Page 16 of Hunger

I pick it up.

I don't know what kind of flower it is. I'm not the kind of person who could name three flowers on a good day. But I knowit doesn't bloom in Nebraska in winter. I know it doesn't bloom on a passenger seat in a locked car.

The shape of it in my hand is delicate. The yellow is impossibly bright against the dark of my glove.

I sit in the car looking at the flower in my hand.

I should call someone. I should tell someone. The thought arrives and lands and then sits there with nowhere to go. Tell who. Tell what.Officer, someone left a flower in my locked car. There's no sign of forced entry. They didn't take anything. They left me a flower.I can hear the response in my head before I can finish imagining the call. They'd tell me to lock my doors better. They'd suggest I check with friends or family. They'd close the file the moment I hung up.

I look at the flower again.

It's beautiful.

That's what that stops me. I'm sitting in my car with a flower in my hand that no one should have been able to put there and I'm thinking about how beautiful it is.

I drive to work.

I keep the flower on the passenger seat. I don't put it in my bag or hide it. I drive the same route I always drive and I park in the back lot and I get out and I carefully lift the flower from the seat and I carry it into the food court with me.

Tammy is already there. She's restocking napkins at the front counter and humming along to whatever song is playing through the ceiling speakers, which is something she only does on Saturdays when Marcus is with his father and she doesn't have to think about anything other than work for the next eight hours.

She looks up when I come in. Her eyes go to the flower in my hand.

"What's that?"

I set my bag down behind the counter and hold the flower up to her.

"It was in my car."

She stares at it. Then she stares at me.

"In your car."

"On the passenger seat this morning. When I went out to drive here."

"Jenny."

"My car was locked."

She sets the stack of napkins down on the counter and walks around the side and takes the flower carefully from my hand. She turns it over. She holds it up to the light.

"It was in your locked car."

"Yes."

"And there was no one around."

"No one."

"And you didn't put it there last night and forget."

"Tammy."

"I had to ask." She's still looking at the flower. Her mouth has gone soft in the way it does when she's trying not to smile. "Honey."

"What."

"You have a secret admirer."