The Roti Stand

Simone had been sitting on the wall for twenty-seven minutes before Anya and Reyah arrived.

She knew it was twenty-seven minutes because she had checked her phone three times, and because she had counted the number of people who passed the roti stand in that time. Fifty-three. Forty-two adults, eleven children. Most of the children were holding something — a bottle of Solo, a bag of channa, a small toy from the vendor near the Savannah entrance.

Simone noticed things. That was what she did. Her mother said she had been born watching, and her father said she had been born judging, and both of them were probably right.

What she had noticed in the past twenty-seven minutes:

• Mrs. Harrinarine had not moved from her stool. Not once. Not to adjust the display of currant rolls, not to check her phone, not to wave at a customer. Her hands stayed in her lap.
• Mr. Harrinarine had moved constantly. He wiped the counter. He rearranged the napkins. He swept the same patch of concrete three times. He was doing things to look busy.
• Mrs. Harrinarine was not wearing her wedding ring. The skin where it should have been was pale, untouched by the sun.
• Mr. Harrinarine was wearing his.
• Twice, a customer had approached the stall and Mr. Harrinarine had handled the transaction before Mrs. Harrinarine could stand up. Twice, Mrs. Harrinarine had looked at him like she wanted to say something and then hadn’t.

Simone had written none of this down. She didn’t need to. She would remember.

“Simone!”

Reyah arrived first, because Reyah always arrived first, even when she arrived with someone else. She was carrying a bag of pholourie from the vendor near the gate — Simone could smell the fried dough and the tamarind sauce from ten feet away.

“Where’s Anya?”

“Buying a notebook.”

“She has a notebook.”

“She bought another one. It’s green.”

Simone nodded. That made sense. Anya had a notebook for school, a notebook for the Sleuth Log, and apparently now a notebook for emergencies. The green one was probably for emergencies.

Anya appeared a moment later, the green notebook already in her hand. The cover was exactly the green of the grass on the Savannah after rain. Simone noticed this.

“What did you see?” Anya asked. No hello. No how are you. Just the question. That was Anya.

Simone told them.

She started with the pale skin where the ring should have been. Then the way Mr. Harrinarine kept moving. Then the customers — how he handled them before his wife could stand up. Then the look. The specific look of someone who had something to say and had decided not to say it.

Anya was already writing in the green notebook.

Reyah was eating pholourie and watching the stall.

“Maybe she lost it,” Reyah said. “Maybe it fell off. Maybe she took it off to wash her hands and forgot where she put it.”

“Then why is she sitting like that?” Simone asked.

“Like what?”

“Like someone told her to sit there and be quiet.”

Reyah stopped eating.

Anya stopped writing.

The three of them looked at the Harrinarine stall. At Mrs. Harrinarine, still on her stool, hands still in her lap. At Mr. Harrinarine, still moving, still busy, still not meeting anyone’s eyes.

“We should talk to her,” Reyah said.

“We should talk to both of them,” Anya said.

“Separately,” Simone said.

They looked at her.

“Together they’re going to tell the same story,” Simone said. “Separately, maybe they tell different ones.”

Anya nodded. She wrote something in the green notebook. Then she closed it.

“I’ll talk to Mr. Harrinarine,” she said. “I buy currant rolls from him every week. He knows me.”

“Reyah, you talk to Mrs. Harrinarine,” Simone said.

“Why me?”

“Because you’re good at getting people to talk. You ask questions like you’re just curious. People don’t feel like you’re interrogating them.”

Reyah considered this. It was true. She did ask questions like that.

“What are you going to do?” Anya asked Simone.

Simone looked at the stall. At the display of currant rolls. At the napkins Mr. Harrinarine had rearranged three times. At the small lockbox beneath the counter, visible if you were looking from the right angle — which Simone was.

“I’m going to watch,” she said.

Anya approached the stall from the side, the way she always did. She had been buying currant rolls from Mr. Harrinarine since she was nine years old, when her grandmother first brought her to the Savannah market and said, This man’s currant rolls are the only reason I still believe in God.

Mr. Harrinarine saw her coming. His face did something complicated — a smile that started and then stopped, like a car that wouldn’t start.

“Morning, Mr. Harrinarine.”

“Morning, little lady. The usual?”

“Please.”

He turned to the display. His hands were shaking. Anya noticed this. She wrote it in her head because she couldn’t write it here.

“Busy morning?” she asked.

“Busy enough.”

“I heard something happened.”

His hands stopped moving.

For a moment — just a moment — he didn’t breathe. Then he picked up the tongs and put three currant rolls in a brown paper bag.

“Nothing for you to worry about,” he said.

“My grandmother always says that worrying is the adult’s job and learning is the child’s job.”

“That’s smart.”

“She’s smart.”

He handed her the bag. She handed him a twenty. He gave her change without counting it, which was unusual. Mr. Harrinarine always counted change twice. He had told her once that his father had taught him: If you don’t count it, you’re telling the universe you have more than you need, and the universe likes to test that.

Today he didn’t count.

“Mr. Harrinarine?”

“Yes, little lady.”

“I hope Mrs. Harrinarine finds her ring.”

He looked at her.

Then he looked at his wife, still sitting on the stool, still not moving.

Then he looked back at Anya.

“Me too,” he said. But the way he said it — Anya would think about that later. The way he said it like he wasn’t sure he meant it.

Reyah approached Mrs. Harrinarine from the front. Direct. Friendly. The way you approach someone you want to buy something from, not someone you’re investigating.

She didn’t know Mrs. Harrinarine well. She knew her as the woman behind the counter who smiled and asked about school and always said God bless you when you paid. That was all.

Today, Mrs. Harrinarine did not smile.

“Good morning, Mrs. Harrinarine.”

“Good morning, sweetheart.”

The voice was tired. Not sleepy tired. The other kind.

“I was hoping to get some of the ginger beer,” Reyah said. “The kind in the glass bottles. My father says it’s the best in Port of Spain.”

Mrs. Harrinarine nodded. She stood up slowly, like standing cost her something. She walked to the cooler at the back of the stall and pulled out a bottle.

“Two dollars,” she said.

Reyah handed her a five-dollar coin. Mrs. Harrinarine looked at it for a moment, then reached into her apron pocket for change.

Her hands weren’t shaking. That was the thing. Mr. Harrinarine’s hands shook. Mrs. Harrinarine’s hands were perfectly still.

“Mrs. Harrinarine?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry about your ring.”

The woman’s face changed. Not much. Just enough. The muscles around her mouth tightened. Her eyes went to the counter, then to her husband, then back to Reyah.

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

“What happened to it?”

The question hung in the air between them. Reyah asked it like she was just curious — the way Simone had said she would. Like a child asking about something she didn’t understand.

Mrs. Harrinarine looked at her husband again. Anya was still there, pretending to examine a currant roll. Simone was somewhere behind them, watching.

“Someone took it,” Mrs. Harrinarine said quietly.

“From the stall?”

“From the lockbox.”

“The one under the counter?”

Mrs. Harrinarine nodded.

“But only family has the key,” Reyah said. “That’s what my father said. He said you told him once that only family can open the lockbox.”

Mrs. Harrinarine’s hands finally moved. She smoothed her apron. Straightened a bottle on the counter. Did something with her hands so they wouldn’t be still.

“Keys get lost,” she said. “Keys get borrowed. Keys get copied.”

“Who would copy a key to your lockbox?”

Mrs. Harrinarine didn’t answer.

“Mrs. Harrinarine?”

“I have to get back to work, sweetheart.”

She turned away.

Reyah stood there with her ginger beer and her two dollars’ worth of change and a head full of questions she hadn’t asked yet.

Simone had seen everything.

She had seen Anya approach from the side, the careful way she pretended to look at currant rolls while she watched Mr. Harrinarine’s hands. She had seen Reyah stand directly in front of Mrs. Harrinarine, her body open, her face friendly, asking questions like she was making conversation.

She had seen Mr. Harrinarine not count the change.

She had seen Mrs. Harrinarine’s hands not shake.

She had seen Mrs. Harrinarine look at her husband twice before answering a question about a ring that was supposed to be stolen.

And she had seen something else.

When Mrs. Harrinarine turned away from Reyah — when she said I have to get back to work — she had looked at her husband one more time. Not the way you look at someone you’re worried about. The way you look at someone you’re afraid of.

Simone had seen that look before. Once. At a friend’s house, when the friend’s father came home angry. The mother had looked at him the same way. Like she was calculating the distance between herself and the door.

Simone wrote nothing down. She didn’t need to. She would remember.

The girls regrouped at the roti stand.

Anya had her green notebook open. Reyah had her ginger beer. Simone had her observations.

“Someone took it from the lockbox,” Reyah said. “Mrs. Harrinarine said so. But when I asked who would copy a key, she didn’t answer.”

“Mr. Harrinarine didn’t count the change,” Anya said. “He always counts the change. He told me his father taught him.”

“And his hands were shaking,” Simone said.

They looked at her.

“What else?” Anya asked.

Simone told them about the look. The specific look Mrs. Harrinarine had given her husband at the end. The way it reminded her of something she didn’t want to be reminded of.

“She’s afraid of him,” Simone said.

The words landed on the concrete between them.

“Or,” Reyah said slowly, “she’s afraid of something else. Something she knows. Something she’s not saying.”

Anya wrote something in the green notebook. Then she closed it.

“We need to find out who else has a key,” she said.

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. But we need to.”

Simone looked back at the Harrinarine stall. Mr. Harrinarine was sweeping again. Mrs. Harrinarine was back on her stool, hands in her lap.

Something was wrong.

Not just a stolen ring. Something bigger.

She could feel it the way you feel a storm coming — not in the air, but in the bones.

“We should come back tomorrow,” Simone said. “The market is quieter on Sundays. Easier to see things.”

Anya nodded.

Reyah finished her ginger beer.

“Tomorrow, then,” she said.