by Jessa Archer
“Your memory must be going, Patsy,” Wren said. “We were in here two days ago.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve seen at least a hundred tourists since then,” Patsy replied, popping her gum. “ One in-season day around here is like seven the rest of the year. I swear I’m going to walk right out those doors one summer day and never come back.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s a lie and you know it. You love this place.”
“You got me there.” She grinned. “But they’ve got two family reunions going on down at the campground, plus that biker group that’s been coming over from Knoxville since—I don’t know, maybe even back in the seventies. You’ve seen ’em, Wren. They used to be trouble. Started a fight here one time. But these days they’re just a bunch of middle-aged coots parading around like they’re Hell’s Angels and stinking the place up with all that sweaty leather. Anyway, this is the first time I’ve had seats open all day, and I’m still short on help. You sure you ain’t interested, Cassie? Tips are real good in the summer.”
Cassie shook her head. “I tried waiting tables once. I’m way too clumsy. By the time you subtracted for all the dishes I broke, I’d have to pay you to work here.”
“Okay. Let me know if you change your mind.” Patsy looked around to make sure no one was listening, then leaned forward to fill our coffee cups. “Is it true?” she asked, dropping her voice to a whisper.
My stomach clenched, even though I’d known she was going to ask as soon as I stepped in the door.
“Jesse and Mac were in here just a few minutes ago,” Patsy continued when I didn’t respond immediately. “Said some kids found a body in the river. Is that true or just more of his bullpucky?”
Jesse Yarnell is a regular, usually accompanied by his trusty sidekick, Mac, whose last name I can’t remember. The two of them are by far the worst gossips in Thistlewood. Both are retired, and they park their well-padded behinds at the counter for at least a few hours a day during the off-season, trading barbs with Patsy, and occasionally her mom, Teresa. Patsy runs them off when the tourists are around because she needs the seating, and they rarely buy more than coffee and pie, or maybe breakfast. They also take ample advantage of the free coffee refills, not that I really have room to talk on that front. But I do think she misses the banter with Jesse when he’s not around.
I debated just telling her I didn’t know, but Patsy wouldn’t believe me. She knew that if I hadn’t already been down to the river to check things out for the paper, I’d at least have heard something about it from Ed, who would have heard from Billy Thorpe. So I’d have to give her some tidbit of information unless I wanted to end up on her bad side. And I really didn’t want to be on Patsy’s bad side. As someone who waited tables in college, I know better than to annoy anyone who has the power to surreptitiously spit in my soup. Not that I ever did that, or that I believed Patsy would, but why risk it?
So I didn’t even bother with a lie. “It’s true.”
She heaved a sigh. “Dear Lord, it’s only May. This town has already seen enough tragedy for a full year, what with that Edith Morton business. Do they know whose car it was?”
“Not yet.” Technically, that wasn’t a lie. They didn’t know whose car it was. Wren and I, on the other hand, didn’t have any doubt.
Patsy tapped the cap of her pen against her bottom lip. “Well, I hate it. Bad for business, and just a plain nasty way for anyone to go. So, ladies,” she said, pasting on a weary version of her usual smile, “on that grim note, do you want to be happy or healthy today?”
That was Patsy’s usual shorthand for whether we were ordering the barbecue bacon cheeseburger, which is sinfully good, or the soup and salad combo, which is decent but allows me to still zip my jeans without lying down on the bed and sucking in my breath.
“I think we’re both just having coffee,” Wren said. “This whole thing sort of zapped our appetite.”
“Can’t blame you there,” Patsy said as she scooped up Cassie’s empty plate. “I’ll be back with some more sweet tea for you in just a minute, hon.”
“I’m good,” Cassie told her.
“Okay, then. Wren, Ruth…just flag me down if y’all need a refill.”
When Patsy breezed off to one of the other tables, I turned to Cassie and continued in a low voice. “It’s Tanya Blackburn. I recognized the novelty plate, and also those weird headlights. It probably went over the edge at Lover’s Leap, which is—”
“The second left past the bridge on River Road,” Cassie said. “We spent summers here during high school, remember?”
“O-kay.” I decided I really didn’t want to inquire further on that point and looked out across the diner. There was a couple I didn’t recognize on the other side, near the front. Tourists, most likely. The man took a quarter out of his pocket and popped it into the jukebox, and the woman leaned forward, poking at the numbers on the bottom. A few seconds later, a song crackled to life on the speakers, and soon Aretha Franklin was suggesting that we find out what “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” meant to her.
“You think about Tanya a lot,” Cassie said. “I can tell, because it’s usually when some eighties power ballad comes on. It always seemed weird to me that she just disappeared and no one bothered to look.”
“Seemed weird to me, too,” I told her.
“And they claimed they looked,” Wren said. “It just didn’t seem like they looked very hard.”
I nodded. “Exactly. Her car was gone. Her clothes were gone. She was eighteen. Her parents told the cops she had been talking about leaving for years. And that was true. But we were leaving together. She might not have told them if she was leaving…”
“But she would have told us,” Wren finished. “And I think she might have told her brother, too. She and Bud had grown apart a bit, and he annoyed her as much as James annoyed me sometimes, but they still took care of each other. Sally Blackburn was always off doing something with her church or some social thing either here or over in Maryville where Tanya’s aunt lived. The kids sort of fended for themselves.”
“Kind of surprised that Bud is living with his mom. Is she in bad health?”
“I don’t think so,” Wren said. “I still see her downtown. Bud, though…I don’t know what happened to him. He seemed bright enough in school. I think he got into drugs when he lived outside Thistlewood. After he came home, he seemed a little off. I think he did odd jobs with his dad’s construction firm for a while. And he still does handyman stuff. His flyer is over there on the bulletin board.” She nodded at the community board near the door, just above the rack that holds copies of the Thistlewood Star. “Nothing steady, though, as far as I know. Back when I was interning at Memory Grove, the old owner hired Bud to paint the reception area. He did a good job, but he seemed kind of…dazed.” She gave a little laugh. “He nearly fell off the ladder when he realized who I was. Pretty sure he never, ever believed I’d come back to Thistlewood.”
“And he was not alone on that count,” I said.
“True. You could definitely have put me in the never-ever category when I left. But things change, as we both know. And yeah, Bud probably felt like Tanya abandoned him, leaving all of a sudden like that. It must have hurt.”
I thought back to that night on the stairs. “You’re right. Mrs. Blackburn mostly seemed angry when she sent me back to check out Tanya’s room. The clothes were all gone. Nothing there but her song notebook, the one thing she definitely wouldn’t have left. But when I saw Bud in the hallway, he seemed sad. Kind of deflated, like he’d lost all of his energy.”
We were silent for a moment, then Cassie said, “I’m so sorry. It had to have been awful seeing that car emerge from the river. Are the two of you okay?”
I gave her a tiny smile. “Yeah. I think we’re mostly in shock.”
“Do you think…” Cassie looked uncomfortable, and I was pretty sure I knew where this was headed. “You said the car went off at Lover’s Leap. Do you think maybe there was a guy she was in love with
? Someone who rejected her? Maybe she did a Thelma and Louise over the side, like in that movie? Only…without Louise.”
“Well, that’s proof positive that you are my daughter. I had that very same thought on the drive back. But I don’t think so.”
“What changed your mind?” Wren asked.
“Remember what I told you about Mrs. Blackburn sending me back to check out Tanya’s room?”
They both nodded, and then Cassie said, “Ah. The clothes. If you were planning to make a dramatic exit like that, would you pack your clothes?”
Wren’s eyes widened. “Come to think of it, why would you pack all of your clothes, even if you were running off? Tanya had stuff in that closet she hadn’t worn since fifth grade.”
That was an excellent point, and I mentally kicked myself for not thinking of it thirty-two years ago. Maybe there was someone at the sheriff’s office who would have listened if I’d presented them with that bit of logic. If nothing else, I might have been able to convince my boss at the Star. Jim Dealey had printed an article about Tanya’s disappearance, even continued to run a notice for a few months after I left for college. But I’d always had the sense it was simply because he knew how sad I was about her disappearance. Like pretty much everyone else in town, he’d believed her parents.
Aretha’s last sock it to me faded out, and the opening bars of the couple’s second jukebox selection began.
Wren turned to look at me. “You gotta be kidding.”
The three of us sat there, silent, as Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” battled with the sounds of dishes clattering, laughter from a booth with four teens (one of whom I’m fairly certain was Ed’s niece, Kate), and a baby crying. I suspected that there would be a service of some sort for Tanya, once her remains were officially identified. But this—her favorite song playing here in the diner where she’d worked—was Tanya Blackburn’s real memorial.
✰ Chapter Five ✰
The song ended, and Wren and I debated a second cup of coffee. Then Cassie’s head turned toward the door and very quickly turned back. She grabbed the dessert menu from the holder on the condiment tray and began to scan it. I glanced up at the chrome ceiling to figure out who she’d spotted. Ah-ha. Dean Jacobs had just walked in.
Was she trying to avoid him by hiding behind the menu? Or simply trying to look nonchalant? I was almost certain it was the latter, so I waved. Dean waved back and headed our way.
“Mom,” she hissed, “I was trying to play it cool.”
Wren laughed and whispered, “Too late.”
Dean was apparently off duty now, because he’d changed into jeans and a dark-blue polo shirt that matched his eyes. The tip of a tattoo peeked out from the collar of his shirt. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I knew my daughter would consider it a major plus. Cassie could show him the heart on her ankle and the flower on her arm—both small and tasteful, but the appeal of inking up mystified me. She’d told me I should get a star tattoo right after I bought the Star. But that wasn’t happening, and she knew it. I had to force myself to get a flu shot every year, so there was no way I’d voluntarily go anywhere near a needle.
“We meet again,” Dean said. “But it looks like y’all are finishing up.”
“Nope.” Cassie slid over to make room in the booth. “We were actually about to order pie.” The look that she gave me and Wren made it clear we would be staying at least a little bit longer. And, apparently, we would be eating pie.
A crash came from behind the counter, followed by a few choice words from Patsy, each one of which would have required a hefty deposit into the swear jar if she’d had such a thing. One of the teenaged boys who was sitting at the booth across from us laughed and gave her a round of applause.
“Sorry!” Patsy glanced around, breathing a sigh of relief when she realized that there were no small children in the dining room. “I do try to rein it in once tourist season starts,” she told the two teens. “But sometimes I slip up. Guess y’all will have to be honorary citizens of Thistlewood.”
“Nothing we haven’t heard before, right, Jack?” The older one grinned at the kid opposite him, almost certainly his brother, who was wearing a T-shirt with Buckeye Nation across the front. The younger boy seemed preoccupied. He just gave Patsy a weak smile and went back to flipping through the songs on the jukebox.
When Patsy eventually made it back to our table, Dean ordered something called a Lumberjack Breakfast—pancakes, choice of meat, eggs, biscuits, and gravy.
“Scrambled or fried, hon? And did you want sausage, bacon, or country ham?”
Just listening to Patsy walk him through the options caused my cholesterol to rise a few points. Looking at Dean, I wondered where he could possibly put it. The guy was thin as a whip, but then, he did most of his deliveries on foot. He always said it was quicker that way, which is definitely the case during the summer months when tourists coming through on their way to the river can clog Main Street from one end of town to the other.
Per Cassie’s orders, the rest of us had pie. Wren looked like even her slice of key lime was pushing the envelope a bit, but I was actually feeling a little better. Hearing Tanya’s favorite song—the one she always called her theme song—had been cathartic. I took a bite of peach pie and thought about the many times we had sat in this very booth all those years ago, sometimes with Tanya, but even more often with her in the waitress uniform, taking our order and then sneaking back to chat with us between customers.
Dean looked like he was trying to work up the courage to say something. Finally, he turned to Cassie and said, “I’m glad that you’re here. I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier in the mail truck, and I have a proposition.”
Cassie raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
Wren and I exchanged a smile. What exactly had the two of them talked about on the ride back from the estate sale?
Dean, who’d clearly caught our exchange, flushed. “Um…a business proposition? You said you were looking for a job. And I haven’t mentioned this to anyone yet, because it’s still in the planning phase, but I’m opening a business in the old antique store building.”
“Really?” I said. “That’s just a few doors down from the Star. I saw some contractors there the other day and asked Patsy what was going on. For once, she didn’t have a clue.”
“Yeah,” Dean replied. “I’m trying to keep it on the down low. The place has been vacant for a couple of years, so I’m getting a pretty good deal. And it’s a cool space. The upstairs is huge, completely open. I’ve saved up a bit, and also have a little money that my grandmother left to me. It’s a little risky, I guess, but as the old saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
“What kind of business?” Wren asked.
“A bookstore. There’s no place in town that sells books. We could even have signings if you happen to know any local authors who might be willing.” He wagged his eyebrows up and down.
“I’m pretty sure that could be arranged,” I told him, since I couldn’t imagine Ed saying no.
Dean glanced over his shoulder to make sure Patsy wasn’t within earshot, and then added in a lower voice, “I also want to put in a coffee shop downstairs. Personally, I like the diner’s coffee just fine, but you have no idea how many tourists stop me to ask for directions to the nearest Starbucks when they’re craving their mocha frappalatte-whatevers.”
Cassie chuckled. “I can believe it. It was a culture shock to me when I came here. In Nashville, you can’t swing a cat without hitting at least one.”
“Exactly. So, I’m putting in a coffee bar. We’d sell little trinkets, too. Souvenirs. Hopefully, handmade items from people in town who make jewelry and so forth. The upstairs area would be separate, though, and this is the part that some people are going to think is kind of out there. I want to turn it into a gaming cafe.”
“Like, arcade games?” I asked.
Apparently I had just shown my age because Dean and Cassie exchanged an am
used glance.
“I might put in some arcade games,” he said reluctantly. “But more like esports. Gaming computers where you can play games like Fortnite and Overwatch. League of Legends. Stuff like that. I think it would be a big hit during the tourist season, when kids—and adults, too—get dragged away from their computers and game consoles to come camping. A day or two of that, and they’re in withdrawal, just like the ones needing their Starbucks fix. I think they’d be willing to fork over twenty bucks to play on a decent machine for a few hours. And it might help keep the place profitable off-season, too, as long as I lower the rates a bit for locals. There’s nowhere in Thistlewood for kids to hang out after school or on the weekends.”
I thought that Patsy might beg to differ on that point, but to be honest, there really wasn’t much for them to do here, aside from eating and listening to old songs on the jukebox.
“Wouldn’t that be kind of noisy, though, with all those games going on?” Wren asked. “I mean, bookstores are usually quiet.”
Dean grinned. “They use headphones, although there might be the occasional loud whoop when someone wins a match. And I’m guessing most of our traffic upstairs will be at night. But I am planning on doing some soundproofing. That’s probably what Ruth saw the other day.”
Cassie turned in the booth so that she was facing Dean. “So…where do I come in?”
“Well, I’m hoping you’d manage the place. I’ll still work with the post office, so I’d only be there part-time. And to be honest, I don’t know a whole lot about running a business. I was dreading the whole process of hiring someone. When you said today that you helped run the store you worked at in Nashville, it was like the clouds parted and delivered a miracle.”