Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe

by Heather Webber

  “I’m Anna Kate Callow,” I said, though I had a feeling she already knew exactly who I was. I motioned to two rocking chairs on the deck. “Come sit. My feet are killing me.”

  She followed me to the rockers, her sure footsteps soundless on the rotting deck boards. Carefully, she sat, still embracing the basket. “Your flats are cute, but probably not the best if you’re going to be waitressing. Zee wore Crocs. Swore by them.”

  I made a face. “I am not going to wear Crocs.”

  Summer smiled. “Did you pack tennis shoes, at least?”

  I’d packed everything. “I have an old pair somewhere. I’ll pull them out.”

  “Good idea.”

  It was my turn to smile—because it had been her idea. “How long have you known Zee?”

  Summer’s fingers, I noticed, were purple. Blackberry stains. On one of our secret excursions, Zee had taken me blackberry picking one summer when Mom and I lived in Ohio. There had been no hiding those stains from Mom, but much to my surprise, she hadn’t made too much of a fuss when she caught us purple-handed. Probably because blackberries were her favorite fruit. Instead, she’d smiled and asked Zee if she’d make cobbler with the berries we’d collected.

  It was the best cobbler I’d ever eaten.

  “All my life. Eighteen years now. I was born and raised here in Wicklow.”

  Eighteen? I’d never have thought that old—something I didn’t mention. No teenager wanted to know she looked years younger.

  “I helped Miss Zee tend her garden a couple of days a week during the warmer months. She told me how much she missed you and wished you could come here.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “She talked about me?”

  “All the time. Showed me pictures, too. Oh, don’t worry! I never told another living soul about you. It was mine and Zee’s secret. You have her smile—she was right proud of that, claimed it was her best feature.” She stared at her dirty feet. “I always thought her best feature was her big heart, but no one asked me.”

  I studied her, catching the quiver of her chin as she fought to keep her emotions in check. Summer Pavegeau must have been a very good friend for Zee to share such a secret. “Just so you know, I agree with you.”

  She gave a short, firm nod.

  “What have you got there?” I gestured to the basket, hoping desperately it wasn’t a zucchini loaf.

  Carefully she pulled back the tea towel, revealing a dozen brown eggs. “Miss Zee was a regular customer, but I wasn’t sure if you were needing any for the café.”

  Although there were two crates of eggs sitting on the kitchen counter, I didn’t hesitate to say, “Of course. We can always use eggs. What’s your going rate?”

  “Two dollars a dozen and a piece of blackbird pie.”

  The addition of the pie caught me off-guard, and I looked more closely at her. That’s when I saw the familiar look of grief trying to hide in her eyes. “That’s a bargain if I ever heard one.”

  I pulled a stack of ones from my apron pocket—tip money—and peeled off two singles. As much as I wanted to hand over the whole wad, I didn’t. Instinctively I knew Summer wouldn’t have taken the money for nothing.

  She tentatively reached out with her stained fingers and said, “Thank you, ma’am.”

  My teeth clenched. “Please don’t call me ‘ma’am.’ I beg of you. Anna Kate is just fine.”

  “Do you think you’ll be needing another dozen tomorrow … Anna Kate?”

  I ignored the fact that she sounded physically pained to say my name instead of “ma’am,” and said, “If you’ve got them, I’ll take them. I see you’ve been working with blackberries. I could use some of those, too, if you have extra.” Suddenly, I wanted to make cobbler.

  A shimmer of excitement flashed in her eyes. “How much are you wanting? A pint? Quart? Gallon?”

  “A quart is fine. I’m willing to pay top dollar, considering the thorns and snakes.”

  “Oh, the snakes don’t bother me none. I like them more than people sometimes.”

  Summer might look young for her age, but it was becoming clear to me that there was an old soul behind those big blue eyes. I stood up. “Let me get your pie. I’ll be back in a second.”

  I turned to find Bow standing in the doorway. He had a piece of pie already boxed, as if he’d done this before. He handed the box to me, then said, “I didn’t want to interrupt, but you’ve got a visitor insistent on seein’ you.”

  The cautious look in his eyes made me nervous. “Who is it?”

  He ran a hand down his trimmed beard. “Doc Linden. You ready to see him?”

  Was I ready? No. No, I wasn’t. Why the hell did I think winging it was a suitable idea?

  “Anna Kate?” he said. “I can send him away if it’s too soon…”

  I didn’t think I’d ever be ready, so I might as well get it over with. I sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. “It’s okay. Can you send him out here, please? I don’t really want an audience hanging on our every word.”

  “Sure thing.”

  My nerves were running wild as I turned around to say goodbye to Summer and to give her the piece of pie.

  But she was already gone.

  4

  Anna Kate

  I sat down. Stood up. Set the cardboard pie box on the deck railing. Wondered why Summer had run off. Plucked a mint leaf, crushed it between my fingers. Nerves twisted my stomach into an acidic knot.

  I should’ve known I’d need to deal with the Lindens sooner rather than later. Of course the rumors of my existence had already reached them. News spread fast in small towns.

  Heat radiated upward in waves from the splintered deck planks as I paced them. Try as I might, I couldn’t stop picturing the constant pain in my mother’s eyes. Pain that seemed to become more pronounced every time we moved, as if the hate she carried around chafed at her compassionate nature and rubbed her soul raw.

  I dropped the mint leaf and wiped my hands on my jeans as I heard the screen door squeak open. It snapped shut with a sharp bang of inevitability that made me jump.

  Bracing for a rush of rage, I steeled my shoulders and clenched my hands and jaw. Slowly, I turned around to finally face the lifelong enemy I’d never met.

  My grandfather, Dr. James Dawson Linden.

  I didn’t know what I’d expected to see. Devil horns, maybe. At the very least, I’d pictured him as a stereotypical old-money southern society gentleman. Air of charming superiority undercut with smugness. Seersucker suit. Slicked-back hair. The scent of pipe tobacco hugging him like a second skin.

  At first glance, there was none of that. There was a humble air about him with his casual clothes, dip of his chin, tilt of his head, and his layered white and silver hair that covered large ears. He wore khakis, a periwinkle blue button-down, and scuffed brown loafers. Standing with his hands tucked into his pockets, he stared at me as if trying to memorize every line of my face, every curl of my hair.

  He was just a man.

  A man with downturned brown eyes that looked burnished from a lifetime of sorrow.

  I honestly don’t know how long we stood there, taking each other in, trying to find familiarity in the face of a stranger. It was easy to see that I had his eye shape, his dimples. I even had the same cowlick at my hairline that forced my hair toward the right side of my face.

  Bitterness burned my throat as I tried to picture what this man would have looked like in his youth, because I imagined, except for the hair color, that my dad had been the spitting image of his father.

  I broke eye contact and tried to get past the overwhelming awkwardness. Chattering from the bird-watchers in the side yard rose and fell, a steady thrum that drowned out actual birdsong. A small brownish gray bird landed at my feet to investigate the crushed mint leaf. A phoebe, I believed. The ornithology class I’d taken in college had been a favorite.

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” he asked, swaying enough to catch my attention.

  Deck boards cre
aked under our feet as I guided him to a chair. He had paled and broken into a sweat. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” He waved away any concern. “The heat…”

  I didn’t believe him. Nor did I think his reaction had been born from emotion at meeting me for the first time. In his distress, his face had lost its normal color, revealing a sallow undertone that had been hiding beneath a deep tan. A faint yellow tinge colored the whites of his eyes as well. Something was terribly wrong. His liver, I guessed.

  My gaze went to Zee’s flower garden, straight to the yarrow, its white flower clusters making it easy to spot. Her secret teachings over the years hadn’t been in vain. She’d given me an education I treasured. From it, I’d developed a love of herbal tea—creating my own blends wasn’t so much a hobby as an obsession.

  Yarrow tea wouldn’t cure whatever ailed Doc, but it might help some, given its beneficial properties for the liver. Then I gave myself a good mental shake. He hadn’t asked for my help. He didn’t deserve my help.

  Yet I couldn’t help myself from saying, “Let me get you some water at least.”

  I wasn’t a monster, for crying out loud.

  “No, no. No need.” He swiped his brow and upper lip with a handkerchief he’d pulled from his back pocket. “I’m not staying long. Please sit.”

  Reluctantly, I sat. If the man didn’t want water, I wouldn’t force it on him.

  “I’m real sorry about Zee,” he said. “She was a good woman.”

  I studied him, looking for insincerity, but found none, which made me even more uncomfortable. I’d been raised believing the Lindens despised the Callows and vice versa.

  Yet here sat Doc with compassion in his eyes. And then, the more I thought on it, I realized I never once heard Zee speak ill of the Lindens.

  It had been only my mother who’d openly despised the family.

  The realization threw me off-kilter, tilting the world as I knew it. It occurred to me that my mother had painted me a very specific picture of the Lindens—but how much of it was an accurate portrayal?

  Suddenly tongue-tied, I was unable to mumble even a thank-you for his sympathy.

  “Do you have any regrets in life, Anna Kate?” He rolled the cuffs of his shirt to his elbows. A worn leather watch with a scratched face glinted in the sunlight.

  “Don’t we all?” I asked.

  “Big ones, I mean. Ones that fester deep in your soul?”

  A breeze kicked up and the bird hopping around the deck tipped its head as if also waiting for my response. “Just one,” I admitted, shoving away the memory.

  I caught sight of Bow peeping out the kitchen window. He pointed at Doc, then hooked his thumb over his shoulder. In charade language, I interpreted that as him asking if I wanted Doc thrown out.

  I gave a subtle shake of my head, and he gave me a thumbs-up. I wanted to hear what Doc had to say, since something was clearly weighing on his mind.

  “I have many.” Doc twisted a gold wedding band around his finger. “Too many. You get to be my age, and you start counting regrets at night instead of sheep.” He cracked a joyless smile.

  He looked to be in his early to midseventies. Barely old age these days. I supposed he could be older than he appeared. I didn’t know any Linden family history. Mom had made it clear that any and all questions about that side of my family were off-limits, and she’d been so resolute on the matter that I’d respected her decision.

  As he dabbed at his forehead again with the handkerchief, I said, “I imagine being in ill health would also cause someone to take a good look back at their life.”

  One of his dark, bushy eyebrows rose. “I reckon so.”

  I was completely unprepared for the sadness that poured over me like it had been dumped from a bucket held over my head, soaking me to my bones. I shouldn’t care about this man or what was wrong with him. Fighting the stinging in my nose, my eyes, I looked away, focusing instead on watching the bird as it pranced around. One of its wings hung at an angle, as if it had once been broken. Poor little thing.

  “We didn’t know about you,” Doc said after a drawn-out pause.

  Thankfully, he didn’t try to deny that I was related—something, I admitted, I had feared. Though I’d gladly take a DNA test if need be. “I know.”

  “Why didn’t Eden tell us?”

  “Do you really need to ask?”

  His gaze went to the bird hopping around the deck, pecking at splinters, and he rubbed his thumb over the watch face. “Your mother had to have known how much a grandchild would mean to us. We would’ve liked to have known you. It was our right to know about you.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “You only know one side of the story, Anna Kate.”

  There was an ache in his voice, a strain that once again made me question everything I’d ever known about the Lindens.

  Gripping the arms of the chair, I said, “Did you falsely accuse my mother of murder? And refuse to let her attend the funeral of the man she loved more than life itself? Because I’d say those things qualify as a forfeiture of any rights you may have had. End of story.”

  “It’s not that simple, Anna Kate.”

  “I think it is.” I jumped to my feet. “I need to get back inside.” I started for the door. The bird lifted off with a startled twitter toward an open window on the second floor and flew inside. I frowned—I didn’t realize a window had been open. Great. Now there was a bird in the house.

  “Wait, Anna Kate. Please.”

  With a sigh, I stopped, faced him, and tapped my foot as I waited for him to come up with something—anything—that could explain the unexplainable.

  Doc glanced at the mulberry trees with a wince. “I’ve decided regret is like cancer. It eats you from the inside out, just the same. I have to accept the fact that I can’t change the past. I can’t. No one can. What’s done is done, and I’m truly sorry for it.”

  Clenching my fists, my nails dug into my palms. I swallowed the words I wanted to speak, and they burned bitterly as they went down. It was a little late for apologies, but … I wasn’t so heartless as to not hear the sincerity in his tone. I only wished my mother had been the one hearing it instead of me.

  “You’re wrong about this being the end of the story, Anna Kate. It could be a new beginning if we let it. If you let it. We can’t go back.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels. “But we can go forward. I’d like to get to know my granddaughter. My hope is that you’d like to know me … and all your father’s side of the family. We have Sunday supper at four. If possible, I’d like you to be there this weekend to meet the family properly.”

  “Thank you for the invitation, but I simply can’t.” I reached for the handle of the screen door and inside saw at least a dozen faces staring my way. All immediately looked away.

  “You know, Anna Kate,” he said, “I understand that you may not want to get to know us, but what of your daddy? Don’t you want to get to know him as we did? We have dozens of scrapbooks and photo albums. You’d barely have to talk to us at all…”

  Your daddy.

  I froze, my hand still on the door handle, immediately recognizing that Doc was manipulating me, managing to see straight into my heart and what I wanted … to get what he wanted.

  Learning more about my dad, getting a better feel for the person he’d been, meant more to me than I could ever express. I wanted to bury myself in those photo albums for hours on end, to hear all the stories over and over again. But I had to stay strong. For my mother’s sake. “I’m sorry,” I said tightly. “I won’t be able to make it.”

  With that, I rushed inside and let the screen door slam shut behind me.

  5

  “Have you ever eaten a slice of the blackbird pie at the café?”

  “Yes, indeedy,” Mr. Lazenby said. “Every day for thirteen years, give or take a day here and there when the restaurant was closed up. Quite tasty, the pie.”

  “The pie is
n’t really made of blackbirds…?”

  “No, sir. It’s regular pie.” His old eyes twinkled. “Usually fruit.”

  “No other specific ingredients?”

  “It’s a Callow family secret recipe. If you’re needing the ingredients, you’re plumb out of luck.”

  The reporter thumbed a drop of condensation from his mason jar. “Do you believe the local legend that the pies will make you dream messages from dead loved ones?” He scoffed. “That blackbirds actually sing those messages—notes, as the writing on the soffit indicates—into the pies?”

  Mr. Lazenby stood up, straightened his bow tie, and set his hat firmly on his head, pulling down the brim. “You haven’t had a piece of pie yet, have you, sonny boy?”

  “No. Why?”

  “If you had, you’d know the answer to your own question and wouldn’t be wasting my time. We’re done here.”

  Anna Kate

  “That bird must have gone out the same way it came in,” I said, coming down the stairs into the kitchen. It was the third time I’d done a search. “There’s no sign of it anywhere.”

  “Probably so,” Bow said as he lifted a chair onto a table in the dining room. “Birds are such curious creatures.”

  Jena slid a mop across the kitchen floor. “The saying is that curiosity killed the cat, not the bird.”

  What looked like pain flashed in Bow’s eyes, darkening the murky blue to almost black. His salt-and-pepper beard was cut short and neatly trimmed, but he repeatedly dragged a hand down the side of his face toward his chin as though smoothing stray hairs. “Sometimes it almost does both, doesn’t it?”

  “Sure enough,” she said with a wan smile.

  As I grabbed a rag and a bottle of cleanser, I glanced between the two of them, wondering about the strange tension in the air. It was almost like they were sharing a memory, one tainted with sadness. “Do you two have pets?”

  We’d already tackled the prep for tomorrow and were finishing up the kitchen chores. As soon as we were done, I wanted to track down Summer Pavegeau. I owed her a piece of pie, and it was a debt I didn’t want hanging over my head. I knew what the pie meant to her.