Page 13

Sunny got ready to roll her eyes and found she’d missed the moment. Pearl hadn’t been joking. Pearl had looked at her, made a decision, and said it out loud in front of the whole counter, and the counter had heard. Sunny sat there with her cup in both hands and felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time, and put it away fast.

“My mother, I’m told,” she said. “I never asked her.”

Pearl heard the shape of that and left it alone, which Sunny hadn’t expected either.

“Well, it suits you. Lara says you’ve got that kitchen turned around in four days and John hasn’t said a word, which for John is a parade. She also says you’re single.”

“Lara says a lot.”

“Lara’s Boston. They talk.” Pearl reached under the counter and came up with a sheet of paper, and it was laminated, and Sunny looked at it and looked at Pearl. “I’m going to leave this here. You don’t have to read it now.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a list.”

“Of what?”

“Of men, honey, what do you think?” Pearl tapped it with the pencil. “Deputy Ryder Davis. Twenty-nine, steady, no debts, fainted at a blood drive once but that’s between us. Cody at the vet’s, he’s the tech, gentle with animals, mother’s a Baptist. Wes Fewell’s nephew, don’t hold Wes against him. And there’s a young man out at the Kane place I’ve had my eye on for a while, but he’s just back and I don’t like to rush a thing.”

Down the counter two men had stopped eating. Levi had syrup on his chin and was watching Sunny with the pure interest of a child who has seen a grown-up cornered.

“Pearl.” She said it nicely. She’d decided at the door that she’d like this woman, and she’d been right, and she still meant what she said next. “I’m done with men.”

“All of them. For the foreseeable. I came here to keep a house and cook for a family and be left alone, and I’m going to do those three things and then I’m going to go home. I don’t want a deputy. I don’t want a vet tech. I don’t want a young man out at the Kane place, whoever he is.” She slid the laminated sheet back across the counter with one finger. “It’s a lovely list. I’m sure they’re all very nice.”

Pearl looked at the sheet, and then at her, and Sunny saw her hear it, and saw her not take it the way it had been meant, which was as a fact. Pearl Whittaker took it as a bet.

“Well,” Pearl said, and put the list back under the counter, and took the order pad out of her apron and wrote something on it, short, and put it back, and picked up the pot. “We’ll see.”

“There’s nothing to see.”

“Honey, I’ve been behind this counter forty years. There’s always something to see.” And she went down the counter with the pot, and Sunny sat there with her coffee, and the woman with the flour came out of the kitchen, which Sunny would find out later she didn’t do, and set a slice of pie in front of her without a word, and went back in.

“Pearl,” Levi said, through pancake. “There’s a baby coming.”

“I know it, baby.”

“In November. It’s in Lara. It kicks when Dad talks.”

“I’ve heard that too.”

“Sunny’s staying till Helen’s back and then Sunny’s going home.” He said it with his mouth full and his eyes on his plate, the way a boy repeats a thing he’s been told and doesn’t like. “Dad said.”

Pearl looked at Sunny over the top of the boy’s head, and Sunny looked back, and neither of them said a word, and Pearl went and got him more syrup.

The county came in for its look in shifts.

A doctor first, thirty and pretty and dry, in a shirt with the sleeves rolled, who took the stool beside her.

“Elena Santos. I look after John. I hear you’ve got him drinking his coffee without arguing and I’d like to know how.”

“I bought the right kind.”

“That’s not it.” Elena looked at her a while longer than a doctor needed to. “You’re calm. Everybody who walks in here the first time looks like they’re about to be arrested. You look like you’ve been here a year.”

“I’ve been in a lot of rooms.”

“I bet you have.” Elena drank her coffee. “Well. If John gives you trouble, call me, and if his sons give you trouble, call Lara, she does the books and they’re all scared of her. And if you need anything for yourself, I’m two streets off the square and I don’t bill for the first visit.”