The diner looked the same as it had when Alice was a child, right down to the metal napkin dispensers on the table and the coral uniforms the waitresses wore.
“What’ll it be?” their waitress said without looking up from her pad. She was young, teenaged, but had the hardened demeanor of someone much older. Alice ordered them each an egg cream, and when the girl returned with two glasses filled to the brim with frothy white, Alice asked if they could speak with the owner.
The girl planted her hand on her hip. “Is there a problem?”
“No problem,” Alice said. She pointed at Madeline. “She’s just an old friend.”
The girl stared between Alice and Madeline. “Dad,” she shouted toward the kitchen, “someone here to see you. An old friend?”
Alice moutheddadto Madeline, who shrugged. They were expecting Dee’s sister.
A man with smooth sunburned skin and a hint of gray along his temples appeared from the kitchen. An apron was tied around his waist, covered with dried bits of unidentifiable food. He looked at Alice and Madeline.
“You’re the owner?” Alice asked.
“Ten years now. I know, I know, we changed the chicken salad recipe. Everyone loves the old chicken salad better. It was a family recipe of Dottie’s and was not a part of the sale.”
“We were actually looking for the previous owner,” Madeline said. “Dottie, is it?”
“She passed about a year before the sale. Her daughter was the one to sell to us.”
“Any idea where we could find her daughter? We’re really trying to locate Dottie’s sister, Dee. It’s urgent that we speak to her.”
The owner stiffened. “I’m not a part of all that. I know you’ve all got this weird unsolved mystery cult thing, but it’s got nothing to do with my diner.”
When he retreated to the back, Alice whispered to Madeline, “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?”
Madeline shook her head no, staring at the linoleum floor where the owner had just stood. She seemed dazed and perhaps a little afraid.
The waitress returned to the table, pen poised on her order pad. “You come here to eat or just to snoop?”
“Just the check,” Alice said sheepishly. She drank her egg cream so quickly she got brain freeze. When the girl came back with the check, Alice left twenty dollars for the two drinks, telling her to keep the change. “We didn’t mean to offend your dad.”
The girl pocketed the twenty, her entire demeanor changing. “Every once in a while someone watches a clip ofThe Woman Lost to the Seaand comes in here trying to be a detective. Maybe we should have changed the name, but people would still find us. I don’t get it. It’s not like they found her blood here or anything. She just worked here. Part-time.”
A customer at a table across the room motioned to the waitress, and she offered Alice a quick smile before skipping away.
“Blood?” Alice whispered to Madeline, who seemed to have left her body.
Outside, Alice leaned against the roof of her car, staring up at the palm trees lining the street. Although she had grown up with these impossibly tall trees, it never ceased to amaze her just how thin and high they grew, how they swayed in the wind without snapping. It was the fronds you had to worry about, which fell from the trees when they were not properly maintained.
“I remember that story,” Alice said. “It was on the rocks at Carpinteria Bluffs. I always assumed it was an urban legend.”
When Alice was sixteen, Gabby had convinced their group of friends to meet at the beach at midnight. She brought a candle and a Ouija board. They set up on the rocks where the police suspected a woman named Edith had been killed. Fingers poised on the planchette, Gabby deepened her voice to ask if anyone was there. “We mean you no harm,” she added.
The planchette started to move, first to theI, then theA, followed byM.
“Iam?” one of their friends asked.
“I am,” Gabby corrected, which suggested to Alice that Gabby was deliberately moving the pointer, even if she didn’t realize she was doing it.
The planchette continued to move:T-H-E-O-N-L-Y. Gabby found a notebook and transcribed,O-N-E-W-H-O-G-E-T-S-T-O-B-E-M-E. They stared at the letters strung together, until someone shouted, “I’m the only one who gets to be me,” before the wind picked up, throwing the planchette into the air. It crashed on the rocks a few feet from them and tumbled into the ocean. The girls screamed in unison, stumbled over the rocks to Highway One, where without speaking they hopped into their respective cars and drove away.
I’m the only one who gets to be me.
How could Alice have forgotten those words? How had she failed to recognize them when she read them in Madeline’s story?
It was a balmy morning, but Alice shivered from the memory, opting not to mention it to Madeline. On her phone, she GoogledThe Woman Lost to the Sea.
