Chapter 1 #2
He hid money under his plate when she wasn’t looking and headed out to visit his first patient of the day, a rancher who thought his heart might be acting up and had asked if Hank could give it a listen.
The fellow didn’t want his wife to know about it, though, and had asked to come to Hank’s office early before his wife woke up.
He felt Rose watching him through the front window the whole way down Main Street, and he a suspicion come to him that she had decided this morning to interfere in his life in some way. Of course, he wouldn’t find out how until she was good and ready for him to know.
The diner was busy and smelled like bacon and warm maple syrup and something cinnamon, when Sunny Carter walked in. Her stomach turned over hard enough that she pressed a hand against it to quiet its grumbling.
She'd eaten the heel of the bread that morning so the kids could have the rest. She’d figured a piece of toast would hold her till lunch but seemed considerably less reasonable now, standing in the doorway of a diner that smelled like a county fair.
She did the arithmetic she did about forty times a day of how to stretch the meager funds in her bank account until Reno’s next check arrived.
It shamed her deeply that she hadn’t asked him to stop sending the monthly checks when she’d found out who her anonymous benefactor was.
But truth was, until she found a job that paid well enough to fully support her and the kids, she needed the checks he’d been sending her every month since her husband died three years ago.
Her bank account had eleven dollars and change to last her three more days.
It would cover a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, and the cheap peanut butter.
She had a pot of stew in the fridge the family could eat on for two more nights and a box of cereal and enough milk in the fridge to cover breakfasts.
They would barely squeak by this month. But she’d had to pay for gas to drive from California to Montana, and until she found a cheap, permanent place to stay, the short term vacation rental they were staying in was expensive.
Her current budget did not include a county-fair breakfast for a grown woman who could let her stomach growl for a few hours.
She slid onto a stool at the far end of the counter away from the door.
An attractive woman behind the counter came over with a coffeepot and a smile that had clearly survived worse mornings than this one. "Morning, Hon. What can I get you?"
"One egg, please. Over hard. And one slice of toast. Dry's fine." Sunny had ordering-small down to a science: name a number first, make it sound like a preference and not a ceiling. "Just the coffee black."
"Coming up."
What arrived three minutes later was two eggs, three strips of bacon, a mound of grits with a pat of butter sliding off the top, a big patty of fried corned beef hash, and a slice of toast already buttered to the edges.
Sunny looked at the plate in alarm. Looked up at the woman. "I ordered one egg."
"You did." The woman smiled and topped off her coffee, unbothered. "Kitchen made a mistake, so I guess that’s all yours. Can't put that second egg back in the chicken.”
“But I can’t . . ."
“If you don’t eat it, I’ll have to throw it away. I don’t know about you, but I was raised to consider wasting food a sin somewhere up near the top of God’s list." She said quietly, "Extra food's on the house. Go on and eat it before it gets cold."
Sunny's whole body ached to eat the steaming hot meal. Her pride wanted to slide the plate back across the counter and march out with her spine rigid. She’d gotten very, very good, the past few years, at telling apart necessity and pride.
Problem was, she had a bad habit of listening to the wrong one.
"I really can't . . ."
"Sure you can." The woman picked up the plate and cutlery of a customer who’d just left two stools down from Sunny and wiped down the counter. She had kind eyes and a face that didn't miss much, and she was studying Sunny out the corner of her eye as she worked.
She came back with the coffee pot to stand close to Sunny, who hadn’t taken even a sip of her coffee, yet. It dawned on Sunny that the coffee pot was a prop. An excuse to stand here and chat without other folks noticing them talking.
“My name’s Rose. What’s yours?”
“Sunny.”
"Things tight right now, Hon?"
The question was asked so plainly, but without the slightest hint of judgment, that the careful, well-bred denial Sunny had been issuing to people for three years just dried up in her mouth. She was so tired of lying. So tired of pretending to be fine.
"Yes," Sunny answered honestly. "Very tight."
Rose nodded like that was the most ordinary thing in the world. "Eat, then. I own this place, which means I get to feed whoever I want however much I want to feed them."
Sunny ate. She tried to do it slowly and daintily, using the manners she’d grown up with. But it lasted about four bites before her hunger caught up with her and she just ate. Rose worked the counter and didn't watch her eat, which was its own kindness.
Somewhere after the eggs and bacon and before she polished off the grits, Sunny felt a hot sting behind her eyes that always came at exactly the wrong moment. It always hit her when somebody was kind instead of when somebody was cruel.
Cruel she could handle. She'd built a whole shell around herself just for dealing with cruelty in the aftermath of the scandal that destroyed her world.
She fought down the tears and barely managed to shove them back under the lid where they belonged.
"You new in town?" Rose asked one of the times she passed by. "Or just passing through, making my hash look bad?"
"New. Sort of. I . . . got here a few weeks ago." Sunny set down her fork. "I'm not entirely sure if I'm staying. That depends on a number of things I don't control."
"Most things do." Rose leaned a hip against the counter. "You got people here?"
"No."
"Family?"
"Four children." Sunny replied. "No. No husband. He died. Three years ago." That was the safe, practiced version. The one that left out everything.
Something moved across Rose's face. Not pity, Sunny would have walked out of here without ever looking back in response to pity.
No, that was . . . recognition.
"You’re a widow with four little ones. How old are they?”
“Ten, seven, seven, and three. Girls at each end, twin boys in the middle.”
Rose was quiet a moment. Then, "You're going to want to hear about the WoWS."
"The what?"
"Worn-out Widows Sisterhood." Rose said with the quiet pride of talking about family. "Eight of us here in Cobbler Cove. We all lost our men in the same fire. It’ll be five years in August. My husband, JB, was the fire chief. We women have been holding each other up ever since.”
Something let loose inside of Sunny that had been tied up in a tight, hard knot for a very long time. This woman understood.
Rose said, “We learned that the only person who knows what it is to bury a husband and have to get up the next morning, feed the kids, pay the bills, and keep holding it together is another woman who's done it.” She looked at Sunny, levelly.
"You've got the look of one of us. I'd know it anywhere. I’ve seen it in the mirror too many times to count. "
Sunny's instinct, the one that had kept her and four children housed and fed for three years, was to look for the catch. There was always a catch. She had learned that down to her bones. People who handed you something for nothing were, in her experience, the most expensive people in the world.
She turned this one over and couldn’t find the seam.
"We get together every few weeks. Check in with one another, help one another with any problems we’re having, and just talk.
We used to get together to cry, and sometimes we still do, but we do more laughing these days.
We’re having supper tonight, in fact," Rose said.
"My house, six o'clock. Bring the kids, we have a herd of children running wild most times and four more won't make a dent. We’ve got kids about the age of yours as well.”
Rose must have sensed her skepticism because she added, “You'll feel better around people who've stood where you're standing. Even if our whacky bunch isn’t your style, you'll have had a hot meal and a night out, and there's no harm in that, either."
"I wouldn't want to impose . . ." Sunny started.
Rose cut her off briskly with, "Here. Let me write down my address." Rose scribbled on the back of a blank receipt and slid it across the counter on top of the bill. Sunny glanced down and saw the order had been marked PAID in Rose's hand.
"Six o'clock. Don't make me come find you,” Rose said firmly.
Rose's house was a big house that looked just lived in enough not to be imposing. Every light was on downstairs, and it sounded from the driveway like a riot was in progress inside.
Sunny had barely gotten Chloe unbuckled from her car seat before her other three kiddos were absorbed into a stampede of children that came around the side of the house at speed.
They gathered up Presley, Harris, and Jenson without breaking stride, the way a lake takes in water from a river.
A tall, teenaged boy strolled after the pack with the casual bearing of a herding dog who knew his business.
Sunny headed for the front porch, and Rose stepped outside to greet her.
"That's Jack following the pack," Rose said, drying her hands on a dish towel. "My son. He watches the kids on WoWS nights. Keeps the casualties down to something a small ER can handle." She called out to him. "Jack! There are four new ones.”
Then to her, Rose said, “Tell Jack their names and he’ll introduce them to the others when they slow down for a minute.”
“My oldest is Presley. She’s ten, almost eleven. The twins are Harris and Jenson. They’re seven. And this one is Chloe. She’s three and bites when she gets mad. You might want to warn the other kids. Although it’s usually only the twins she chomps on.”