The cook stamped out his cigarette, ducking a glance again through the pass-through and out the window. “Got an awful lot a’ berries on th’ trees this year.”

Frances’ mind tumbled with worry. She wanted to think about all the cook had said, including the news about soup, yet she was also worried about the hour. Should she visit Nancy after all, even though night was setting in? Suddenly, she remembered something. “You’re Mal—aren’t you?” she asked the cook.

“Yep. We pick th’ berries ourselfs, and make all kind a’ recipe from ’em,” the old man went on, tapping the spatula harder, with a clanging sound that struck Frances’ nerves. “We get ’em before the lizards do, ’cause we pick at night. Right, Lucas?” He turned to the teenager on the crate beside him, who still ate from the cereal bowl.

Frances looked through the pass-through, too. “It’s not a tumor,” she went on quietly. “Palmer didn’t say so. He said dozens of people get scars, and that these appear naturally, for no reason at all, exactly how a wart might suddenly appear, or the universe. So it’s all very common, you see.”

“Hmm. Tha’s not th’ way I heard it, Frances.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter to me, Mal! Because I’m leaving Munson.”

“Heh! Fancy girl, ’ent you?”

Frances sighed, realizing she should not have mentioned her plan to Mal. She did not feel like arguing, either. Lifting and wiggling a sore ankle, then turning in the close, oil-smelling kitchen, another memory bolted through her. “I’ve been back here before, haven’t I?”

“Dozens a’ years ago, seems like. You were a cute child, Frances. What do y’ do now?”

The sound of the man’s voice, even the sight of his roughened, sinewy under-throat made her smile: long ago, in the diner’s gravel parking lot, Mal had folded her up in his arms and pulled her to safety from her mother’s parked car, which had been in the path of a telephone pole that fell and snarled the car with wires.

“I’m not sure yet what I’ll do in life, but I think it’s important to plan on something,” she said.

Mal grinned faintly back to her. “How old are you, Frances?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“Oh, well, then, y’ got plenty a’ time t’ decide.”

She took a long breath. “I’d like to work with animals someday, I think.”

“Is tha’ right?” The cook smiled rather arrogantly, then turned to the boy on the crate. “Lucas here worked at th’ ol’ slaughterhouse in Little-Munson, before he made a goddammned mess a’ everything, that is.” Lucas looked up and grinned, showing a thick row of slanting teeth, which he brought down hard on the spoon of mush.

“I liked my dog,” Frances persisted tonelessly. “She was familiar to me! I don’t like all animals. But there are so many of them—everywhere!”

The cook eyed her. “They is?”