Chapter 13: Mr. Tern

I held the phone out to Ewan in the dark of the van.

He took it in both hands and read the text twice.

"Somebody's idea of a joke," he said.

"The scar is circled in red marker."

"Lots of cooks have burns, Rosie. Half the line at Carberry's has a forearm like a waffle iron."

His voice was perfectly even.

I watched his thumb press so hard on the edge of my phone that the screen flickered.

I could have said it right then.

I gave him the phone back to hold and said, "Who has your number, that they'd know where to send it?"

"I don't know yet."

I did.

She had a white Mercedes and a camera lens as long as my arm.

At two the next afternoon the dining room was empty between lunch and dinner.

I was folding napkins at table four.

The bell on the door rang, and Dale walked in with Tabitha a step behind him.

He had on a tan suit and no smile, and she had a folded sheet of glossy paper in her fist.

"Where's your husband?" Dale said.

"Behind you, Dale. He's been in the doorway to the kitchen for a minute and a half."

Dale turned.

Ewan stood there with a dish towel on his shoulder, wiping his hands.

"Mr. Hubbard," he said. "Table for two?"

Tabitha snapped open the paper and slapped it down on the bar.

It was the page from the magazine, with the red circle around the scar.

"Tern Hospitality," she said. "Thirty-nine restaurants in nine cities. Never photographed, never interviewed."

"And look at that arm. I zoomed in on my own video, Daddy. It's the same comma."

Dale leaned over the page.

He looked at the picture, and then at Ewan's left sleeve.

"Roll it up," he said.

Ewan looked at me.

I kept my face still and folded a napkin into a triangle.

He rolled up his sleeve to the elbow and held the arm out under the light.

"Fryer, when I was seventeen," he said. "Look at the tail."

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