She eyed me for a moment, then tilted her head. “Come inside.”
She was steeping a jasmine tea ball in a porcelain tea bowl at her tiny table for two. I dropped into the chair opposite hers, and she took her seat calmly. Before her, the tea ball began to unfurl in the hot water, the petals fanning out like a delicate sea creature as it bloomed.
“Tea?” she asked. “Full of antioxidants. Boosts brain function.”
I shook my head.
“Tell me everything,” she said. “Start at the beginning.”
I took a deep breath and burst out with the whole story, from the day I first washed windows with Rory to last night and the disintegrating lemon drop.
“It was my only hope to make everything all right,” I said in despair. “And it’s gone. Unless... do you have another one, one last lemon drop?” I caught my breath at the thought.Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes.
“Sadly no.” Aunt Gert shook her head. She gave me a sympathetic frown. “That was truly the last one, I’m afraid.”
“Oh.” My shoulders slumped in defeat. It was done. The sense of loss was instantaneous, so strong I felt it squeeze the breath from my lungs. I choked, coughed. She watched me impassively.
“I can’t believe this is how it ends,” I whispered.
“Who said anything about ending?” Aunt Gert snapped. “One door has closed, with great pain and disappointment, I’m sure. This is a setback, it’s true, but not the end of everything for you. And while you don’t see it yet, to paraphrase the great English poet John Milton and only slightly less famous American chanteuse Judy Garland, every cloud has a silver lining. You just have to find it.” She sounded bracingly unsympathetic.
“There’s no silver lining.” I shook my head in despair. “Everything’s ruined now.” I had never felt so hopeless.
Aunt Gert took a sip of the tea, considering. Her tone softened. “You must follow your bliss, even in this, Lolly. Things feel dark, it’s true, but there will always be a spark of light. Follow that. It will show you where you need to go.”
“I can’t. This is too big, too broken.” I put my head in my hands in despair. “I don’t see the spark of light. Everything has fallen apart.”
Aunt Gert sat in silence for a long moment, then cleared her throat. “Some things aren’t meant to be mended,” she said finally, gently. “Sometimes it’s in the breaking that the light can finally shine through.”
39
Two days afterDad’s stroke Daphne found me in the dim, empty dining room of the Eatery at three in the afternoon.
“Hey, Lols,” She came through the door from the kitchen and saw me standing at the empty pie case, staring blankly inside. The diner was still closed, an unprecedented occurrence. “What are you doing?” She set her messenger bag and bike helmet on a nearby table and lightly touched my shoulder.
“Trying to figure out how we can possibly reopen without Dad,” I admitted. “I don’t know how we’re going to manage it.”
Dad continued to stabilize, to our great relief. His speech was still pretty garbled, and there were moments of confusion when he’d look at me with a lost, bewildered expression that broke my heart. He also still had no sensation on his left side. The physical therapist who assessed him at the hospital told me that he would most likely make slow but steady progress to regain some of what he lost, but no one could tell us how complete his recovery would be. It was a waiting game.
In a few days he would be discharged to a utilitarian rehabilitationfacility about ten minutes from our house. The arrangements had been made just this morning. He was going to hate it, I could tell. The place smelled like a gym crossed with a hospital, and I could already see that he was humiliated by the necessity of having someone help him urinate and dress himself. He was not going to be an easy patient. Still, we were incredibly relieved that he was alive and recovering after such a major stroke.
Daphne looked around and frowned. “Yeah, kind of difficult to run a restaurant without a cook.”
I nodded. “Julio can’t handle running the kitchen by himself, and we can’t afford to hire a chef. I don’t know what to do.” I sighed in exhaustion. It all felt like too much.
“Want a soda?” Daphne asked, heading for the kitchen.
“Sure.” Maybe the sugar would be a much-needed pick-me-up. I wasn’t doing well. I wasn’t eating, wasn’t sleeping. The bags under my eyes were dark smudges of exhaustion. Every time I thought of Rory and the girls my heart crumpled with sorrow. To come so close only to have it all taken from me once more was absolutely crushing. I ached for Rory, for the girls, for the might-have-beens and almost-weres. I couldn’t reconcile what I had finally allowed myself to hope for and believe could happen with the horrible reality of how it had turned out. I was plodding through each waking hour numbly, making decisions to try to keep us afloat while secretly I was drowning inside.
“Here. Come sit.” Daphne returned and slid into a booth near the front window, gesturing for me to join her. I sank down opposite her with a weary sigh. Everything felt like such a mess.
“Hey, I need to talk to you about something.” Daphne twisted off the tops of both sodas, handing me the black cherry and keeping the vanilla cream for herself. She and Dad both liked the vanilla cream flavor. Rory had always liked the orange cream best. He was the onlyone. After he left our lives there was always a disproportionate number of orange cream sodas left in the fridge.
“Oh, is this a soda conversation?” I asked, suddenly feeling a touch uneasy. “I’m not sure I can handle one of those right now.”
For as long as I could remember Thomas Kemper sodas had signaled some change in our family. My parents had sat me down with a black cherry soda to tell me that Mom was pregnant with Daphne. I’d given Dad a vanilla cream soda to gently break the news that I had called off my engagement to Rory. A soda conversation meant something big was up in our family.
She didn’t answer directly. Instead she clinked glass bottles with me and took a long pull, then looked around and said, “This old place. It’s had a good run.”
