You curse like a sailor, her mother always said. And you eat like a lumberjack.

Still. Despite the gut-expanding, tongue-pleasing meal, she doesn't want to look up, lest her eyes explode from all the cheeriness.

The Sunshine Café. Ugh.

Bright yellow walls. Sunlight filtered through gauzy curtains. Powder blue stools at the counter. Farmers, migrants, truckers, and country yuppies all milling around together. Each one of them probably goes to church, puts change in the collection plate, and tries to be a good American citizen, smiling all the while. Miriam shakes her head. She reminds herself to one day get drunk and urinate on a Normal Rockwell painting.

Miriam wads up a hunk of toast, ruptures an egg yolk, lets the runny ooze swirl together with the syrup swamp she's created.

And then someone sits down across from her.

"You owe me for the tow truck," Ashley says.

Miriam shuts her eyes. Breathes deep through her nose.

"I'm just going to pretend you're a pink elephant. You'll kindly take this opportunity to get up and slink out of this place like a rat before I open my eyes, because if I open my eyes and still see you there, oh Figment of My Diseased Imagination, I'm going to stab you in the neck with my fork."

Ashley snaps his fingers. "Or, alternate scenario: I call the police."

Her eyes snap open. She watches him. He grins, the middle of his bottom lip bisected by a dark scabby line. So smug. So satisfied.

"You won't. You're road scum just like me. They won't believe you."

"Maybe," he says. "But they'll believe pictures. That's right – I got photos. And the coincidences will seem more than a little strange, won't they? Since Richmond, you've been, what, at the scene of three different deaths?"

Her jaw tightens. "I didn't kill those men."

"All of them conveniently missing the cash from their wallets. And I'm sure if someone were to do a little bit of digging, they'd find the credit cards missing, too. Credit cards that sometimes get used, then thrown in trash cans or ditches. Digging even deeper, they'd find a trail of the dead, wouldn't they? With your footprints walking them backward through time. They'd find your diary. They'd find your weird little datebook."

Miriam's guts go cold. She feels trapped. Cornered. A butterfly pinned to a corkboard. For a second, she genuinely considers sticking her fork in Ashley Gaynes's neck and bolting.

"I didn't kill them," she says.

Ashley watches her. "I know. I read enough of the diary."

"But you don't believe it."

"I maybe do," he says. "My mother was into all kinds of mystical blah-blah. Crystal gazing, psychic phone line, all that. I figured it for garbage, but sometimes, I wasn't so sure. I always wanted to believe.

"Plus, these three I've seen, they each died in different ways, didn't they? The bike courier in Richmond – the black kid? Traffic accident. Hard to call that murder, though you are a crafty little cunt, aren't you?"