Chapter Three
TARYN
I'm elbow-deep in the third sink of dishes, and Gus's kitchen is talking to me.
The man labels his containers with the date and a smiley face.
His knife roll is worn but the edges are sharp, well-tended.
There's a sun-faded postcard of the Grand Canyon taped inside the dry-goods cupboard, and a coffee can on the shelf marked GUS'S VACATION FUND with about nine dollars of change in it.
I hope his gallbladder behaves itself, since he seems like a good guy.
I move on to scrubbing the flat-top. It keeps my hands busy and stops me counting what’s left in my purse.
Hawk's been gone for ninety minutes. Twenty miles each way, he said, and every time the bell out front does its tinkly chime, my stomach drops.
But then it's a delivery man or a customer, and I go back to my degreaser.
Marvin appears at my shoulder with two mugs.
“Look hon, I don't know your situation,” he starts, “and the good Lord knows today wasn't a job interview, but I gotta say my piece. Gus is out two months minimum, the doc says, maybe three. I need a cook and you’re the best one I've seen come through that door since my grandma died.
She'd have said so herself, then boxed my ears for the wages I'm about to offer you.”
He names the wages. They're fair, more than I made in Bishopsdale in a good month.
I take a deep breath. “You should know who you're hiring. I came here to marry a man who didn't show this morning, so if he walks in tomorrow with a broken axle and a good excuse, you and I might have to renegotiate.”
Marvin considers this for a moment. “Well if he walks in tomorrow, he can wash dishes while you two talk. Offer stands.”
I nod and he shakes my hand and grins. I have a job. Whatever else today decides to do to me, at least I have some way of making money in the cutest little town I've ever seen.
I’m sitting in the booth having my third slice of pie when a striking woman walks through the door.
She’s in her sixties and looks like she got dressed in a Paris apartment, not a small town.
She’s wearing a tailored jacket, silk blouse and leather pants, with her silver hair pinned up with a jeweled comb.
Bangles chime down one wrist as she pulls off her sunglasses, surveys the room and then sashays over to me.
“Voila!” she announces. “The girl who fed the Scenic Summits charter with a soup pot and her bare hands. Word spreads fast, chérie… I bumped into Lila on her way to pick up her daughter from school. I’m Vivienne Lambert. Viv. I own the boutique in High Vale.”
“Pleased to meet you, Viv.”
Viv installs herself in my corner booth and pats the seat across from her. She’s a good listener, and before I know it, I’m telling her all about the letters, my plans for Grandma June, and how Keith didn’t show up.
“What do you think of this solution? My house has three bedrooms and one of me in it, and the blue room has a view of the mountains. Rent is one almond croissant a week, payable Sundays, until you get your bearings here.”
I open my mouth but absolutely nothing useful comes out.
“As for this Keith,” Viv sniffs and stirs her coffee. “We'll see what Hawk brings back over that pass.”
“You know Hawk?”
“Chérie, I've known that man for years, and today is the first time ever he's bought anybody pie.” She says it lightly, but her eyes are bright as a magpie's. She writes her number on a napkin, slides it over to me, and leaves.
The sun is dropping behind the peaks when the rumble of a motorcycle comes up the street. Hawk fills the doorway a moment later. He's got his gloves in one fist as he crosses the diner and stands in front of my booth.
“Keith's alive and well. He's also a damn coward.” He sets an envelope on the Formica between us.
“Found him at home, the clerk gave me the address. This letter was already written, sitting on the table. Been sitting there for weeks, he said. He couldn't work up the nerve to mail it. Then he was going to bring it in person, but he couldn’t face seeing you disappointed. So he did nothing.”
My name is on the envelope. I open it and read.
Keith says he’s sorry. There's a widow named Carol-Ann who started coming into the store in March for birdseed, and he should have written the moment he knew he’d fallen for her, but he didn't. He'll pray I find better than him.
Folded inside the page are three twenty-dollar bills. For the bus home, the last line says.
All those months of letters, an overnight bus, and the whole future I built for June and me is ruined in a second.
I can’t stop the tears falling. Hawk doesn't say a single word, just sits down opposite me in the booth, passing me a handkerchief. He doesn’t move while I cry my eyes out over another man's letter.
I blow my nose on his handkerchief, then square the twenties on the table and push them away from me.
I manage a weak smile. “Well. I guess I'm not spoken for anymore.”