But move on to what? Dad would be moving on to rehab and trying to rebuild his health. Daphne would be moving on to her dream in Costa Rica. I wasn’t sure what Aunt Gert was going to move on to. Maybe Antarctica. And that left me. How could I seek joy? Where was my bliss? What did I really want?
“I don’t know,” I said aloud, knowing as I spoke the words that they were not true.
I did know. I wanted so many things I couldn’t have now. My mother back with us, she and Dad running the diner, the pillars of thecommunity and our family as they’d always been. Rory’s hand in mine, fingers laced together, his heart my home. Those two little tousled heads on the pillow in the morning, dark and copper, sleek and curly. My girls. I wanted to have a sense of the freedom I’d barely tasted in Brighton with Toast, the sensation of endless possibility, a heady mix of purpose and potential.
Sitting there in the dim, empty dining room, thinking of all my heart longed for and all I had lost, I became aware of the rest of the picture. I was not just holding on to the broken pieces of our family dream for the diner. I was holding on to so many other things in my life that were already gone, so many wonderful things I had tasted and then lost. All the dreams I’d had that were now shattered. I was holding on to the pieces and trying to put together things that were irreparably broken.
If you cling so tight to something that’s already broken, to a life and dream that can never come true, you don’t have space in your life for anything else, for the good and real plan Bs.My mother’s words to me that day in Hawaii came back to me now. True but hard. I knew she was right, but...
“How in the world can I let them go?” I whispered, thinking of Rory, of the girls, of all that I could never have now.
You have to have faith, Lolly, she’d told me as we stood together in the cold darkness on the side of Mauna Kea, tiny human dots under the vast swath of the universe.It takes faith and courage to let things fall apart, not knowing what will happen after you do. But you are strong. You can do this. There is more for you, my girl. More life and love and good things...
I closed my eyes, choking back a sob. Did I believe my mother’s words? Was I strong enough, brave enough? Could there possibly still be good ahead for me? I wasn’t sure, but I knew one thing. I was tired of holding the broken pieces together with my bare hands. I was tired oftrying to fit them all back into a shape that could never be whole again. I was tired of working my fingers to the bone for a dream that was dead. And I was so damn tired of waking up six days a week at the crack of dawn to make those six lemon meringue pies. I couldn’t do it anymore, any of it. Whatever came next, my mom was right. Daphne was right. It was time to let go.
I laid my cheek against the cold Formica tabletop, breathing in decades of stale fried potato grease, cold coffee, lemon pie. My history. Our history. Our family the way I wished it still was. All was dim and silent, the only sound the hum of the refrigerated pie case and the ticking of the wall clock. On impulse I got up and crossed the room, soda in hand. There was a quarter lying on the lip of the jukebox, and I slipped it into the slot, punching a number I knew by heart. F4. “I Will Always Love You.” The song that always reminded me of Rory, of the first day I’d laid eyes on him, of the star-crossed arc of our young love. The jukebox clicked and whirred to life, and a moment later Dolly Parton’s signature warble filled the empty dining room, singing about lost love and endings. I stood in the center of the room and closed my eyes.
Hey, Marty, two of the pork roast specials with a side of roasted potatoes for table six. It was the echo of my mother’s voice. I could see her bustling through the swinging kitchen door with a push of one wide hip, dessert plates of lemon meringue pie marching up her arm, the warmth of the kitchen wafting behind her, redolent of crispy roasted potatoes and the sharp, sweet tang of red cabbage sauerkraut. I’d do my homework at the back table while the dining room filled with customers for dinner. Later, in high school, Rory was often waiting at the back door for me when our shifts ended. We’d take off our aprons and head down to the beach together. I remembered the giddy feeling of untying those strings and slipping out the back door into the wide, waiting world. My mother frowning at us and flicking a dish towel atRory, admonishing us to be good. My dad humming along to the Eagles as he flipped cod cakes on the grill. Everything was light and laughter and warmth.
“Lolly, Lolly, look at me. I can do the splits!” A six-year-old Daphne in a bright leotard and pigtails entertaining the patrons by doing her entire gymnastics routine in the aisle between the booths and tables. Later, after my mom’s death, she’d been the one doing her homework at the back table while I tried desperately to fill Mom’s shoes.
I swallowed hard, thinking of all the hours I’d spent in this room. The diner had nurtured me, coddled and challenged me. It had been my home since before I was born. I trailed my fingers over the slightly sticky Formica of the counter, over the cold chrome of the pie case. Dolly trilling softly in the background. Outside, in the pale afternoon light, the rain whispered down. The jukebox clicked off. All was silent. I let out a long, slow breath. It was time.
Time to pull myself up and stop living in the past. I couldn’t change what had happened. Wishing and waiting would not bring any of it back. There had been a chance with that little lemon candy, but that chance was gone. All the chances were gone. The only option I had now was to move forward, look ahead.Be honest. Pay attention. Seek joy.
How could I do that now? I had paid attention. I had been honest. And I had tried to seek joy. And all it had gotten me were crushed hopes and a broken heart all over again. And yet... and yet... I couldn’t fool myself; I couldn’t unsee what I’d already seen and knew to be true. I had no idea if I could ever find joy again, but I couldn’t go backward to that quiet misery again. All I could do was follow any tiny glimmer of light and keep moving forward, come what may.
I blew out a deep breath and took a long pull of my cherry soda. It tasted like my first crush on Rory, the day I got my period, the day I held my red-faced, squirming baby sister for the first time—mychildhood and adolescence, so many memories in that bottle. I glanced at the clock. It was growing late. Grabbing my soda bottle and Daphne’s barely touched one by their long glass necks, I started for the kitchen.
“It’s over.” I said to the empty space, feeling a lightness and a sorrow both. Tomorrow I would break the news to Dad. It was time to move on.
40
“Bertha, I’m home.”I unlocked the front door and carried my Safeway grocery bags into the front hall. Rifling through them, I pulled out the box of dog treats and the pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. Bertha waddled into the hall, saw the pint of ice cream in my hand, and came over to me, tail wagging, completely ignoring the box of dog treats in my other hand. She followed me into the kitchen. No one was home. Aunt Gert’s cottage was dark, and Daphne was out somewhere with Damien.
Grabbing a spoon, I collapsed on the couch, still wearing my rain boots. Bertha nudged my hand with her cold nose and gazed at me dolefully, waiting patiently in the hopes that I would cave. I opened the box and tossed her a dog treat, which she ignored.
“They’re bacon flavor,” I told her. She wagged her tail and kept her gaze trained on the ice cream. “Not going to happen,” I warned her. “This is all mine.”
I pulled off my rubber boots, scratched her head for a moment, and then cracked open the pint of ice cream. I had a laundry list of things to do but needed to take a pause. Time for an ice cream break.
It had been one week since my momentous decision to close the Eatery. I’d gone to the hospital the following morning to talk things through with Dad. He cried when I told him how I felt, but in the end he agreed with me. It was time to let it go.
The following two weeks had been a whirlwind of activity. I’d found a local real estate agent who’d met me at the diner and given me the good news. Even though the building was old and in need of repairs, the real estate market in Seattle was hot, and she quoted an asking price that made me almost cry with relief. If we got even close to that amount, it would be enough to set Dad up nicely with a modest retirement and even cover the cost of a caregiver during his recovery.
Since that point, I’d spent every waking minute getting ready to put the diner on the market. Aunt Gert had been helping me and had proved surprisingly handy with a paintbrush. She insisted on working in a high-necked white painter’s smock that looked like a nightgown a Puritan might have worn. This amused Daphne to no end, and she’d taken to dropping by the diner at odd hours just for the joy of watching Aunt Gert paint in her smock. Every time I found her loitering, I put her to work. We had a lot to do.
For her part, Daphne was still planning to go to Costa Rica, but had been good about helping as much as she could before and after school. She had assisted me in getting Dad settled in the rehab facility after he’d been discharged from the hospital. He was, as expected, not a good patient. He was stubborn to a fault. The staff had found him collapsed halfway up a flight of service stairs a few days before. He’d been determined to prove he could go up all three flights, but his leg had buckled halfway up the first set of steps. Two aides had gotten him back to his room. He was uninjured, but they told me he cursed all the way down the hall, a barely intelligible string of very colorful navy swears. However, all that stubbornness was paying off. He was making good enough progress that he was being sent home in a few days. Whichwas both gratifying and terrifying because I had no idea how to care for a stroke victim.
I glanced at the handful of pamphlets splayed out on the coffee table with titles like “Life After a Stroke” and “Living with Limits” and dug a maraschino cherry out of the ice cream.
“Bertha, where do we even start?”
She wagged her tail and looked hopeful. I sighed and dropped a small dollop of ice cream, sans cherries or dark chocolate flakes, on the carpet near Bertha’s feet. Although I was thrilled that Dad was well enough to come home, I didn’t feel prepared to care for him after his return. Damien was coming over later to install a rail in the shower, and we were making a bedroom in the den for Dad until he could navigate the stairs on his own. I needed to buy a walker too, and make sure all the rugs had anti-skid pads beneath them. But the most pressing item was to find a caregiver for him, someone who could help him at least part-time while I was handling prepping and selling the diner.
“Okay, we need to find an awesome caregiver, Bertha. Got any good recommendations?”
Bertha huffed and licked her jowls. I tossed a bacon-flavored dog treat onto her paws. Which she ignored.
