I clamp down on my bottom lip. This sounds concerning. Haunting isn’t exactly a grand love story. “I’m sorry for… startling you.”
“I’m sorry too,” he says. “I’ve been eating breakfast for every meal since the day she died, and she hasn’t shown up once. I thought maybe she’d finally come back, reincarnated as my pretty waitress.”
I press my lips together. I’m getting hit on a lot this week, and in the strangest ways.
“Don’t worry, dear. I know you aren’t her. Dorothy would have smacked me for such a comment.”
I nod and run both hands down the length of my apron. “Okay. Well, then. Enjoy your meal.”
“Now, don’t be like that. You asked me about my wife. Other than the fact that she’s been dead for the past ten years, she’s fabulous. Always was. Never in my eighty-one years have I met another woman like Dorothy Reese. The woman never did take my last name. Very modern of her, considering we were married sixty years ago. She just couldn’t stand the thought of being a Crabtree. Always saidshe was much too pleasant to be called by such a name, and if she didn’t love me so desperately, she would have left me ages ago.”
My nerves dispel, and a laugh bubbles out with his serious sentiments—I’m so glad to have been wrong about Mr. Crabtree’s love story. “Is that right?”
“Yes, dear, that’s right.” He stabs at a bite of pancake with his fork, swirling it in the syrup on his plate. “I hope one day someone loves you that desperately, Miss Fran.”
I appreciate Lester calling me by my preferred name. No doubt he’s heard Glen call me Frances a dozen times.
I clear my throat and tap the counter with my fingers. “Thank you. Enjoy your meal, Mr. Crabtree. I hope Dorothy haunts you real soon.” Maybe haunting sweethearts could be a grand paranormal love story.
“Me too, dear,” he says, the wrinkles on his face creasing with a smile. “Me too.”
I check on the couple at table four, then slink back to table ten, where my laptop awaits.
I send Professor Ellington a quick update on my research. She insisted that if I chose such a topic, I update her regularly. I add in a note about Lester and Dorothy, comparing the two to the older couple inTheNotebookwho just wanted to be together in life and death.
Ellington would have to be heartless not to love that story. But then, I’m not so sure she isn’t. How can anyone so in love with literature be so cynical?
I hit send and lean back in my seat, glancing at my customers. The café is quiet. I should have another minute before I check on my diners. Most want their drinks full and to be left alone.
With my sixty-second break, I pull out my phone.Nibbling on my cheek and dreaming about Drew Barrymore standing on a pitcher’s mound waiting for a kiss, I type in:CurrentReno-Tesoro Red Tail players.
But before my page has time to load?—
“Frances!”
I jump from my seat at the back table—as if I’ve been caught. As if I don’t have a right to look up players on a team roster. “Yes,Glendon?” I hurry around the lunch counter and peer through the cook’s open window, where Glen is grimacing.
“I’ve got pie back here,” he says, as if this should have already occurred to me. He hasn’t even noticed the nickname I’ve given him.
“Pie.” I nod. “Right.” Why Glen makes a fresh pie on Tuesdays is beyond me. There is no one here to eat his pie. “Hey, Mr. Crabtree, can I interest you in a slice of apple pie?”
“Blueberry!” Glen barks.
Blueberry? What was the man thinking?
“I’m all set, sis,” Lester Crabtree says. He reaches out and pats the back of my hand, sitting on the counter. I think the possibility of his dead wife coming back through me has bonded Lester and me for life. At least it’s upped my game from Miss to Sis.
I slide his ticket over to him, along with a chocolate chip cookie, on a napkin.
Glendon never needs to know.
Hurrying over to the couple at table three, I offer them pie too. To Glen’s frustration, no one wants his blueberry pie. I leave a ticket on their table just as a buzz sounds from my apron pocket.
Thanking the couple, I turn away and take two steps out of Glen’s sight to check my cell. The drop-down feature tells me Rosalie has texted. But the screen lights up with a Red Tail team roster. And that smiling face, front and center, is one I recognize at first glance.
Ten
Zev’s caris too warm. It’s spring, for crying out loud—in Tesoro, in Reno. We don’t need the heat on. I reach for the temperature knob, but before I can turn the heat down a notch—or ten—Zev smacks my hand.
