Chapter 32
Grey
Leaving Sabrina while she’s still sleeping mid-morning feels like opening an old wound.
Like the next time I look at her townhouse, it will have disappeared. Like I’ll never see her again at the café or anywhere else in Snaggletooth Creek. Like I’m leaving myself exposed for her to disappear again.
But I have a breakfast date with Mimi, and I want to know how her evening was.
Up to a point.
I don’t need details if hers ended like mine did.
I do, however, need her advice.
“That’s the same face you had when you were puzzling out how to combine plastic and beeswax, except I think you’re dwelling on something much heavier right now,” Mimi says when I join her and Zen in the sunroom of the bed and breakfast Sabrina arranged for her.
While there are six four-person tables in here, we’re currently the only occupants.
A wall of windows overlooks a snowy yard and pine-covered mountain peaks in the distance, and a colorful painting of a bear holding a coffee and tea service over the buffet on the opposite wall.
Winter weekdays must not be popular for the bed and breakfast crowd.
Or else we’re eating late. “And you’ve been wearing it off and on since I got here yesterday,” she adds.
“You ever contemplate justice, Mimi?” I ask while I put my napkin in my lap. My tea is steeping and for the first time in months, I feel a sense of peace.
Optimism, anyway.
Though it’s short-lived thanks to Zen, who makes a noise over their coffee cup that could mean anything from finally, we’re getting somewhere to Uncle Grey is a moron .
“A time or two,” Mimi answers me. “I was married to your grandfather for too many decades.”
“Why’d you marry him?” Zen asks.
“I was sent to college to find a husband. When my first choice fell through, I went with the backup plan. And it was a poor backup plan.”
“Why’d you stay?”
“Murder is illegal, and he could afford better divorce attorneys.”
They’re both laughing when the hostess comes in carrying three plates of a gorgeous eggs benedict with a side of yogurt parfait and orange slices.
Zen has no memories of my grandfather, which is something I’ll forever be grateful for.
He was a scary old bastard. Passed it down to my father, despite Mimi’s best efforts, and that explains everything anyone ever needs to know about my family.
Mimi waits until our hostess has departed, fork poised over her food while she watches me finish fixing my tea. “What justice are you contemplating?”
That’s a much more complicated answer now that I know why Mimi’s here.
She confirmed Sabrina’s story yesterday afternoon, ending with I used to sometimes think about how I could’ve been living in the mountains running a little bakery with the man of my dreams, but what good are wishes that can’t come true?
“Grey?” Mimi prompts.
I shake my head. “There’s someone here who…hurt me. And I thought?—”
I cut myself off with a sigh.
Liking it here was never part of the plan.
But I do.
I like it entirely more than I feel like I deserve.
“You thought destroying something of his the same way he destroyed something of yours would be justice?” Zen prompts. “But then you found out you’d be hurting a lot of other innocent people along the way?”
I meet their gaze. My college years aren’t something we’ve ever discussed. All I said about buying Chandler’s café was I’m looking forward to seeing how it feels when the shoe’s on the other foot .
But I get the feeling they know more of the story, if not most of the story.
“Knowledge is power,” they say quietly. “Sometimes it’s all the power you have.”
“Am I understanding this right?” Mimi says. “You bought a café and saved a man from financial ruin to…get revenge?”
“I paid him less than what it’s worth,” I mutter.
“Face it, Uncle Grey.” Zen pops a bite of eggs benedict into their mouth. “You’re not built for being a bloodthirsty man of vengeance.”
I’m not.
Especially when following through with my plan will hurt Sabrina.
She says she’ll adapt, that she wanted me last night more than she wanted her café, but it doesn’t feel right.
Not because I think she lied.
I think she was being completely honest.
It’s more that Bean & Nugget isn’t broken.
It’s beautiful.
It’s beautiful because she runs it.
She belongs to Snaggletooth Creek, and Snaggletooth Creek belongs to her.
Same for Bean & Nugget.
“It’s never too late to turn something ugly into something beautiful,” Mimi says.
I cut a glance at her too, knowing she’s right, and starting to finally understand what I need to do to find the peace I came here for. “You’ve been cagey about what you and Harry Sullivan talked about last night.”
“Bah. I’m not cagey. I just can’t remember.”
“She doesn’t want to tell you that they’re getting married,” Zen pipes up.
“ Zenbow .”
“Full-name me all you want. I know that’s where this thing is going.”
“I am too old to get married.”
“So take him for a test drive and see if you want to invite him out to your retirement compound.”
“Stop talking,” I order Zen.
“Please. She’s been lonely, not dead. But use a condom, Mimi. Just because you can’t get pregnant doesn’t mean you can’t get an infection. Do you know how many articles I’ve read about the rampant spread of STIs in retirement communities?”
“Did I not just tell them to stop talking?” I say to Mimi.
Also, my face better not be turning red.
“Like you don’t want to be still getting it on with the ladies when you’re in your nineties,” Zen says.
“Mimi, how would you like to have all of your dreams come true and run a café in the mountains while we all decide if this guy you have your eye on is worth your time?” I say.
And then I hear myself.
And all of the pieces of this puzzle click.
That’s what I’ll do.
I’ll give the café to Mimi on the condition that she pass it to Sabrina when she’s done with it.
“Oh, now that sounds like a lovely plan,” she says. “Do I have to do anything?”
“Just sit in the corner and talk to all the old people about the weather,” Zen says. “Sabrina and I have everything else under control.”
“What if I want to talk to the young people about their lives?”
“You can do that too,” Zen says, “but you should know there’s a very dedicated contingent of old people here who demand that the café’s owner acknowledge the weather with them at least once a day. Also, if you’re the new owner, you can put a halt to all of the construction plans.”
“Construction plans?”
“Uncle Grey’s sitting on a contract to completely gut the inside of the café and turn it into a kombucha bar—I’m sorry, a kombrewchery called The Hive where he’ll brew his own kombucha and convince the county to give him a liquor license so he can serve and sell mead too.
And he’s putting a gigantic bee on the outside of the building so that Chippy Choochoo Sullivan will freak out every time he looks at the café he used to own.
Sorry, Mimi, most of Harry’s grandkids are great, but the Cheese Turd is not . ”
“Take the café, Mimi,” I say.
She laughs.
“I’m not joking,” I say slowly. “Take the café. For a day. For a week. For however long you want it.”
She laughs again over her breakfast.
“Was Harry Sullivan your first choice?” I push. “Was he the man you wanted to marry instead of Grandpa?”
Her laughter stops, and she eyes me like she doesn’t want me putting the pieces of this puzzle together.
“Was he?” I press.
“That was seventy years ago, young man.”
“Why did you break up?”
She sighs. “That’s not my story to tell.”
Fucking gossip . “Did you know Elsie Sullivan?”
Zen stops eating and looks between us. “What’s going on? What do you know?”
“Did you?” I press Mimi.
Everything Sabrina said last night about the other reason she called Mimi is tumbling through my head and clicking like a key in a lock.
Mimi holds my gaze. She’s not sad. Not slow. Not weak. “Very briefly.”
I lift my brows.
“She was Harry’s best friend’s little sister.”
“Best friend from here, or from school?”
“Both. They grew up here together, then both went to Carnegie Tech before it became Carnegie Mellon.”
“And Elsie?”
“Came to visit on occasion.”
I swallow.
I can’t ask the next question.
I can’t ask and not betray the trust I want Sabrina to have in me.
“They got married when she got pregnant,” Mimi says. “Harry thought it was important to do right by his best friend’s little sister.”
I stare at Mimi.
Zen’s staring at me. I can feel it.
But I will not ask what I still want to ask.
Was Harry really the father of Elsie’s baby?
“He broke my heart, but for the very best reason,” Mimi says.
And then she goes back to her breakfast like she didn’t just say I forgive him for dumping me to marry a woman who was pregnant with another man’s baby .
“How did I end up buying a café to get revenge on the grandson of the man who broke your heart in college?” I ask Mimi.
The man that Sabrina says isn’t her real grandfather.
The man that Sabrina also says is the gold standard against whom she judges all other men.
Mimi laughs. “The world works in mysterious ways. Now eat. I have a date with Harry in an hour, and I’m not sitting here with you while you don’t eat your breakfast when I could be doing my hair and makeup instead.”
I dive into my breakfast.
It’s good to eat. Definitely worked up an appetite last night.
“I mean it,” I tell Mimi. “If you want to run a café in the mountains, it’s yours. Five years or five minutes. I don’t care. Spend some time living a dream.”
“Greyson, that is a ridiculous way to spend your money.”
Zen snorts in utter amusement. “Take the café, Mimi. By my calculations, he could buy and ruin a café every month and still reach billionaire status in another seven years.”
“Do you want to keep working as my personal assistant or not?” I interrupt.
They grin and don’t answer me.
Directly, anyway.
“When you told me we were coming to Colorado so you could get vengeance against a random dude who owned a café, I had no idea I’d like it as much as I do.
Maybe I don’t want to be your assistant anymore.
Maybe I want to stay and work for Mimi at her café and hang out with her and her boyfriend instead of you. ”
“Oh, honey, Harry is not my boyfriend,” Mimi says. “And I do not need a café.”
Zen rolls their eyes. “You’re in your nineties, Mimi.
You don’t have time to waste debating if you want to be boyfriend and girlfriend or live out some old dreams. Forgive, forget, pick back up where you left off, save Uncle Grey from his horrible plans of thinking he can actually be Super Vengeance Man , and grab life by whatever balls it has left for you. ”
“That’s…more like the romantic you I expect,” I tell them.
“I aim to be very direct and tolerate zero bullshit from the people in my life.”
Mimi’s eyes are twinkling.
They’re actually twinkling . “So you think I should take this café?”
“Please, Mimi. Save me from my horrible boss and give me a new direction in my life.”
She laughs. “I’ll think about it. In the meantime, Greyson, please go run my café for me today. And give Harry’s granddaughter a raise. She works hard. She’s earned it.”
She does work hard.
She’s the reason the café runs as smoothly as it does.
And she’s right.
It won’t hurt Chandler at all for me to destroy it.
Super Vengeance Man was a bad idea.
But coming here wasn’t.
Coming here showed me what I actually want. What I need for closure from all of the people who’ve stabbed me in the back. And how I want to spend the rest of my life.
“Can you run the café today?” I ask Zen.
They blink at me.
Blink again, then look at their phone. Their eyebrows shoot up.
And then they grin at me. “About time, Uncle Grey, but give a person some warning when you know the manager’s going to be out for the day since she didn’t sleep at all last night.”
Now I am definitely going ruddy in the cheeks. “I want the café back when you’re done with it,” I tell Mimi.
“For your kombrewchery?” she asks.
I shake my head. “For something better. Excuse me. I have some research I need to do.” I kiss them both on the tops of their heads, and then I take off.
I do.
I know exactly what I need to do.
And it’s perfect and just and right.
Finally .