“So?”
Audrey rolled her brown eyes toward the ceiling. “They’ll see me cleaning windows.”
“So?” Sarah asked again, then said, “Good morning, Lisa and Carlita. What can I get you today?”
“Two coffees, black, and half a dozen maple doughnuts,” Carlita said.
“We’ll take them to go,” Lisa said. The woman was a short brunette with brown eyes, so much like her daughter, Crystal, that she often referred to the girl as her mini-me. “Audrey, we heard that you were caught with contraband at school. Our girls are good churchgoing kids, so we can’t have them affiliated with someone who smokes and drinks. We’ve told them to end their friendship with you.”
Anger rose in Sarah’s heart so fast that she got light-headed. “Sorry, ladies, but we’re all out of maple doughnuts.”
“I’m looking at a dozen right there,” Carlita said.
“We had a call-in order just before you arrived, and they are taken,” Sarah said through clenched teeth. She would bet silver dollars to doughnut holes that the contraband belonged to Crystal and Kelsey.
“Then forget the whole order,” Carlita snapped and whipped up a forefinger with a perfectly manicured nail to point right at Audrey. “You stay away from our girls. They don’t need your kind as friends.”
She had jet-black hair, brown eyes, and a temper—something that Kelsey had inherited right along with her mother’s hair and eyes. The two women left the shop in a huff, slinging dirty looks over their shoulders and whispering back and forth all the way out the door.
Audrey covered her eyes with her hands and started to cry. “Look what y’all have done.”
“Honey, you brought all of this on yourself. We didn’t do anything but make you accountable for your mistake,” Sarah told her. “Dry youreyes and wait on these next folks coming in here. And you probably won’t listen to me, but you need to reconnect to your old friends. They would never ask you to do something like take the rap for a crime you didn’t commit.”
“I’ve lost all those friends,” Audrey whined. “Raelene doesn’t even speak to me anymore.”
“Is that the truth, or did you throw her friendship away and quit talking to her when you started running with this new crowd?” Sarah asked.
“It doesn’t matter—and besides, I’m not going back to them anyway. Crystal and Kelsey are my real friends,” she huffed.
“I’m going to get the last of the doughnuts that Macy and your mama have made. You take care of orders and hold your head up. You don’t need those girls in your life.” Sarah hurried back to the kitchen.
“How’s Audrey doing?” Grace asked.
“She’s about to have a meltdown, but Mama told us that whatever doesn’t kill us will make us stronger,” Sarah said and went on to tell them what had happened. “My first instinct was to tell her to go on to the house and drown her sorrows in ice cream, but she has to learn to own her mistakes.”
Grace’s face went into what Sarah called her “mama bear” expression and got worse with every second. “I shouldn’t hate anyone, but I’m coming real close to that point with both of those girls and their mothers.”
Her hands knotted into fists, and Sarah was glad that Carlita and Lisa had left the shop, or she might have been bailing her sister out of jail that afternoon.
“She has to accept responsibility, but it sure don’t make it easy on me,” Grace said through gritted teeth.
“I understand, and that just about blows holes in what little righteousness I have, too,” Macy said. “We all love her so much that it’s hard not to feel sorry for her.”
“What kind of advice would Mama be giving all of us right about now?” Grace asked. “I could sure use some of her wisdom to help me get control of my temper.”
“She would tell me to have a beautiful wedding and wonderful life with Neal.” Macy tucked an errant strand of her red hair up under her net. “She would tell you”—she pointed at Grace—“to be tough and make Audrey accountable.” Her blue eyes twinkled again as she glanced over at Sarah. “And she would tellyouto settle down, stop hitting the bars until they shut down on Saturday nights, and to be a better example to your niece.”
“Two out of three ain’t bad.” Sarah picked up the last two trays. “And maybe I will settle down someday soon.” She bypassed the opportunity to tell them about the man she’d been seeing for a few months. She wanted meeting him on Sunday to be a surprise. “I see our old guys parking their truck.”
“Dependable old Frankie, Ira, and Claud,” Grace said as she shed her apron and picked the keys off the rack beside the kitchen door. “They must have been at a cattle sale, or they would have been here when the doors opened this morning.”
Macy hung her apron beside Grace’s and crossed the kitchen floor. “I was seventeen when they retired and started coming in for breakfast every morning, so it’s been fifteen years. I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee for them.”
Audrey had just finished waiting on a family of six, who had pushed two of the tables together and were having doughnuts and milk. She gave her mother the old stink eye and started toward the kitchen.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Grace asked. “You and I are going to stay up here in the front and wait on customers until noon.”
“Do I have to wear this thing on my head?” Audrey’s tone dripped icicles.
