"I will."
I walked out of the hospital room and down the hall and didn't let myself cry until I was in the elevator with the doors closed. I gave myself the length of the ride to the ground floor, then wiped my face and pulled my keys out and walked to the car.
I called Danny before I pulled out of the parking lot and as soon as he answered he blurted out, "How's Dad?"
"There’s no change…" I hated being the bad news bear, but my brothers had heard the same warnings from doctors as I had. They knew there wasn't much hope. "How's Kip?"
"He's good. Tiffany's got him in the backyard chasing the neighbor's cat. He's having the time of his life."
"Is he asking for me?" I switched to speaker mode and mounted my phone on the dashboard.
"He asked once about an hour ago and Tiffany distracted him with a popsicle. He's fine, Sara. Don't worry."
"Keep him inside the house as much as you can. I don't want him running around the front yard where people can see him." It was risky enough with me being back in town. Tony had to understand that I'd be coming home for my dad. Whether he snooped around the place or not I wouldn't know until it happened. But the worst would be Garret rocking up and seeing my boy. There would be too many questions to answer and with everything going on with Dad I couldn't deal with that.
"I know. You've told me four times."
"I'm telling you a fifth. Please, Danny."
"He's safe. I promise. Go do what you need to do and we'll hold down the fort here."
I hung up and pulled onto the highway toward town. The drive was twenty minutes and I spent most of it worrying about Tony finding out I was back. Ma's Griddle was right across the street from the Black Anvil, and surely he'd heard that Dad had a stroke by now. Amber always ran her mouth.
Whether Tony raised a stink about it or not would yet to be determined.
Then there was Garret. I'd heard about his accident from Mom a few months after it happened, but she didn't know any details beyond what the town gossip had provided, and I hadn't asked for more because asking about Garret would've raised questions I wasn't prepared to answer. But knowing he'd been hurt and not being able to call or visit or do anything about it had eaten alive.
I was too huge at that point—belly swollen with his baby that I now had to hide from everyone because at this point, it'd become a secret so large it'd swallow me whole if he found out. I couldn't imagine how angry he'd be. It was better if I kept Kip to myself. This thing with Dad would blow over one way or another, which I'd have to process emotionally, and I didn't want to have to deal with Garret—or Tony—on top of that.
The diner was dark when I pulled into the lot behind it. I unlocked the back door and stepped inside and hit the lights, and the kitchen flickered to life one fluorescent tube at a time. Everything was clean but cold. Amber had shut it down in a hurry when Mom made the call about Dad, and there were a few things left mid-task on the prep counter, a cutting board with dried parsley on it and a ticket pad flipped open next to the register, the kind of small signs that pointed to a normal day interrupted by something terrible.
I checked the walk-in and the produce delivery had come. Boxes of tomatoes and lettuce and onions stacked on the shelves, along with the dairy order and a case of eggs. I pulled what I needed for the morning and set it on the prep counter, then went out front and flipped the sign to open and unlocked the front door.
The back door opened at six-thirty and the cook came in with his jacket still on and a thermos in his hand. He'd been working for Mom since before I was born, and he didn't need instructions from me or anyone else. He hung his jacket on the hook by thewalk-in, rolled his sleeves to his elbows, and fired up the grill without so much as a good morning.
"Glad you're here," I said, and it made his head pop up.
He looked over his shoulder and gave me a nod. "Glad you're here too. How's your daddy doing?"
"Holding on."
"That's what Ducettes do," he said, turning back to the grill to scrape it down with the flat edge of his spatula. "I'll have the first round of bacon ready in ten. You need anything from me, just holler."
The two waitresses came through the front door a few minutes later, tying their aprons as they walked. The younger one stopped when she saw me behind the counter.
"Sara, oh my gosh, we've been so worried about your family. Is there anything we can do?"
"Just keep this place running the way Mom would want it. That's the best thing any of us can do right now." I didn't know what else to tell her. It wasn't like anyone had a magic wand to wave and fix Dad's busted body. All we could do was hope and pray, and wait.
"We will. I promise." She squeezed my arm as she passed and headed for the dining room, where she started pulling chairs off the tabletops and setting them down one by one. The other waitress was already at the coffee station, filling the machine and stacking cups on the counter.
I watched them work for a minute as the diner came to life the way it had every morning for as long as I could remember, and then I went back to the office and sat down at Mom'sdesk. The surface was buried under days’ worth of paperwork. I started sorting through the pile, pulling out what looked urgent and stacking the rest to the side, and tried to get a sense of if anything had gotten behind but it felt overwhelming.
I heard the dining room filling up too, customers coming in for breakfast that had been sorely missed in this town without any other restaurants for the past three days. I peeked out to see four men in leather cuts were settling into the corner booth. I recognized Butch and Rusty immediately, both of them a little older and rougher than I remembered. A third man I didn't know had his back to me, seated across from them. And the fourth was Garret.
My breath caught and I pulled back from the doorway before anyone could see me. I pressed my back against the wall and closed my eyes and felt my heart hammering against my ribs. I figured I'd end up running into him, but I didn't assume it would be the first morning this place opened back up. He probably got curious and came to see me and find out what had happened straight from the horse's mouth. I just didn't know if I was ready for that conversation with him.
I inched back to the doorway and looked again. He was facing my direction but his eyes were on the menu, and I could see him clearly now. He'd aged a little, silver now threaded through the dark hair at his temples and along the edges of his beard, and the lines around his eyes were deeper than they'd been four years ago. His shoulders were still broad and his arms were still thick with muscle, but he seemed tired, maybe a little withdrawn. And when he shifted in the booth I caught the way he favored his left side, a subtle hitch in his movement that told me the leg still bothered him.
