Chapter 12 — THREE TIMES

On the fourth of January, Renata Cruz asked if she could talk to me at the end of her shift.

We sat in my booth. Third from the door.

She had been turning something over for weeks and she started three times before she got it out.

"The lady in the hospital. Eli's mom."

"Sarah."

"Sarah." She put her hands flat on the table. "Mr. Harrison, she's been in here."

The floor moved a little.

"When?"

"Three times. That I saw. Once in the summer, once around September, and once — the last one was maybe five weeks before the boy came in. October."

"Are you certain it was her?"

"I didn't know it was her." Renata looked miserable. "I've been trying to figure out how to say this. I didn't know who she was. It's just that when Eli came in and you said the name, I thought about it, and I remembered the woman, and then I looked at the boy and I knew."

"Tell me about the times."

"All three the same. She'd come in maybe seven, seven thirty. Sit at the counter, right at the end, by the register. Order coffee. Not eat." Renata swallowed. "And she'd look at your booth."

"At me."

"You weren't always in it. The first time you weren't. The second time you were, and she sat there about twenty minutes and then she left money on the counter and went out."

"Did she ever say anything?"

"She asked me once if the owner still came in."

"What did you say?"

"I said Mr. Harrison? Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays and Sundays." Renata's voice went. "I told her your schedule. I thought she was a rep."

She had come three times.

She had sat twenty feet from me and looked at the back of my head and drunk a cup of coffee and left.

She was already sick in September. She had been diagnosed in April.

I went to the hospital that night, which was outside the hours, and a nurse let me up because by January they all knew me.

Sarah was awake.

I said, "You came to the diner."

She did not deny it.

She looked at the wall for a while and then she said:

"Three times."

"Why didn't you come over?"

And my daughter, who was thirty-eight and weighed about ninety-five pounds, said:

"Because I had a whole speech. And I'd get in there and you'd be sitting there with the paper doing the crossword in pen like nothing ever happened, and I'd think — he's fine. He's completely fine. He didn't need me for twenty years."

I said, "Sarah, I do the crossword in pen because I've done it every day since your mother died and it is the only twenty minutes of the day I am not thinking."

She turned her head.

"You do it in pen because you're arrogant."

"I do it in pen because if I make a mistake I have to look at the mistake for the rest of the day."

She started to laugh and it turned into coughing and it went on a long time and a nurse came and I stood back against the wall like a man in a house he has broken into.

When it stopped she was crying, which was the first time.

She said, "I sent him because I ran out of time to have the speech."