The bell over the door sounded again. “I’m sorry, sir,” I told him, parroting what I’d heard Kasey say multiple times already. “We’re doing the very best we can.”
“Well, it’s not nearly—” he began, but then there was a crash. I looked up to see Ben, standing over a pile of pancakes and broken plates now on the rubber kitchen floormat. By the time I remembered I was on the phone, the man had hung up on me. Nice.
“Finley!” Lana called out. “Can you do a pass on the counter?”
“On it.” Grabbing a pitcher, I started to move down the row of seated customers, reaching around elbows, coffee mugs, and the mason jars of flowers at each setting. I’d just finished when Kasey returned, looking flustered.
“It’s madness out there,” she told us. “I put Cat in charge of managing the line. She’s the only one who scares them.”
Well, that tracks,I thought. Use that corporate steel for good.
Finally, at twelve on the dot, I shut off theOPENsign, which was more ceremonial than anything, as several tables remained. A few minutes later, Cardoon was rounding up his Tides people and herding them back onto the bus. When Clark and Kaseywent next door to take stock of the sale, Lana soon following, it was just me and Ben. Plus the music, audible for the first time since we’d opened.
“Poor Dolly,” I said as I sorted silverware. He was wiping the flattop, his back to me. “Singing all morning and nobody can even hear her.”
“You could when business was down.” A scrape as he kept cleaning the grill. “She’s got a vast catalog. Even so, there were times I got a little sick of it.”
Above me the voice was high and sweet, a mandolin behind it. “So it’s just her, all the time? I thought maybe you guys were in a phase.”
“Nope.” He pulled up the fry basket, shaking it out. “Marshall was really superstitious, especially when it came to the business. Kasey was playing Dolly constantly here when they started to break even. Just to be safe, from then on he refused to put on anything else.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Now it’s a trademark. I don’t think we could change it even if we wanted to,” he added. “It’s also a way of honoring him, I guess. And his quirks.”
I smiled. “He sounds like he was awesome.”
“He was,” he replied. “Loved to fish. Always wore shorts, even when it was snowing. Also, exceedingly chill. Never spoke bad about anyone, even my dad after he literally took the money and ran.”
I wiped down the counter, making sure to get the sides. “Are you in touch with your dad much?”
“Only when I have to be,” he replied. “Another big reason not to have a phone.”
“Mine can only reach me on the landline at the Woods right now,” I said. “I like talking to him, though.”
“What’s he like?”
Ben was out of sight as he said this, bending down to the bottom of the oven. “Great,” I replied, meaning it. “Dependable. Then again, I guess he had to be as a single parent.”
He popped back up. “How long was it just you two? Before he remarried?”
“Only a couple of years,” I replied. “And I don’t remember much about them. Just that he was the known quantity. Like a constant in math.”
“Whereas mine was like the value ofX,” he said, turning to throw the rag in his hand at the linen box. He missed. “Always different depending on what was around him.”
The door opened. It was Liz, today in capris and a bright orange blouse with an embroidered neckline. Behind her, more cars were pulling into the lot. “Can we get some coffee for Cat?”
“Sure,” I said, filling a cup with the last of the pot. “How’s it going?”
“Crazy.” She did look frazzled, her hair sticking up, face flushed. “And emotional. Watching people bargain for our history…”
She trailed off, just as the door opened again. Kasey. “Someone’s interested in the entire living room set but at a discount,” she said. “Are we doing that?”
“What did Cat say?”
“Couldn’t get her attention. She’s busy mediating a dispute about the saving-places policy of the line to get into the sale.”
“It’s that long?”
