4. Erin
ERIN
The mug arrives at six-forty on the dot.
Joan doesn’t ask. She didn’t ask the second morning either — she just set it down in front of the corner stool, black, no cream, and moved on while I was still reaching for the menu.
The menu stays behind the counter now, where it apparently lives.
I’ve started getting here a few minutes early to be in the right seat when she comes around.
Cedar Hollow has decided I take my coffee black. Cedar Hollow is correct.
By the end of the second day, I have the first of Whitlock’s backed-up charts. A patient who hasn’t had a proper follow-up in months because there’s been no one to see them. He gives it to me without ceremony, explains everything he knows, and doesn’t bring it up again.
The next morning, there are two more. He carries each one to my desk the same way: here is what he knows, here is where he stopped, here is what needs doing.
I take them and read them and start working, and I watch the set of his shoulders ease by degrees through the afternoon, and I say nothing about it.
Lito keeps putting food on my desk. A plastic container of chicken adobo with garlic rice the first day, still warm from his kitchen.
A sweet-savory eggplant omelette next, in a container with his nephew Adam’s name on the lid in marker, which is now my new favorite egg dish.
On a gray afternoon later in the week: thick, earthy mung bean soup with pork on a hot bed of rice, and richer-than-rich egg and milk flan with caramel syrup for dessert.
"Lito, at this rate, our blood sugar readings are going to tell on us."
"That’s okay. I won’t tell if you won’t!"
Linda steers me through the supply closet, the X-ray machine’s complaints, and the back stairs shortcut over the course of the week.
The rented cottage on Cypress Lane takes two days to learn. Which floorboard, which light switch, which side of the room is the best place for a bed. I sleep. I work. I eat. One morning I notice I’ve been walking to Joan’s without checking my phone first, which used to be the first thing I did.
I have not thought about Denver in four days.
One evening, I’m in Joan’s with a chart open beside my bowl of soup when the bell above the door rings.
Cleo comes through first. She’s holding two of David’s fingers and pulling, not because he needs directing but because she’s six and forward motion is her natural state.
Both pigtails are at different heights. There’s something on her chin that is either dinner or an art project.
She scans the diner from the door with the focus of someone conducting a sweep, spots me on the second stool from the window, and drops David’s hand entirely.
"Erin!" She hauls herself onto the stool beside me, both hands and both knees, boots finding the footrest. "We came because Daddy burned the hot dish."
"I didn’t burn it," David says, settling onto the stool on Cleo’s other side.
"The tater tots on top were black."
"That’s a crust."
"Daddy." She opens her arms. "That's not what a crust is."
He doesn’t argue with this. He catches my eye across Cleo’s head, one second, level, then he shrugs and mimes a sigh. I shrug and mime-sigh back. This is an established debate, and he has made his peace with it.
Joan materializes with two menus, sets them down without commentary, and slides Cleo a paper placemat with a maze on it and a cup of crayons. Standing protocol. David gets coffee without discussion.
Joan adds to my cup on the pass. "Want a slice of pie, hon? Lemon meringue today."
"No, thank you." Her eyes don’t linger. She moves on to the table at the window.
The diner has maybe eight other people in it. The jukebox is playing something slow and old from the back corner. I close my chart and push it to the end of the counter because there’s no longer room for it.
Cleo tugs at my sleeve. "Erin! Erin! I have a joke." By the look on Joan’s face and her father’s, she's had this joke for some time.
"Okay. Ready? Knock knock!"
"Who’s there?" I oblige.
"Cow says."
"Cow says who?"
"NO!" Both hands hit the counter. "Cow says MOO!" The cackle is enormous — head back, gap-toothed, entirely unbothered by the volume. She looks at me to confirm receipt, looks at David, looks back at me. "Daddy, she didn’t get it, you have to explain it —"
"Oh, she got it," David says.
"I got it," I say.
Cleo cackles again, satisfied. She picks up a crayon and starts on the maze, narrating her own progress under her breath, left, left, no that’s a wall, go back, okay ; she sings the Biscuit song as she colors.
The mac and cheese arrives. She eats with the fork in her right hand and the crayon in her left, both receiving the same level of concentration. She eats most of my crackers by a process of gradual acquisition, one cracker at a time.
Joan brings lemon meringue, two plates, and Cleo shifts her full attention without ceremony. David eats half a slice of Cleo’s pie so she doesn’t have to finish it alone, which Cleo doesn't notice because she has moved on to the story about the local cats at the library.
Then, mid-sentence about the cats at the library — there are three of them, their names are very important, and one of them hoards the children’s section — her words start getting further apart. A pause. Another. Her head tips against his shoulder, the pie fork still half lifted.
She’s asleep.
David reaches across and takes the fork before it can go anywhere, then sets it on the edge of her plate. He doesn’t look at me while he does this. His eyes are on Cleo and the fork, with the careful attention of a man moving something he doesn’t want to disturb.
After a moment he shifts her to his hip to stand. He lifts so gradually that I don’t catch the moment the weight leaves the stool. He just moves, and then Cleo is against his shoulder with her cheek pressed to his collar, her pant leg riding up above the boot.
I catch the bruise immediately.
Outer right shin. Flat, yellow-purple, the size of a half-dollar. A week old or close to it. The color has already peaked and is settling into resolution. Not fresh. Not dramatic. A bruise that happened on some ordinary afternoon and wasn’t worth mentioning.
Six-year-olds bruise like fruit. The first frost is already in. The ground is hard by morning, small children fall constantly, and Cleo is small-framed and runs at everything. I write it off before the thought has fully formed.
I go back to my coffee.
David settles the check one-handed while Cleo sleeps against the other. He tips his chin toward the door. "’Night, doc."
"’Night."
I watch him carry Cleo out into the cold, through the diner front door and out to the sidewalk. His hand steady at Cleo’s back as he gets her settled in the cab of his truck. Methodical, no wasted motion, the same way he carried her up to the door.
He gets in. The truck pulls away. I turn back to my soup and I’m surprised it’s gone cold.
Joan picks it up on the pass, offers to reheat it, and sets down a small takeout container in its place — lemon meringue, lidded, no explanation.
I take it. She’s already at the other end of the counter, wiping something down and adjusting her radio.
Later in the week, halfway down Main Street on the way back from the pharmacy, I find David standing outside the Bluebird with two paper cups of coffee.
I slow down. He’s been there long enough to have found the spot out of the wind against the wall, which is either habit or intention. Hmmm. He’s looking toward the far end of the street, and when I come around the corner of the hardware store, his eyes zero in on me.
He holds out the left cup just as I reach him.
"Hey," I say. "How’d you know I take it black?"
"Lucky guess." One shoulder shrugs, briefly.
I take a sip and resist the urge to close my eyes and sigh. I’ve been getting coffee from Joan’s counter for almost a week now, and apparently David has been paying attention.
The Bluebird’s door swings open behind him, and three women come out together. Their animated conversation stops abruptly. A clean stop, mid-syllable. Three heads turn. Not quite simultaneously, but close enough.
I don’t look directly. I hold the cup with both hands and look at a point just past David’s left shoulder. The cold is dry and the sky over Main Street is going pale at the edges and he is a comfortable amount of sidewalk beside me.
The three women go left. One voice carries back clear from the corner. That’s the new doctor. The chin-wagging and giggles take up again and echo into the distance.
David exhales. Not quite a sigh. He doesn’t watch them go. He watches me.
The laugh comes out before I decide to let it. Sudden, bright, real, the kind that arrives before conditions are checked. I don’t recognize the shape of it until it’s already in the cold air between us.
I have not laughed like that since before Denver.
David shakes his head. "Small town."
"Linda warned me. Casseroles, huh?"
He tips his chin once and sips from his own cup. "You get used to it."
He walks me to the clinic. At the corner he holds the door, not with ceremony, just holds it open, and I put my hand on it, and for a moment both our hands are on the handle in the cold. Then I have it and he steps back.
"See you, doc."
"See you."
I go in without looking back. I manage this because I’ve decided I’m going to.
A flash of auburn and pink rushes in and almost tackles me, just before the door closes.
Cleo, in her braided pigtails and pink cat-ear beanie, holds aloft a white paper bag in both hands, sugar already on her chin and the expression of someone transporting something important.
"Erin! We got cookies! I saved you the good one. Daddy said I had to ask, but I already saved it, so really it’s already yours —"