The Cherokee Rose itself was a nice little establishment. The front door - painted white, with trim of orange that Rick was coming to recognise from the flowers themselves - was freshly painted enough that the humidity hadn't yet set it to peeling, and the hinges were well oiled enough not to creak. A bell rang merrily as he slipped in through the front door, its chime the standard gentle ti-ting. Bright yellow curtains hung from the various windows around the place and the colour saturated the warm sunshine cascading in, sending warm light playing about the walls. A woman's voice called out, "Be right with you!" and he nodded.

The place wasn't exactly packed - while a hodge-podge of people occupied the various barstools and benches, at least half of each were empty - but it was damn full for the roadside diner it was. Bright flowers sat on each table, the same as the others he'd seen, though these were in glass jars and milk bottles instead of vases. The air smelled of cooking meat, grease hissing and popping in the background.

At one end of the bar, just by the swinging door used to carry orders out to the tables, sat a little girl. She was smiling, her chin-length locks swishing from side to side as she coloured merrily in a book in front of her. A crayon - brown again (since Rick apparently couldn't escape the colour), of the type found in children's meals or doctors' offices - was clutched in one hand. Rick couldn't see much, but he could tell the book wasn't a collection of colouring sheets like he'd expected it to be and, instead, was a sketchbook, with what looked to be decent-quality, unlined paper inside.

She looked up, eyes half-narrowed in something that Rick would almost call suspicion if she weren't a child, and frowned. "What?"

He shook his head. "Nothing." Her expression intensified. "Really, nothing! I was just curious what you were drawing, is all."

She shrugged, but didn't speak. Her hand twitched towards the paper again, and then made the full journey. Brown wax slid against white paper, depositing itself in pebbled streaks.

Rick waited a second, watching as she finished with the brown and swapped out for green, then grey, then red. "Can I see?"

She didn't look up. "May."

"What?"

She looked up at him pointedly. "Mama says it's may. May you see. Uncle Daryl'd just ask if you had eyes and tell you to use them your damn self. I can't say that, though. Mama'd chew me out fer cursing." She looked down again.

Feeling remarkably chastened for someone who'd just gotten chewed out by a child, Rick nodded. "Then may I see?"

The girl - Sophia, Rick had long since gathered, even if he hadn't yet verbalised the name - opened her mouth to say something. Before she could, the same voice from earlier interjected, false cheer ringing in every syllable. "What can I get for you, Officer?"

Carol was, it turned out, even more intimidating in person than she was through the diner's front window. Her silver hair was pulled back by a leather strap, tied so that it wouldn't get in her eyes, and it left him subject to a piercing look that wasn't quite hostile but wasn't exactly friendly either.

"Just a cup of coffee, ma'am, if you don't mind."

She hummed contemplatively but didn't move towards her supplies. "You here for Ed?" Rick noticed, much as he didn't want to have done, as Sophia stiffened at the name.

But Rick didn't answer either. "Why would you ask that?"

Carol shrugged. "You're not the first," she said. Her hands reached up to her shoulder, pulling down a dish towel she'd had hanging there. "Won't be the last, probably. Don't know why you want just let us be. He's gone. He's not coming back." Truth, Rick thought. "Haven't missed him since he went, and haven't seen him either." Truth. "He's gone. Just let him be gone."

Rick let his head tilt to one side, shifted to work out the pins and needles in his leg. "You're not worried? What if he does come back?"

He got a snort for that one. "Doubt he will." A moment passed but, before he could ask for more information, she kept talking. "There's a feeling, you know. Like you're being watched. Eyes, skittering up and down your back, lurking at the back of your neck in the prickle of hairs standing up. Felt it every day when Ed and I were married - every day." She paused, then set about scrubbing at the countertop with the rag. "Haven't felt it since he left." Truth.

"What if he's out there? You never worry about what he's doing? About who he's hurting?"

"No," Carol said. "I don't worry about that at all." Truth.

Rick raised an eyebrow. "And if he hurts someone else?"

A shrug. "Not my problem."

Lie.

"Fair enough," he said anyway. "Can't argue with that." I could, but I won't. "Any chance of that cup of coffee?"

She shrugged. "Sure." The rag was abandoned on the formica countertop, and then came the gentle clink of a mug being set down and the slosh of liquid being poured in. "On the house. You want milk? Sugar?"

"Thanks. And no, this is good." The steam rose merrily from the dark brown surface, wisps dissipating into thin air as if they'd never existed. A fitting metaphor, really, given that Ed Peletier had done exactly that, had vanished from the face of the earth with the only trace of him left confined to arrest reports and the brutal truth contained in his wife's medical files. He picked up the mug, felt the smoothness of its surface scalding his skin, and then took a careful, measured sip. It stung a little, but he nodded his thanks anyway. "Mighty fine cup of coffee, ma'am."

"It's Carol," she simply said. "And it's a family recipe."

Rick nodded, and the conversation lapsed.

– – –

Whatever he might have thought about the diner's business level - that it being so busy when he walked in was a fluke, perhaps, or even the opposite - Rick was wrong. The diner started out that busy and stayed that busy, for the entirety of his first cup of coffee and well into his second. He got used to that bell chiming away, ti-tinging any time someone came or went, and there was an about-equal flow in either direction. It was oddly… nice, actually.

"Another, please," he said.

Carol nodded, eyes still somewhat flinty as she regarded him from the other side of the counter. "Coming right up. But you've gotta pay for this one."

"Fair enough."

– – –

Another hour. Rick wasn't really sure what he was waiting for, but the coffee was good - damn good - and the apple pie he'd ended up splurging on was well worth the price. (He had his eyes on some weirdly pink-tinted cookies too, just visible through the glass of the display counter but he hadn't worked himself up to getting them quite yet.)

Carol grinned wryly at him, the apparent softness of her expression belied by the steeliness of her eyes. "Another, Officer?"

Rick had wondered, off and on, whether she was suspicious about him being suspicious, whether she'd picked up on the fact that he didn't think her as innocent as she seemed. It was moments like these that made him ever more certain that she did.

Still, he smiled. "Thanks," he said, nudging the cup closer with the tips of his fingers.

She nodded. "No problem." A smile, there and then gone again, fleeting and underlain with a kind of fakeness he couldn't define. "Glad you're liking it."

Another nod. "Very much, ma'am. Thanks again."

She kept his stare for a minute, assessing. When she turned away, Rick was pretty sure he'd seen something vaguely like resignation in her expression.

– – –

It took a while - three cups of coffee, one slice of pie, and three "beet and acorn cookies" - for Sophia to finish her drawing and start a new one. The brown crayon had been decimated, but the green one had ended up faring worse, the wax covering was frayed and torn where she'd peeled it back to make more room for colouring.

Rick smiled at her, fidgeting with his fork and distantly registering it scraping against the porcelain. "What's the word?"

She looked over at him, and Rick didn't think he'd seen such blatant amusement at his own expense from a child's expression before. "On what?"

"Do I get to see your drawing?"

Sophia looked at him for a second, expression blatantly assessing in a way that made him think of Daryl's. "Why d'you wanna see?"

He shrugged. "Curiosity." He thought back to Carl's drawings, then, tucked neatly into his drawers at the station lest they wrinkle or smudge. "My son's always liked art."

"I'm not your son."

"I know." A grin, which might even have been genuine. "Still curious."

She flipped the paper over, then lifted it to show him. He had a few seconds to assess it - a nice little scene of a forest, well-rendered but unmistakably a child's creation - before she set it back down again. "There."

He nodded. Tipped his hat in a slightly showy gesture of antique gentility. "Thanks, ma'am."

In the split-second before she looked down again, Sophia didn't look impressed.

– – –

About half an hour after the lunchtime rush, Carol stopped by again, mopping the still-spotless counter with her grey rag. "You find whatever you're looking for?"

Rick couldn't help blinking at that one, even though he'd long decided to throw subtlety out the window. "What do you mean?"

"You're clearly looking for something. Most folks come looking for Ed leave before now, but you're sticking around. Can't see a reason for it, so I thought I'd ask." I see you, he heard beneath the words. Can you see me?

"Oh, no, it's nothing like that." Yes. "I've just got a long drive back and I'm not eager to make it."

"Fair enough," she said, her head tilting to one side. "Want some food for the road?"

"I'm good." Another tip of the hat. "Thanks."

Her nod is a tense thing, tight and rigid even as it's hidden behind the whisking of silver hair along her collar. "Alright, then. You be safe now." And then she's gone, back to the counter to work.

"I'll do that."

– – –

Walking out of the diner was a lot more uncomfortable than walking into the diner. Despite the brightness inside, the sunlight outside still managed to be blinding when Rick finally walked out, and his side was stinging something fierce. He hadn't pulled anything, of that he was sure, but that didn't stop the throbbing sensation setting his entire side on fire. Like it or not, he was not in any condition to drive.

Lucky, then, that he also wasn't in any great hurry to leave.

He'd seen an inn - or a motel, whatever it was called - a few minutes' worth of car ride away, and it wouldn't be hard to find his way there. Suppose he just… stayed? Stuck around? Snooped for a little bit? Call it a vacation from work, like his boss was trying to make him take.

Yeah. He might just do that.