by Zoe Chant
The stubborn hope that Dan had been clinging to all the way out here began to crack and fall apart. "Guess I should've called ahead," he said, trying to make a joke out of it.
"I'm really sorry, man. Wait ..." Derek rotated in the chair, trying not to disturb the baby falling asleep in his arms. "Please tell me you didn't quit your day job."
"I was looking for a change anyway," Dan not-quite-lied. It wasn't quitting if he hadn't had a job to begin with. He'd been knocking around between short-lived security gigs, whenever he could get a bar owner or event manager to give him a chance as a bouncer, but even that work had dried up lately.
Ben gave him a look, and Dan remembered that Ben's panther let him know when people were lying.
Oops.
"Crap," Derek said. "Listen, dude, we might be able to figure out something, like a trial basis kind of thing ..."
Dan stiffened.
"I don't need charity," he said, his bear bristling.
"It's not charity," Ben said quickly, moving in to defuse the situation. "Actually, what we've both realized lately is that neither of us is that good at the administrative side of things. You used to do the supply-clerk thing in the Army, didn't you? Filing, typing—"
Dan was already vigorously shaking his head. "Typing's not my thing these days," he said, gesturing with the metal clamp.
"Website building?" Ben tried hopefully.
"What about babysitting?" Dan asked.
It was meant to be a joke, but by the time he said it, he had already realized that he meant it. And at the looks on their faces, he felt something new—a cautious dawning of hope.
"Yeah, I—wait," Derek said. "Are you offering?"
Dan shrugged. "I came here looking for a job. I'm not too picky about what the job actually is. I can't do data entry worth a damn." He gestured with the clamp again. "But I can cook and change diapers."
"Can you?" Derek asked. "I don't mean to offend here, seriously. But I've got all I can do keeping up with with these two with a pair of working hands."
"I can brush my teeth, zip my fly, and tie a necktie, so I think I can handle a baby," Dan said. A baby's diaper was a delicate task, but after some of the exercises the physical therapist had put him through, he was confident he could do it.
Especially if the alternative was being homeless.
Derek and Ben shared a look.
"How are you with baby dragons?" Ben asked.
"Well, let's find out." Dan reached out his flesh-and-blood hand. Skye immediately jumped from her father's shoulder to Dan's arm and scrabbled up to curl around his neck.
"Job interview done," Derek said. "You're hired."
Paula
"You quit?" Paula said in desperation and disbelief.
She hip-checked her way into the diner's kitchen with a stack of dirty plates in each hand, her shoulder tilted up next to her ear to hold her phone.
"I'm sorry!" said the voice of the diner's one and only (and now former) full-time waitress, sounding a little desperate herself. "I was going to tell you, I swear! It's only, I hadn't heard back from the other job and I thought I didn't get it and then I did get it and they pay more than you do—"
"So you just decided not to come in to work instead."
The kitchen was sweltering, the cook busily slapping scrambled eggs onto plates. Paula slid the dirty plates one armload at a time into the dishwasher.
"I'm really sorry," the ex-waitress was saying. "Um, can I come in on Friday and collect my last paycheck?"
"Sure," Paula said. "Why not. You can bring back your DeWitt's Diner T-shirt at the same time. And now we're in the middle of the breakfast rush so I have to go."
She very carefully hung up instead of throwing the phone across the room.
"Lost another one, huh?" said the cook, Mitch, without a break in the quick slap of spatula on griddle as he somehow balanced a dance of hash browns, eggs, and pancakes without ever mixing them up or getting pancake batter in the scrambled eggs.
Big, tattooed Mitch had been Paula's first hire after she inherited the place from her parents only to have their longtime cook retire for health reasons immediately after. She had hired him mainly because she was desperate, but at this point it was hard to imagine the diner without Mitch and his always entertaining, dubiously authentic stories of his misspent youth.
"Third one in a month," Paula groaned. "It's not even worth training people at this point." She checked her phone. Other than the waitress, there were no recent calls or texts. "Mitch, please tell me you've seen my son today."
"Sorry, Miz DeWitt. Nope."
Paula sighed and sent yet another text. Austin! You're supposed to be helping out in the diner before school! Did you make your sister's lunch like I asked?
No answer. She looked toward the back door of the diner and thought briefly of running across the alley into the house where she had grown up, and now lived with her two kids, to roust her son and get her daughter ready for the day.
Even more longingly, she thought of not having to get up at four-thirty to get ready for the morning rush at the diner. Just having leisure time to spend with her kids. Not working all the time.
"They're getting restless out there," Mitch said. "Order up!"
Paula groaned. She slapped a smile on her face, grabbed the freshly loaded plates and headed out to the dining area.
"Miss, I don't even have a glass of water yet," someone complained as she whisked the plates to the appropriate table.
"I'll be with you in just a minute, sir."
She left dishes piled on the end of an unused table while she frantically scribbled orders. Swooping back into the kitchen, she was just in time to see a small, bright-green-clad figure come banging through the door that led out to the alley, along with a rush of cold wind.
"Mommmm!" Lissy's little face was bright pink from cold under her spring-leaf-colored hat. "I need lunch money!"
"Your brother was supposed to make your lunch."
"Uh-uh," Lissy said. "He just went to school."
Paula cursed under her breath. "Here," she said, and grabbed a grilled cheese sandwich that Mitch had just smacked off the griddle. "Ow! Hot!" She stuffed it into one of the bags they kept around for carry-out orders, and looked around wildly for something from the general fruit-and-vegetable category. The only thing in sight was a pile of tomatoes. She put one of those in too, along with a cup of yogurt, and thrust it into her daughter's hands, then herded her through the kitchen and out into the dining area. "Do you have your boots? Where's your book bag?" Lissy's hair didn't look like it had been brushed, but at this point Paula was willing to let it go. The school bus stop was visible through the café's front window, and there was a flash of yellow. "There's the bus. Hurry!"
Lissy ran off, banging through the door onto the snowy sidewalk as the school bus's red stop lights began to flash.
The dining room full of customers spontaneously applauded.
"Thank you," Paula said modestly. There were times when she really appreciated the camaraderie of living in a small town.
"Miss, I asked for a warmup on my coffee ten minutes ago," came from a corner.
On the other hand, there was always someone like that.
It wasn't until a couple of hours later, when the breakfast crowd had drained out, that she finally got a chance to sit down and rest for five minutes. Mitch had very generously skipped his morning break to help her clean up the dining area, and she flipped the sign to CLOSED to give herself a few minutes to cram some leftover scrambled eggs into her mouth and text her teenager again.
Austin, when you get this, CALL YOUR MOM.
She had always promised herself that she wasn't going to do to her own kids what her parents had done. She loved her parents, but had deeply resented spending her teen years at mostly unpaid labor in the diner. She had loathed the diner, from the smell of grease to the cracking of her skin after a day spent with her hands immersed in dishwater. There were a number of reasons why she
had fled for the big city as soon as she graduated from high school, but getting away from the diner was definitely part of that.
She never wanted her kids to feel that way.
And yet, here I am. Running the diner just like my parents did. Roping my son into doing my chores.
Paula sighed and rubbed her forehead. Then she composed another text.
Sweetheart, I'm sorry. It's been a rough morning. I depend on you a lot and I know that. Just tell me if I'm piling too much on.
She stared at it, then deleted the last two sentences and just sent the apology.
The bell at the front door jingled, and Paula looked up. She hadn't bothered to lock the door, figuring that she didn't need to scare off customers if someone was determined enough to get past the CLOSED sign. This was the dead time between breakfast and lunch, so it wasn't all that likely for anyone to come in anyway.
And yet here someone was. Paula didn't dislike very many people, but she took an instant dislike to this guy. He just looked ... creepy, was the word that came to mind. He didn't look like a trucker or a farmer or even a tourist, the usual types of single guys that they got in addition to the family dining crowd. He would have been almost instantly forgettable if she'd looked at him in a crowd on a city street—dark suit, slicked-back dark hair, sunglasses—but here, he stood out. He glanced around the interior of the diner. His eyes were hidden behind the sunglasses, but there was still something about the way he was looking around that she didn't like.
"Sorry," Paula said. "We're closed."
That too-curious, somehow vicious gaze came to rest on her. Instead of leaving, he came in and closed the door behind him.
Paula stood up slowly. She kept her hand on her phone. Mitch was just in the back; if she shouted for help, he would hear her.
"I said we're closed," she repeated, and took a side step to the mop bucket. "If you'll excuse me, I have a lot of cleaning up to do—"
"Mrs. Raines?" the stranger said, and Paula's stomach did an unpleasant swooping thing.
She had never used her married name in Autumn Grove. Here, she was one of the DeWitts (you know, Martha and John's daughter), the DeWitts who ran the diner. Austin and Lissy still technically had their dad's last name for official school purposes, but they were "the DeWitt kids" everywhere else.
There was no good reason why a stranger should come in here calling her by her ex-husband's name.
"Do you know Terry?" she asked, but—stupid question; of course he did. A better question was why he was here. "Are you a lawyer?" Maybe her ex had finally gotten it together on child support.
"Terry?" Sunglasses laughed. "That's funny. Is that what you call him?"
Her stomach did the awful swooping thing again.
For her entire disastrous marriage to Terry Raines, she had suspected, and then known for sure, that he was lying to her about something big. Marriage-destroyingly big. She just had never known what it was.
She had sometimes imagined fancifully that Terry was living some kind of double life. Now she was slapped in the face with the worst kind of confirmation. He hadn't even told her the truth about his name.
"What's his real name?" she asked in a voice that didn't sound like her own.
The stranger pushed his sunglasses on top of his head. That was no improvement. His eyes were the strangest color she'd ever seen, almost gold.
"Why don't you just tell me where he is, Mrs. Raines. Our business is with him, not you."
"I don't know," Paula said shortly. "I haven't heard from him in over a year. If you find him, tell him he owes child support and there had better be a present in the mail for Austin's next birthday."
"Who's Austin?" the stranger asked, and Paula froze with her hand clutching her phone.
Whoever this is, he doesn't know about the kids.
He's no lawyer.
What the hell was Terry mixed up in? Mafia? Loan sharks? Whatever it was, she wanted no part of it. Especially not with the kids to worry about.
She dropped the phone into her apron pocket and whipped the mop out of the bucket. In high school, for a brief period, she had been a baton twirler. Now she spun the wet mop in a perfect two-finger twirl that would have impressed even old Mrs. Karluch, their gimlet-eyed baton-twirling instructor. It just barely missed the ceiling lights, sent a spray of bleach water arcing across half the tables, and came to rest pointing at the stranger's face.
She had the pleasure of seeing him stumble away until his back slammed into the door. Apparently he hadn't expected the little ex-wife to come bearing a loaded mop.
"Get out of my diner," Paula said.
He wiped mop water off his cheek with the back of his hand. "We're not done talking, lady."
Paula kept the mop aimed at his face. "Yeah, we are. Terry's problems aren't my problems. Not anymore."
"You think so?" His tone was nasty, and it began to sink in on Paula that—once his initial shock had worn off—someone who was used to hassling people for money might not be put off by a small woman armed with a mop soaked in bleach water. "Let me tell you how it is. You're going to help us get in touch with—"
"I haven't talked to that deadbeat in over a year." Paula tried to keep a quaver out of her voice. She could see the gold-eyed stranger getting bolder by the moment.
Now he reached out, gripped the mop just behind the head, and moved it away from his face. Paula struggled to keep hold of the mop as it was moved against her resistance. She didn't have a chance. He was shockingly, terribly strong.
"Maybe we should go somewhere private and talk about this some more," he said.
From behind Paula, a voice said, "I think I heard the lady tell you to leave."
Mitch was standing in the kitchen doorway. He was holding one of the big knives from the kitchen. He held it down against his leg, but he held it in a way that suggested he knew a few things to do with it. As usual in the overheated kitchen, he wore nothing on top but a sleeveless, sweat-damp T-shirt, half tucked into his stained jeans. His bare, hairy arms were all muscle and covered in crudely inked tattoos, a skull and a rose and the name Veva and some cartoony dinosaurs. Paula had long suspected that they were jail tattoos, but didn't really want to ask.
"She said get out," Mitch added. "Just in case you missed it."
In his other hand, he was holding a damp cloth. With his eyes fixed on the stranger, he began to carefully polish the blade of the butcher knife.
Paula's eyes nearly popped out of her head. She edged out of the way to make sure she wasn't between them. The stranger was looking at Mitch now instead of her, and his hand had slipped off the mop head. She gave it a fierce thrust, poking him in the face with the wet mop end.
He made a noise like "Blargle!" and stumbled into the door.
"Out!" she snapped.
He wrenched the door open, scrubbing at his face. "We're going to find him with or without your help," he said coldly, and slammed the door behind him with a loud clash of bells.
"I don't care!" Paula yelled after him. "Terry can drive off a cliff for all I care!"
Terry ... or whatever his real name was.
Her knees wobbled. She swayed against the counter, and lowered the mop for support.
"You okay, Miz DeWitt?" Mitch said.
"Uh ... yeah. I'm okay. Thank you. Also," Paula added, "remind me not to get on your bad side."
Mitch grinned. "If he comes back, ma'am, just you let me know."
"Okay," Paula agreed. "Sure. Thanks."
Mitch gave her a nod and went back to the kitchen.
Paula returned the mop to the bucket and went over to peek cautiously out the door. The sidewalk was clear; there was no one in sight except a boy shoveling snow outside the hardware store.
That weirdo hadn't had a weapon. He wouldn't come back, would he? Maybe once he thought about it, he would realize that there was no point in going after her for Terry's debts or present whereabouts.
A quivering feeling of weakness went through her, as if
in counterpoint to her furious strength a few moments before. She had to raise her hand to her face to make sure she wasn't crying. Her eyes felt hot and prickly.
Damn Terry. He just had to keep finding new ways to screw up her life. Her biggest regret was marrying that loser—or would have been, at least, if it hadn't resulted in two beautiful kids. She wouldn't undo Austin and Lissy for the world.
And honestly, Terry hadn't been an awful husband. He was a decent father to the kids, too, when he was around. But he was a pathological liar, and apparently it went deeper even than she had realized.
She was done with men. Absolutely done.
With a deep sigh, she got a bleach rag and went to wipe the mop water off her recently cleaned tables.
He won't come back. I'm sure he won't.
Because I don't know what I'm going to do if he does.
Dan
Waking up early had never been a problem for Dan. He'd struggled more at adapting to a night work schedule at his various post-service bouncer jobs. Even when he went to bed at 2 a.m., he tended to pop awake by 5:30 or 6, rain or shine, winter or summer.
But it was someone moving around out in the main part of the house that woke him this time. He jolted out of a restless sleep to find himself wide awake and sitting up, adrenaline pumping through his body. For a disorienting moment, he didn't have any idea where he was, and then he remembered. He was in Derek's spare bedroom, and this was his first full day taking care of Derek's kids.
Light showed in a strip under the door. There was no clock in the room, but he tapped his phone and checked the time. 3:50 a.m. Either there was an intruder who had turned on the lights, or someone in the household was an even earlier riser than Dan himself.
He got up and put his pants on, not bothering with the prosthesis. He went quietly out into the main part of the house. If it was an intruder, he didn't want to give himself away.