𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑸𝒖𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏

February 2. 58 days left.

The woman came in at 8:14.

Mollie noticed her the way she noticed most women who looked like that, which was to say immediately, involuntarily, and with a degree of internal commentary she would never admit to. Tall. Dark hair cut short in a way that took confidence or money or both. A leather jacket that had been somewhere interesting. She ordered coffee at the counter and stood waiting with one hand in her back pocket and the other holding her phone, not looking at it, just holding it, the way certain people held thing, loosely, like the object was lucky to be there.

Mollie looked at her toast. Looked at Fayiz. Looked at her toast again.

Fayiz was telling her about Theodore's latest criminal enterprise. Something about a neighbour's boot and a three-block pursuit. She was listening. She was also not listening, because the woman at the counter had turned slightly and Mollie could see the line of her jaw and the earring, singular, left ear, a small silver hoop, and the particular way she stood, hip cocked, shoulders easy, that did something to Mollie's respiratory system she chose not to examine.

"...and he just sat there," Fayiz was saying. "With the boot. In the snow. Like he'd conquered something. Like he'd planted a flag."

"The boot."

"The boot. The landlord's boot. He's claimed it. I think legally it's Theodore's now."

"Admiralty law," Mollie said, still looking at her toast. "Salvage rights. If it's abandoned in the snow, the first terrier to find it has a legitimate claim."

He laughed. She didn't hear the rest of the sentence because the woman was walking toward them.

Not toward the booth. There was no reason for the woman to walk toward the booth. The exit was the other direction. The bathroom was in the back. There was no logistical justification for the woman to be walking this way and yet here she was, coffee in hand, and she was looking at Mollie.

Not at Fayiz. At Mollie.

"Sorry," the woman said. She had a voice like the jacket: warm, worn in, carrying distance. "This is going to sound ridiculous. But is that a Laura Marling patch?"

Mollie's hand went to her bag strap. The patch. She'd sewn it on two years ago in the flat in St. John's with Dana's sewing kit, which Dana had left behind along with the good towels and the Post-it and the particular emptiness of a flat that had been shared and then wasn't.

"Yeah," Mollie said. "It is."

"That's not Semper Femina, is it."

"Once I Was an Eagle, actually. But Semper Femina is..."

"The better album. I know." The woman smiled. It was a good smile. The kind that arrived slowly, that gave you time to decide whether you wanted to be inside it. "I saw her in Halifax last spring. Small venue. She played 'Sophia' twice because the sound cut out the first time and she just... started again. Didn't even look annoyed. Just started again."

"That's very her."

"It's very her," the woman agreed. She was still looking at Mollie. Still smiling. The coffee in her hand was untouched, which meant the coffee had been a prop, which meant the walking over had been the point. Mollie recognized the mechanics of this because she had, in another life, been on both sides of it. The approach. The excuse. The real reason underneath the excuse, which was: I saw you and I wanted to talk to you and this was the best I could do on short notice.

The woman held out her hand. "I'm Noor."

"Mollie."

Noor's handshake was firm. Her fingers were warm from the coffee cup. She held on for exactly the right amount of time, which was to say one second longer than necessary, and Mollie felt something she hadn't felt in months, the small electric awareness of being chosen, of being approached, of being the person in the room someone had decided to walk toward.

Across the table, Fayiz had stopped talking.

Mollie glanced at him. His face was neutral, pleasant, the expression of a man watching a conversation that didn't concern him. Except his hands had gone still. He'd been cutting his pancakes and now the knife and fork were resting on the plate, perfectly parallel, and his eyes were on his coffee, and something about the stillness was off. Not off. Careful. The way you were careful around wet paint.

Noor noticed him for the first time. "Sorry... I'm interrupting. I just... Laura Marling. You don't see the patch often."

"You're not interrupting," Mollie said. Because she wasn't. They were in a diner. People talked in diners. This was a normal thing that happened between normal people in normal places and there was no reason for her heart to be doing what it was doing, which was two things at once, which was the problem.

Noor reached into her jacket pocket. Took out a card. Set it on the table, gently, beside Mollie's tea. She knocked it slightly out of alignment with the sugar dispenser and corrected it, almost absently, which Mollie found endearing against her will.

"I run the music programme at the Arts Centre on Harbour Drive. We're doing a folk series in March. If you're interested." She paused. The smile again, slower this time. "Or if you just want to talk about Laura Marling sometime. Either way."

Either way. Mollie heard the two words the way you heard a key change in a song, suddenly, with your whole body. Either way meant: this is not about the folk series. This is about you. I walked over because of you.

"Thanks," Mollie said. "I'll... yeah. Thanks."

Noor left. The bell rang. The door closed. The diner resumed its usual business of being a diner, and Mollie was sitting in the booth with a card on the table and a cup of tea that had gone cold and a man across from her who was looking at his pancakes like they required very serious attention.

She picked up the card. Turned it over. Put it in her coat pocket. Her fingers were shaking, slightly, and she folded them around the tea cup to hide it.

The jukebox played something by Patsy Cline. Saoirse dropped a glass in the kitchen. Dottie sighed audibly. The world continued.

Fayiz picked up his fork.

The silence was different now. Heavier. Not the blanket kind. The kind that had a question inside it, curled up, waiting to be asked.

• • •