Page 17 of Hunger

"I have a — Tammy."

"You have a secret admirer." She's grinning now. She can't help it. "Someone has been leaving you presents."

"Someone broke into my car."

"Someone left a flower in your car. There's a difference and we both know it." She hands the flower back to me. "Do you know what kind it is?"

"I have no idea."

"It's winter jasmine."

I blink at her. "How do you know that?"

"My grandmother had it on her porch in Tulsa. She kept it in pots all year." Tammy's smile hasn't gone away. "It isn't supposed to grow up here. Not outside, anyway. Someone got that out of a greenhouse, maybe? Or a florist?" She tilts her head. "Or maybe someone's grandma."

I look at the flower.

"It's beautiful," I say. It's the only thing I can think to say.

"Yes." Tammy reaches out and tucks a piece of my hair behind my ear, which is a thing she's never done before but which she does now in a quiet, almost-maternal way that I don't know how to respond to. "It is."

She goes back to her napkins.

I find an empty paper cup in the back and fill it with water and put the flower in it. I set the cup on the shelf above the prep counter where I'll be able to see it during my shift.

It glows there, bright yellow against the white of the wall.

I work the grill, take orders, make change. I think about the flower the entire time.

Around three in the afternoon, between rushes, Tammy comes up beside me with two cups of coffee and hands me one.

"Did I tell you?" she says. "Craig hasn't come back to work. He missed yesterday and today both."

"He's probably sick."

"Mm." Tammy sips her coffee. "Probably." She glances at me sideways. "Don't tell me you missed him."

"I didn't miss him."

"Good. You shouldn't be missing him."

She bumps me with her hip on her way back to the register. I look up at the flower on the shelf. The bright yellow against the white wall. Something that no one should have been able to put on my passenger seat.

I think about the stone on my nightstand.

Two gifts, now. Two gifts and no one to explain either of them.

I work the grill. The food court fills again. The afternoon goes on.

Chapter Five

Jenny

I wake at six on Monday morning and the apartment feels different.

I lie in bed for a moment trying to identify what's wrong. The heat is running. The window is closed and the curtain is still. Nothing has moved. Nothing has been touched. But there's a quality to the air in the room that doesn't belong to me. A coolness that has nothing to do with the temperature. The faint sense of a room that's been entered and exited very recently.

I sit up slowly. The blanket falls to my waist. I look around the room in the gray half-light.