Chapter 5
LIZZY
As soon as she’d stepped into the office where Victor had now abandoned her, the scent of her dad’s cologne hit her like a visceral gut punch of grief and nostalgia.
That was the best explanation she had for why she’d even heard Victor out.
She was a fool to even consider his offer.
A smarter woman would have stormed out of the place, sought a lawyer, and attempted to fight for ownership of the diner.
But for one, she didn’t have lawyer money.
She was flat broke and technically in the negative if you counted her looming credit card bills.
And second, she didn’t want the diner enough to fight for it.
In the rush to start over, she’d done what she always did—She’d jumped onto the next thing without fully thinking it through or looking back.
The same way she’d jumped from boyfriend to boyfriend, job to job.
Like the bad decisions before them, selling the diner and house seemed like it would solve all her problems. Clearly it would not.
Which raised the question, what next?
Her instinct was to run, but it was those same impulses that had led her here to this moment.
Single, fired, and standing in her dead dad’s office.
So, by that logic, she should slow down and really consider her options.
She looked around the room. The space was cluttered, just like how she remembered it.
There were old, framed clippings from the local newspaper hanging on the wall, depicting the restaurant’s opening.
Next to them was a faded black-and-white photo of Frank Sr. with his arm around Frank Jr. She had a distinct memory of staring at it while doing her homework as a kid.
Growing up, she practically lived at the diner.
Frank Jr. worked the flat top, and Mom waited tables.
Rather than be alone in their big empty house, Lizzy would hang around to be closer to them.
She sank down into Frank’s chair. It was an old, worn-in leather chair, a bit faded but surprisingly comfortable.
Much better than the stiff plastic ergonomic ones she’d used at work.
She spun side to side, swaying in place, remembering doing something similar as a kid, when she could have pulled up her knees and spun around until she was sick.
With a sigh, she glanced over at the single framed photo on the desk.
She was nine or ten in it, gap-toothed with twin braids, wearing a pink frilly dress and proudly holding up her spelling-bee competition trophy.
Behind her, Frank Jr. was beaming in a way that was rarely caught on camera, or in life.
Mom must have taken the picture because she was nowhere in view.
Lizzy picked it up and ran her finger over her chubby cheeks, but her eyes lingered on Frank Jr.’s smile. She remembered that day, but didn’t remember him smiling. He rarely smiled. All she recalled was him giving her a firm nod and a “You’re a smart cookie” when she fished for compliments.
Lizzy set the frame back down on the desk, eyes misting over.
She’d been in such a rush to get here that she hadn’t even called her mom and broken the news.
Her mom and Frank Jr. had divorced over twenty years prior, but she deserved to know he’d passed.
Lizzy pulled her phone out of her pocket and scrolled to her mom’s contact page but hesitated to press call.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to deliver bad news—though she really hated it.
But she’d also have to tell her mom that she and Steven broke up, which would lead to telling her he was cheating and her mom telling her “I told you so.” And Lizzy would feel worse than she already did.
She suspected she knew what her mom’s advice would be too.
Come home, we’ll figure it out. Pumpkin Hollow isn’t for you.
She set the phone down on the desk, and her gaze skimmed over to a piece of paper at the top of a pile.
It was a schedule sheet with a sticky note attached noting everyone’s schedule limitations—kids, vampirism, full moon.
Judging from the blank spaces and the thick layers of Wite-Out on the page, Victor had been trying and failing to accommodate everyone.
Lizzy loved puzzles, and looking at the schedule reminded her of sudoku or a similar fill-in-the-blank type puzzle.
She studied it for a few minutes and then wrote down a couple names, cross-checked limitations and nodded to herself, satisfied.
There was a gap in the overnight schedule, however.
There simply weren’t enough employees to fill all the slots.
Because they’d lost Frank, she realized sadly.
He would have worked those empty slots, and that was most likely what he’d wanted her to do.
She sighed and pulled a fresh sticky note off the pad and scribbled a quick note for Victor in case he thought she was overstepping.
But she was part owner of the diner, and it did seem he’d been struggling to make a schedule that kept everyone happy.
Those gaps would keep nagging at her, though.
Rather than think about things that were decidedly not her business, she decided to do the hard thing and call her mom. She picked up the phone and dialed before she could chicken out again. Lizzy hit the call button, and her mom picked up after a few rings, breathless.
“Hi, sweetie, just on my walk with the girls. Say hi.”
Mom had a group of ladies in her neighborhood who met up daily. She said the community and activity kept her “young” and she’d outlive everyone, even Lizzy.
Lizzy didn’t doubt it with the stress she was under. She aspired to have her mom’s lifestyle. Her mom never doubted herself; she had every moment of her life planned out to a T.
“Hi, ladies,” Lizzy said.
The women in her mother’s friend group greeted her warmly, their voices overlapping one another to form an indistinguishable cacophony.
One voice broke through the rest. “That boy ask you to marry him yet? You’re not getting any younger.”
“Goddess, I hope not. He didn’t, did he?” her mother asked, panic creeping into her voice.
Lizzy fidgeted in her seat, swinging side to side. She couldn’t read her mom’s mood through the phone, and she’d hate to deliver double bad news without being able to gauge her feelings. Though, the breakup would be good news to her.
“No. He didn’t,” Lizzy said flatly. She felt the wave of numbness threatening to consume her once more, pulling her down into a dark pool of unfeeling. It was rather comforting.
“Good. You can do so much better. I emailed you about those online courses. Did you take a look?”
Lizzy had, in fact, not. The idea of going back to school overwhelmed her. Starting over at college in her forties, like her mom had done after divorcing her dad, wasn’t part of her life plan, but then again, she didn’t really have a life plan.
“Is now a bad time?” Lizzy asked, cutting off her mom’s tirade before it started. And right now, she didn’t want to hash out her mistakes and wasted potential with her mom.
“No, not at all—What’s that…?”
Lizzy heard a few muffled words from her mom’s companion, and then her mom laughed.
“Sorry, sweetie, Brenda was telling me about her neighbor who she’s been fighting with over the garbage cans. Anyway, what did you call about?”
She looked down at the picture on the table and then to the schedule with its gaps. She didn’t know what she wanted, and her mom would only pressure her to do what she thought best. What if she stayed, just for a little while until she figured herself out?
“You still there, sweetie?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I’ll call you back later when you’re not with friends.” Her voice cracked a bit.
“Ok. Love you, talk later.” Her mom hung up.
Lizzy sat for a moment in the silent office, staring at the schedule sheet.
Then she dragged it over to her and wrote her name onto it, filling in the leftover shifts, including overnights, just as a gentle knock came from the door.
She stood up and found Victor filling the doorway.
His apron was splattered with grease, and there was a bit of flour smudged on his face.
“I hate to ask this, but could you help take some orders? We’re absolutely slammed.”
“No problem!” She had decided to help out, why wait?
“You’re a lifesaver.” The relief on his face was abundant, and it warmed a small part of her cold heart to be needed.
He rushed back to the kitchen, where she heard the other fry cook shouting out orders. As she passed the kitchen, she saw all four fryers were bubbling and the flat top was packed with bacon, burgers, and buns.
She grabbed a spare apron from the hooks where they’d always hung and an order pad from the bussing station, and she stepped out into the dining room.
The tables were packed, and Trudy looked up with sheer panic radiating off her.
Vivianne was behind the counter with a queue of milkshakes lined up, empty cartons of milk lying on the counter next to them.
Every table was full and had a milkshake on it.
Lizzy went into crisis resolution mode. It was what she was best at.
She’d spent a few years at a crisis call center until her boss had fired her for spending too long on her calls.
Then there had been her brief stint as a wedding planner before she’d broken up with her photographer boyfriend and moved cross-country.
“Why is everyone ordering milkshakes?” Lizzy asked.
“Vivianne offered up a free milkshake with any order,” Trudy said, her voice wobbling as if she were about to cry.
Vivianne looked over from the shake mixer and gave her a sheepish shrug. They’d deal with that later. For now, they had to get customers in and out.
“I’ll take tables one through eight, and you take the counter and tables nine and ten.” Lizzy pointed at the two four-top booths in the nook between the window and the counter. While Lizzy would take the eight four-top booths lining the window that faced Main Street.
Trudy nodded and went over to tend to her tables.
All told, Frank’s wasn’t a large diner, but when it was full, it buzzed with energy.
She remembered this from high school. Back then, she’d found it overwhelming.
The stress of the other waitresses, the cooks arguing in the kitchen, Mom and Dad fighting in the office over bills.
But this new numbness made navigating the diner almost easy.
She simply had to put on a smiling face and serve.
“What can I getcha?” she asked.
“I’ll have the bacon burger, extra bloody,” said the wolf shifter.
“And I’ll take the BLT and extra-crispy fries,” said the witch with him.
“And milkshakes for both of us,” he said before handing Lizzy their menus.
“Coming right up.” She jotted down their order and moved to the next table and the next. She found herself falling into an easy rhythm. Maybe she could do this.
In what felt like no time at all, the rush ended, the sun had gone down, and the streetlights turned on, casting a yellow glow on Main Street. There were still a few tables left, but they’d long since run out of ice cream.
Trudy had gone home, and Vivianne was slumped at the counter, staring off into the distance.
“If I never see a milkshake again, it’ll be too soon.”
“Serves you right,” Victor said, coming out of the kitchen and wiping his hands on a towel hanging at his waist. His tight bun had wisps of dark hair escaping from it, and he was greased up in a way that should have been disgusting but was a little bit delicious. She was a sucker for a grimed-up man.
“Well, I care about this place. It’s a Pumpkin Hollow institution.” She shot Lizzy a nasty glare.
“Lizzy is your boss. You can’t talk to her that way,” Victor scolded her.
“It’s alright,” Lizzy said. “I deserve it.”
Victor crossed his arms and frowned at her. “Finish your side work until Annalise comes in, then you can go home.”
“Yes, boss,” Vivianne said with a mock salute to Victor.
“Can I talk to you in the office?” he asked Lizzy.
He led her back into the office, where they’d abandoned their previous conversation.
The room felt too small with the two of them in there.
Even with the desk between them, his presence loomed over her, in a sexy sort of way.
In the exact sort of way she shouldn’t be thinking about, because she was definitely going to stay single.
“Thanks for helping out there. Vivianne means well, but she’s a bit chaotic.”
“You didn’t have to defend me. I am kind of the bad guy in this situation.”
He nodded thoughtfully as the silence dragged on.
“If I’m honest, the diner has been struggling for a while.
We’re in desperate need of repairs. If we didn’t have our regulars, I might have to close for good.
” He ran a hand over his face. “I don’t have the money to buy you out right now, but if you give me time, I can find a way, I think… Maybe if I take out a loan.”
“Are you going to need help to get through this month?”
He glanced up at her. “Yes…?”
“Since we’re being honest with one another—My bank account is empty, I just got fired, and I abandoned my apartment to my loser ex.
I’ve got nowhere to go and a car full of antiques and clothes.
If you can pay me some sort of wage, enough to live off for the month, I’ll stay and help.
” She picked up the schedule and showed it to him.
He looked at it, eyes widening. “You’d do that?”
“Yup!”
“You’re a lifesaver… There’s just one more thing, and I hate to ask…”
She braced herself for the other shoe to drop.
“My son and I have been staying at Frank’s place so we’re closer to the diner. Are you alright with staying with us?”
She blinked at him for a moment. And every fiber of her being was telling her “Girl, run.” But people-pleasing tendencies died hard.
“That’s great! I love kids!”