She's silent for a long count. I can hear her breathing, the rapid shallow pattern of a woman trying to hold herself together over the phone.
"Come to my house today." Her voice cracks on the last word. "Please."
"I will. After my shift." I swallow. "But, Mom. Don't answer the door for anyone. Don't go anywhere alone."
Her breath shudders through the speaker. "I know, baby. I know."
We hang up, and I sit on the bed with the phone facedown on my thigh and stare at the wall of Rookie's room and breathe.
The apartment is gone. Not physically. But the safety of it.
The illusion that a clean counter and a locked door could keep the world out is gone.
A stranger photographed it and posted it online, and now anyone with an internet connection knows where Saylor Bell sleeps.
Saylor Halstead.
The name I buried is crawling out of the grave, and it's dragging me with it.
* * *
My shift starts at five, and by six I've settled into the rhythm of pouring and serving and not thinking.
Sarah walks in alone at seven.
No Porter. No booth. She sits at the bar, which sheneverdoes, and orders a double of whiskey neat instead of her usual wine.
I pour it and set it in front of her. Her fingers wrap around the glass, but she doesn't lift it.
Her eyes are swollen. The skin around them is pink and raw, the way skin looks when you've been crying for hours and then washed your face and cried again.
She's not wearing makeup.
Sarah always wears makeup—not a lot, but enough.
Mascara, lip gloss, the baseline armor women put on before they face the world.
Tonight her face is bare, and the bareness says more than tears would.
I don't ask. I learned from Tildie that prying is a door slammed shut, but presence is a door left open.
I wipe the bar near her. Stay in range. Refill the napkin holder she's leaning against. Small tasks that keep me close without making it obvious.
She speaks first. Her voice is raw, scraped down to the studs.
"Have you ever done something you can't take back?"
The question hits me in the center of my chest and sits there.
I set the rag down and look at her. Really look. Not the quick assessment I give customers. The slow, full-attention look of a woman who recognizes someone drowning because she's been underwater herself.
"Yeah." I lean my hip against the bar. "I have."
She nods. Not at my answer. At something internal, some conversation she's having with herself that I'm only hearing half of.
Her thumb traces the rim of the whiskey glass. Around and around and around.
"I found something out." She says it to the glass, not to me. "About someone I love."