“I think I was blushing redder than a stop sign. I don’t even know if I managed to say my name properly. He ordered a Gray Goose martini, which I also thought was unutterably fancy. His friends got whiskey. And he asked me what I wanted to drink.

“I said, ‘I can’t drink, I’m only sixteen.’ And he smiled, showing the most white and perfect teeth I’d ever seen. I should have realized then what a warning that smile was, but when you’re a teenager, you don’t realize you’re just a child. You don’t realize how different adults are from you. You think you’re one of them, or close to it. You don’t know that in innocence and vulnerability, you’re like a kitten padding around next to a tiger.”

I feel a sick sense of dread at where this story is going, but I don’t want to interrupt Celia, not even to encourage her. I’ve learned that when someone is in the flow of a narrative, the worst thing you can do is derail them. Not if you want to learn something.

“He asked me a few more questions about myself, as I brought their drinks and then their food. I didn’t dare ask anything about him. I found out later, from the regulars, that he was a bigshot at a building materials company in Knoxville. He’d just built some big estate thirty miles outside Silver Run.

“Ellis paid the bill for the table, which came to maybe sixty dollars. And he laid three crisp, new hundred-dollar bills on the table.

“If he would have been there when I picked them up, I would have said, ‘That’s too much,’ and refused to take it. But the men had already left. So I just picked the money up, staring at it like it was a gold nugget. Like it was something magic left by a genie in a fairytale.

“Then, a couple of hours later, when I had wiped down all the tables and we’d closed for the night, I went out behind the restaurant to get my bicycle. And there was a sleek black car, parked ten feet away from my bike. Ellis got out of that car and said, ‘Let me give you a ride home.’

“I never took rides from men at work. Not even if it was raining. But I felt like I couldn’t refuse him, because he’d given me all that money. So I got in his car.

“I’d never been in a truly luxurious space before. The gleam of the dashboard, and the scent of the leather . . . it was like I was sitting in a mobile palace. And Ellis himself seemed ten times as powerful and intimidating, now that I was in his space, sitting right next to him.

“But his voice was as soft and gentle as ever, as he asked me all about my parents and my siblings, and why I wasn’t in school.

“He drove me straight home, respectful as can be, and dropped me off in front of the house.