and forty minutes.
She told him about every flag that hadn't looked like a flag.
About the way the grooming had felt, from the inside, like attention.
About the way she'd defended Daniel, in her own head, against the small voice that had occasionally tried to ask a question.
Jackson took twelve napkins' worth of notes.
Mae refilled their coffees twice without speaking and brought a second plate of eggs at 0635 when Sarah was hungry without realizing she was hungry.
Around 0650 Sarah stopped.
She was looking out the window.
The light had come up over the trees.
She said, "You know what I keep thinking?"
"What."
"I keep thinking how many other people are in this right now. How many other people are happy with someone who isn't real."
Jackson did not move.
He did not speak.
He let the sentence sit on the table.
Sarah looked at him.
He looked at her.
Something happened in the booth that Jackson couldn't have named, but that he registered in his body as a small click, the way a key registers in a lock.
The wolf in him noted it too.
Sarah said, "I think I want to know. About them. About the others."
Jackson said, "Yeah."
"I don't know what that means yet."
"You don't have to."
"Okay."
Sarah looked at her napkin pile. At the pen. At Jackson.
"I'll go home and sleep."
"Yes."
"I might call you. Later. With more."
"Anytime."
Sarah slid out of the booth. Stood. Touched Jackson's shoulder briefly as she passed, the way she touched the shoulders of regulars she'd served for years.
She went to the counter. Mae was there. Mae didn't say anything. Mae just put her hand on Sarah's hand for a moment.
Sarah went out into the morning.
The bell on the door rang and went still.
Jackson sat with his napkins.
He looked at them a long time.
Mae came over.
Sat down across from him.
Looked at the napkins.
Said, "She taught you."
"She taught me."
"You're going to be different now."
"I know."
"It's all right."
"I know."
Mae poured herself a coffee from the carafe she'd brought to the table. Looked out the window at the trees.
"Pack's going to be different too," she said.
"Yeah."
"You bring those napkins to the strategy meeting."
"I will."
Mae nodded.
She didn't say anything else.
The diner began, slowly, to fill with the breakfast crowd. Mae got up. Went back to work.
Jackson folded the napkins carefully. Put them in the inside pocket of his coat.
He sat one more minute in the booth.
The wolf in him was settled.
Settled in a new way.
Settled the way a wolf is when it has, at long last, understood the shape of the territory.
* * *