by Grace Palmer
Four years ago, he’d called, and they’d had one of the worst winters on record. When their “divorce-aversary”—June 12th—came and went this year without a peep, the ladies had all let out a sigh of relief.
But that turned out to be premature.
Because this year, Ruben just happened to be a week late. And when he called, he called with a vengeance.
Mae had gone over to Debra’s for their regular Sunday afternoon stroll along the beach and found her seated in her living room, utterly distraught. Bawling, actually, the kind of boo-hoo crying that almost never came from a strong woman like Debra.
“Oh, honey!” Mae had said at once, rushing to her side. It didn’t take long before Debra revealed that Ruben had called and berated her worse than ever. No matter how many times Lola and Mae told Debra to stop taking his calls, they both knew that she never would. Even if it left her absolutely devastated at the end of it.
Ruben was a lowlife nobody. Emotionally and verbally cruel, he had leached off Debra’s warmth and vivaciousness for years before she finally mustered up the courage to ask him for a divorce. But apparently, married or not, he had no intention of letting her live her life peacefully. Whenever he called, he told her how worthless he thought she was, how much better he was doing without her, and on and on like that, until the poor woman nearly started to believe the things he was saying to her.
Lola had quickly come to the rescue as well. The women had done as much as they could to get Debra’s spirits back up after the horrible phone call. Nothing seemed to be working, though. Not wine or food or an afternoon at the spa. Ruben had done a thorough number on his ex-wife. Even her best friends didn’t know what else they could do to dispel the funk into which she’d plunged.
So that was a headache and heartache all on its own. On top of that, it had been raining for days straight. Just an endless torrent of gushing, fat raindrops, the kind that almost hurt when they hit you on top of the head if you happened to be caught out in a storm.
The other thought that Mae kept coming back to over and over was: I miss Dominic. That, too, she tried to run away from, but it kept sneaking up on her in idle moments. She wondered where he was, what he was doing. He’d been quite short on details when he left. “Six weeks” was the only bit of information he’d provided. That seemed not so bad when he’d mentioned it—especially considering the challenging circumstances under which he’d left—but now that six weeks had passed and he still had not returned, Mae was starting to feel nervous. It was like being trapped in the desert without supplies. A rain shower would come eventually—but when?
When she’d finally scrounged up a clean towel that passed Dr. Hoffman’s inspection, she left before he could find something else to complain about. She took off her apron, hung it on the hook in the kitchen, and drove over to Pete and Holly’s new house.
“Hi, Mrs. B!” Pete greeted her as she came in and set her umbrella by the door. “Still raining?”
“It certainly is! With little sign of stopping, I’m afraid.”
“You’re starting to talk like Dominic,” Holly remarked wryly from her perch at the kitchen counter.
Mae blushed. “Nonsense.”
“Mhmm,” Holly murmured knowingly.
Mae decided to change the subject. “How is the move going, Pete?”
He swung his arm around the living room. “Feast your eyes on our cardboard kingdom.”
There were still many boxes piled high in two of the corners, though “cardboard kingdom” might’ve been a little bit of an exaggeration.
“This house is just all wrong.” Holly sighed. “I don’t know where to put half that stuff.”
“Hollz …” Pete interrupted warningly.
Mae thought it best to keep her mouth shut here. There was obviously some unhappiness surrounding the move, though she hadn’t had enough free time to check in with her middle daughter to find out why that might be. All she could see was that Holly seemed downright miserable. Actually, a little angry, too. She made a mental note to follow up when she could find a moment.
“Well, I’m here, so put me to work!”
“I’m actually gonna take the kids to a movie,” Pete said apologetically. “Not trying to duck out on the work or anything.”
“Not to worry,” Mae said with a reassuring smile. “We’ll be just fine.”
“Besides,” Holly added, “you’ve got the worst job anyhow. They’ve been cooped up because of the rain all day. And I just caught Alice sneaking candy from the snack drawer. Have fun, love you, bye!”
They all chuckled as Pete groaned.
Once he and the kids were en route to the movie theater, Mae and Holly got to work. They started by tackling more of the kitchenware that remained packed up in the boxes. They chatted as they worked. Mae told Holly about Dr. Hoffman, the guest from her nightmares.
“… And then, when one of my other guests called him ‘Mr.’—well, you should’ve just seen his face! That mustache bristled and he launched into a fifteen-minute lecture on how to properly address him. I mean, my goodness! I try not to say a bad word about my fellow humans, but that man is something else entirely. Bless his heart.”
Holly shuddered. “Sounds awful. I—”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, one second, dear. My phone is ringing. If it’s Mister Hoffman …” Mae frowned when she saw the caller ID.
“Hello?”
The voice on the other end of the line told her the news in a rushed, urgent voice. Mae’s face fell at once. “A fire? At the inn?! Oh goodness gracious! I’ll be right there!”
36
Sara
Sara’s head had been in the clouds for weeks now. Starting a restaurant from scratch did that to a person, apparently. There were just so many things she had to keep track of. Shipments arriving and recipes to test and permits to get, all of which were constantly being rearranged and pushed back or moved forward. It was enough to drive a girl crazy.
But no one had ever called Sara lazy. She was determined to make sure that remained the case. She had organized binders bursting with photocopied invoices, contracts signed in triplicate, permits and certificates of inspection galore. She had filled composition notebook after composition notebook with different recipe concoctions and drafts of the restaurant’s future menu.
And, across the top of everything, she printed in careful block letters the same thing each time: Little Bull.
That was the name she’d picked. It had taken a couple hours of sitting in a corner and scribbling all over a yellow legal pad before it occurred to her. She’d rejected a million and one names in a row, until suddenly, boom, it popped into her head. Little Bull. It felt so right that she literally shivered, though the air outside was warm and damp lately with all the rain. She’d immediately sketched out a rough logo, too, of an angry bull with steam rising out of his ears.
Honestly, the whole thing spooked her as much as it thrilled her. It felt like someone else had taken control of the pen in her hand and dragged it across the page on her behalf. She’d looked over her shoulders, but the room was empty.
“Little bull” had been her and her father’s joke, their thing. Naming her restaurant after it was both a tribute and an act of gratitude. After all, a sizable chunk of the money she’d needed had come from Dad’s life insurance payout. She owed it to him to immortalize his memory in the heart of her new undertaking.
So, Little Bull. Giving the restaurant a name like that brought it to life. It made everything feel so freakishly real. This was happening.
But she had other people to thank, too. Eliza and Holly had both contributed what they could, which was both generous and unexpected. Even Brent, who hardly had two pennies to rub together, had sheepishly handed her a check one day for five hundred dollars. “It’s the best I can do,” he’d mumbled. She tried over and over to reject it—he was pouring hundreds of hours into building out the restaurant with her, after all; he certainly didn’t owe her a dime—but he just looked he
r dead in the eye and said, “If you don’t cash it, I’m just gonna go down to the bank and wire the money right into your account myself. Take the money, Sara.” So she’d finally relented.
That was how it became Little Bull—A Family Business.
That felt right.
They were getting closer and closer now—only a week until opening night!—and Sara was a bundle of nerves. Actually, that wasn’t quite correct. She was way too busy to be nervous. But if she stopped for even the slightest of moments to try to take a breath, the nerves came to life within her, sizzling like hot oil in the pan. What if it fails? What if you embarrass yourself? What if people hate it?
She had months of successful Friday Night Feasts in her memory to bolster her confidence. But there was a big difference between feeding a dozen people one night a week, and feeding several hundred. Could she pull this off? Would she pull this off?
Only time would tell.
With her head so full of thoughts, Sara had to do a double take when she rounded the street corner and saw a crowd of people outside of the Sweet Island Inn, along with a fire truck flashing its lights. She’d been on her way to the inn to see if her mother needed help with anything. With Dominic gone, Mom seemed awfully lonely, so Sara had made it a point over the last month or two to swing around the inn whenever she could and check in.
Apparently, this wouldn’t just be a social visit.
As Sara rushed closer, she noticed the acrid smell of something burning. She saw a pillar of smoke rising into the sky, too. She’d been so preoccupied with restaurant thoughts that she hadn’t even noticed it until now.
The crowd—maybe two or three dozen people, some of whom she recognized as neighbors and friends of the inn—watched as two firefighters strode into the building in full gear.
Sara’s heart leaped into her chest. This inn was everything to her mother. If it went up in flames, Mom’s heart would burn along with it. She had to help. That thought blared across her mind like someone laying on a car horn.
GO! HELP!
Without thinking any further, she took off running towards the front door.
She was maybe fifteen yards away when she felt an arm snake around her waist and yank her out of mid-stride.
“Whoa!” came a deep, rasping voice in her ear. “Easy there. You can’t go in yet, ma’am.”
“That’s my mom’s inn!” Sara yelped. “I have to help.”
The arm set her down, but maintained a point of contact on her shoulder. Sara looked up to see the face of a young firefighter, partially obscured by the helmet he was wearing. He had dark, curly hair, sapphire-blue eyes, and five o’clock shadow straight out of a GQ article. When he spoke, she saw the flash of blindingly white teeth. And dimples. He was right on the line between movie-star good-looking and just normal-person handsome. Sara couldn’t quite decide which side of that line he fell on.
All those thoughts flashed by in an instant before Sara returned to the matter at hand. “Let me go!” she snapped, pushing away his hand. She started to walk back around the man, who’d placed himself between Sara and the inn, but he stepped back in front of her and shook his head.
“No, ma’am,” he said again. “We need to clear the building first. There could be structural damage. It’s not safe.”
Sara looked desperately over his shoulder. This couldn’t be happening.
A new thought began to repeat in her head. If the inn went up in smoke, Mom wouldn’t have enough money to repair it, because she’d already given most of Dad’s money to Sara.
She felt a wave of guilt crash over her. In a bizarre way, she felt like this was her fault. She shouldn’t have been selfish. She should’ve just let her siblings have their own special moments instead of demanding her share of the spotlight.
Stupid, childish, immature.
She felt faint. The world was fading away. Was there an earthquake all of a sudden? The ground was shaking …
Sara came back to consciousness sometime later. She looked around, dazed, and realized she was seated in the back of a fire truck. The man who’d stopped her from entering the house was holding an oxygen mask over her face. He saw she was awake and frowned.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, concerned.
“Dizzy,” she admitted.
“You fell,” he explained. “Fainted, actually. You almost hit your head, too. Good thing I caught you.”
“You caught me?” she repeated dumbly. What kind of terrible rom-com is this? She laughed inwardly. Her life was getting more and more ridiculous by the day. Fainting into the arms of a handsome firefighter? Give me a freaking break.
Suddenly, her memories came flooding back in. The inn—the fire—Mom. She sat bolt upright and tried to rip the oxygen mask off her face. “My mom—I have to …”
“You have to sit,” the man said, pressing her back into the seat. “Breathe.”
She tasted the copper tang of blood in her mouth. Her head throbbed. She tried to look outside the window, but with the way the truck was parked, she couldn’t see much of the inn building. It seemed like much of the crowd had dispersed, though. Maybe that was a good sign?
“What happened?” she asked. “Is everything okay? Where’s my mom? Who are you?”
The man chuckled and settled back in the seat across from her, though he kept glancing over every now and then to check the numbers flashing on the screen Sara was hooked up to that displayed her pulse and oxygen saturation. “That’s a lot of questions at once,” he said. “Which one would you like me to answer first?”
Sara still felt weak. Too weak to retort back to this guy. “Is everything okay?”
“Fine,” he answered at once with a reassuring nod. “Oven malfunctioned and made a whole lot of smoke, but nothing too damaging. It’ll just smell a little crispy in there for a few weeks until everything airs out, that’s all.”
She let out a sigh of relief. Malfunctioning oven didn’t sound so bad. And this man seemed very calm about the whole thing. She wasn’t quite sure yet whether that was just his professional demeanor—don’t upset the fainting chick!—or if things really were no big deal. “Okay, next. Who are you?”
“Joey Burton.” He tapped on the little name tag affixed to his suspenders.
“Why aren’t you inside fighting the fire, Joey Burton?” Sara had been half kidding, but the words still came out a little more harshly than she’d intended. She felt bad when Joey winced.
“Still a rookie,” he said. “Vets go in. Rookies man the perimeter.”
“Ah. A rookie.”
The oxygen flowing into her lungs from the mask was going a long way towards making her feel better. It was hard to say whether the fluttering she felt in her stomach now was caused by the smoke inhalation or by the man sitting across from her. Was he wearing cologne? It was faint, but Sara could swear she smelled it coming off him.
“I’d like to go see if I can find my mom, please,” she said.
Joey started to say something, then hesitated. He glanced once more at the screen displaying Sara’s vitals. “All right,” he relented. “You look all right. But don’t go far. You gotta sign paperwork before I cut you loose.”
She waved in response and walked off the fire truck. Outside, she saw her mother talking with the two firefighters who’d gone inside. The smoke seemed to have stopped pouring out of the inn’s open windows, so Sara figured that the situation was under control. But Mom looked so tired. Depleted, really. Sara remembered her saying something earlier this week about a terrible guest, but she’d been too busy to be much help with the whole thing.
“Mom!” she called over as she walked up to the trio.
“Oh thank goodness,” Mae said, grabbing Sara’s hand. “Are you all right? The nice men here told me that you fainted!”
“Yeah,” Sara said, feeling foolish. “Just smoke or stress or something, I don’t know. I’m fine now, so no need to worry about me. Are you okay? Is the inn okay?”
“Everything is
fine, ma’am,” one of the firefighters replied. “The situation has been handled.”
“Thank you gentlemen so much for your quick response,” Mom was gushing. “I’m so glad this island has heroes like you on hand!”
“You’re quite welcome, ma’am,” replied the second one. He had a C on his helmet, probably for “captain,” if Sara had to guess. “We’ll just need you to come this way, Mrs. Benson,” he added. “We’ve got some paperwork for you to fill out.”
The captain and Mom walked off, leaving Sara to stand awkwardly alone with the second firefighter. His face was smudged with smoke. Fortunately, Joey came up at that moment. Sara almost laughed. He looked a little silly, waddling around in those huge pants.
“Lieutenant, one of the neighbors asked us to move the truck so they could get their vehicle out of their driveway. Permission to move it?”
“You ain’t drivin’, Rook.” The man laughed. He plucked the keys out of Joey’s hand and walked off, whistling.
“That seemed a little harsh,” Sara commented.
Joey took off his helmet and ran a hand through his curls. “Yeah, well, it’s the chain of command. Gotta put in the time.”
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Twenty-six.”
She blanched. “You’re a baby.”
His brow furrowed. “Don’t you start on me, too.”
She had to laugh at that, but she couldn’t deny that she felt weird thinking about how cute he was. He was still a little whippersnapper compared to her thirty years old, wet behind the ears and all that. Or that’s how it felt, at least. Either way, she ought to focus on her business. The last thing she needed was yet another male distraction.
She opened her mouth to say something else. Before she could get the words out, though, Joey’s stomach rumbled louder than Sara had ever heard someone’s stomach rumble before. Instead of speaking, she burst out laughing.
Joey, for his part, looked absolutely mortified. “I … uh …” Between the hazing from his lieutenant and the stomach noise, his “cool guy firefighter” bubble was more or less completely burst in Sara’s eyes.