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“Those symptoms really do line up with her behavior,” he said, his fingers thrumming on my thigh.
I didn’t quite have the courage to tell him how glad I was that he’d been there. I hadn’t really understood it during the stress of the moment, but keeping a clear head had been so much easier just by the fact of his proximity.
We officially finished our feast and worked together to bus the table, a quick job between the two of us.
“You guys all seem comfortable working here,” I said, searching for the right words to ask what I wanted to know. “I know it can’t be easy. How long did it take for y’all to find the rhythm of it all? Do you have other employees outside of the family?”
Vinh considered my question as he spun his stool toward me, maneuvering my legs between his. “I’m surprised you see it that way. It feels like complete and utter chaos to me.”
I tilted my head, “How so?”
“My parents and Liem have only been on the Coast for… not even four months?”
Wow, not long. Not long at all. I managed to hold back a sigh, forcing down the intrusive thoughts the information triggered.
“You know about our dad’s surgery?”
I nodded, glad my slight shift in mood hadn’t been obvious. “Yeah, Liem told me the other morning. How is he holding up? Is he getting around okay?”
He blew out a breath. “I want badly to just say ‘good.’ It’s not that he isn’t good, but… it’s complicated. He’s more complicated than he likes for us to believe. He seems to be coping as well as anyone can be after an amputation. Especially an unexpected one.”
I nodded again, because if there was anyone who knew about complicated family dynamics….
“Liem said it was some kind of infection?”
He nodded, his fingers tapping out patterns on the top of my leg. “Yeah. Only a couple of weeks after they moved here.”
The story was sad and intense enough to mostly distract me from the pronoun he’d used. They moved. Not we.
“But to answer your original question better,” he continued, “Mom does just about everything. She’s incredible. She’s a pretty good cook, and Dad is even better. Before they had Liem, they owned a small restaurant in Eufaula, but from the way Mom describes it, it was more like a bar that happened to serve great food. I don’t remember it much, except for cooking in the kitchen with Dad.”
I frowned. “They had to shut down? Because of having Liem?”
He took a deep breath, always thinking before he spoke, which was something I appreciated about him. “No. This is not really my story to tell, but the Cliffsnotes are that Dad developed a drinking problem that nearly got away from him while they owned that restaurant. Luckily, or unluckily, maybe, Mom grew up with an alcoholic father and saw the signs. She got him into a program, and he’s been sober ever since.” He lifted his gaze from my thigh, his fingers stilling as he locked eyes with me. “You’ll have to ask him about it one day. It’s a nice story, overall.”
Then he squeezed my thigh and rerouted back to my original question. “Liem and I do a lot of prep and serving, among a few other things. We did have a couple of part-time employees who stayed on during the summer, but they’re back in school now. Hopefully once Dad is feeling up to it, he can take over some of the prep. We’ve been brainstorming ways to make the kitchen more accessible for him. It’ll be easier once he gets his prosthetic and some therapy and rehab along with it. Aunt Ari and Uncle Gil were well loved here. The regulars only eyed my parents with suspicion for a couple of weeks before accepting that Ari’s wasn’t going to go through any major changes, the name included. Much to Liem’s disappointment.”
I laughed, remembering that particular rant. “He said he has a Lott of ideas for new names.”
He let out a long-suffering sigh, and then his phone beeped with an alert. He leaned back and pulled it out of his pocket, a crease between his eyebrows forming as he read it.
“What are your plans for the rest of the day?”
I frowned, realizing I hadn’t made any concrete work plans for today or tomorrow. It was maybe the first time I hadn’t filled every hour since Cody left. “I should probably go check in at Fortuna and get some hours in.”
“I really want to ask more about what all you do, but I don’t think we have time now. A storm is blowing in. You might want to go ahead and head back there now so you don’t get caught in it. In fact—” He paused midsentence and stood up, sending a waft of his delicious eucalyptus-and-herb-tinged scent in my direction before reaching out and helping me off the stool. “—I’ll follow behind you. I don’t think I’ll need to move the houseboat to land for this one, but I better go to the harbor just in case.”
“Can your car haul a boat that heavy?”
He laughed. “In spirit, yes. But no, not in reality. Paul has a friend at the dock he pays to haul the houses and boats inland during hurricane season. I told the guy I’d help him load them in exchange for transporting mine if the time came. Some people may be more cautious and want theirs moved regardless of the forecast.”
Forethought, I’d discovered, was a big turn-on.
He led me by the hand to a small gate that opened to a fresh-looking ramp that led down to the side of Ari’s. “What about our plates?” I asked, looking back at our neatly stacked pile.
“Don’t worry.” He squeezed my hand. “I texted Liem. He said he’d get them.”
I smiled. “Thank him for me. Oh! No, I can do that now.”
