AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The Waffle Shoppe did not disappoint. It had all of the charm and atmosphere you’d expect for a place that sold all-you-can-eat pancakes for $3.95. The Formica table was peeling, and three-quarters of the menu pages were stuck together with some mercifully unidentifiable mystery substance. But the coffee was hot, and the patrons were quiet. If I’d had my camera, I would have taken quiet, quick face shots, character studies. People were way more interesting to shoot while they were concentrating on their food, but you had to be careful, because in some establishments, the management took that personally … or they suspected that you were a narc.
I struck up a friendly conversation with Nina, my waitress, which, according to the truck-stop code, meant that my food wouldn’t be spit in intentionally before it arrived at my table. I consider that a quality dining experience.
After a delicious breakfast/dinner of apple cinnamon French toast and hash browns, I wandered into the motel parking lot, carbo-loaded and ready for bed. I had a long day of appeasing the ninety-year-old woman trapped in a vampire’s body ahead of me, and that would require sleep.
Shuffling across the lot, I plucked nervously at the engagement ring I wore around my neck. I hadn’t wanted to hold on to the ring at first. The moment I’d found out about Jason and Lisa, I’d taken it off and hurled it across the room, vowing never to touch it again. And I wouldn’t have, if the damn thing hadn’t gotten caught in my vacuum cleaner and destroyed it … the vacuum cleaner, I mean. The ring was fine. Damn it.
I’d seriously considered putting it through a wood chipper and sending him the fragments. But considering that it had survived the innards of my vacuum cleaner unscathed, I foresaw that plan ending in some sort of tragic, accidental Fargo scenario.
Jason Cordner was my first serious boyfriend. I’d dated casually before, but the boys I chose were either as dull as a box of mud or closet sociopaths. I’d moved back home, licking my wounds from the inevitable collapse of my studio, and my parents thought I needed “good influences.” I was on the verge of making up a boyfriend to get my mom off my back when I met Jason at the annual Puckett Labor Day picnic.
Jason was a junior partner in a law firm my parents occasionally consulted with. I dropped buffalo wings down the back of his polo shirt. He claimed it was love at first sight. I think he might have gotten barbecue sauce in his eye.
I liked Jason. He didn’t light my world on fire at first, but he seemed like a genuinely nice guy, a kind person. He made me laugh. He let me in on intimate little details that none of my previous boyfriends had shared, such as home address and marital status. And he made me feel centered, special, as if I was a fascinating work in progress, instead of an enormous fuck-up. We did all of the normal, boring things that normal, boring couples did. Pizza, Half-Moon Hollow High football games, arguing whether to watch a Sandra Bullock movie or Vin Diesel. He introduced me to his best friend, Lisa, who’d lived next door since they were kids.
The year we were together was the calmest of my life. Jason thought it was “cute” that I loved photography and suggested that I work at the Sears photo studio part-time if the artistic urge struck. My parents saw our relationship as some sort of sign that I was growing up. They stopped questioning me like a naughty teenager every time I left the house. They stopped telling quite so many embarrassing stories about me at family dinners. I think they were afraid that they were going to scare Jason off. They could not have been happier when Jason proposed, Daddy because it meant that I was someone else’s problem now and Mom because it meant that I wouldn’t move away from Half-Moon Hollow and she’d be able to keep an eye on me.>“Sweetheart!” she cried. “Why haven’t you called?”
“Because you’ve been calling enough for the both of us?” I suggested dryly.
“Well, I just wanted to know that you’d arrived safely.” She was using the unreasonable client-quelling voice that she used as one Puckett in the firm of Puckett and Puckett, Attorneys at Law. This was not a good sign.
Mom, my father, and my brother, Glenn, practiced in the long-held family firm, their shiny law degrees from the University of Kentucky displayed together in a three-part frame. There was supposed to be a fourth frame, but I hadn’t finished the requirements for a bachelor’s degree, much less law school.
I rubbed at my left eye, which tended to twitch when Mom used “the voice” on me. “Which was why I texted you as soon as I arrived in Tacoma.”
“Yes,” she protested. “But I want to know how it’s going!”
Now, most people would consider that the sweet, interested curiosity of an involved parent. But my mother had ulterior motives. Mom didn’t want me to tell her how well I was doing or what Mr. Sutherland was like. She wanted to know if I was tanking ahead of schedule, forcing me to “come to my senses” and drive my butt back to Half-Moon Hollow, where I was safe and contained.
As much as her assumptions of disaster hurt, I supposed she had good reason. At the tender age of twenty-six, I’d launched failed careers as, among many other things, a photographer, a pastry chef, a magician’s assistant, and a florist. Mom and I suffered from an opposition of life philosophies. I tried to think of life as the search for the next great adventure. I liked waking up each morning not knowing what I would be doing by the end of the day. I liked learning new things, throwing myself into new situations, even if it meant a few bumps and scrapes along the way. But ultimately, I was a guidance counselor’s cautionary tale. Mom blamed the public-school system and insisted that the family should have sent me to St. Bridget’s Academy across town, even if it meant having to convert.
We were about as old money as a family could get in Half-Moon Hollow. Pucketts were pillars of the community. We served on committees and councils. We funded buildings and restored memorial statues. We sponsored youth sports teams and hosted Labor Day picnics for state senators.
Well, that’s what my family did. I served the community in more of a “judge ordered me to” sort of way. Until the previous year, I’d been the family embarrassment, the college dropout, the kid who never quite made it into the Christmas newsletter. My shameful status was temporarily revoked when—
“Have you called Jason?” Mom asked.
—when I agreed to marry Jason.
I let out a long, slow breath. “No. The point of me taking this trip is that I have space and don’t have to talk to Jason, so I can figure out what I want.”
Mom sniffed. “Well, he’s worried. I know you’re upset with him, but he’s worried about you. He asked me to pass that along.”
“Hmph.”
“I really think you should just come on home. I know you’re hurt, honey, and I’m not saying you don’t have good reason. But you can’t run away from your problems. I’m so worried about you, out there on your own. And how are you supposed to do … whatever it is that you’re going to do concerning Jason unless you talk it out?”
I tugged at Jason’s tasteful diamond engagement ring, hanging from a sturdy chain around my neck. “We did talk it out, Mom. We have spent hours talking around and around this Lisa thing. We spent a whole weekend getaway at the lake talking about it. I canceled the wedding. I keep giving his ring back, but he finds some way to slip it to me again. We’re never going to break out of this weird, pointless cycle unless I have time to figure out what I want, without him hovering over me with apology flowers, apology candy, apology jelly.”
“Apology jelly?”
“Yeah, I didn’t get that one, either,” I muttered.
“Well, I don’t think this temp job”—Mom said the words with as much contempt as good manners and the Botox injections that kept her from expressing the full range of human emotions permitted—“is the answer to your problems. And besides, we miss you around the office. It’s just not the same without you.”
“I’ll bet.” I chuckled, genuinely laughing for the first time all day.
Despite the fact that I lacked only two credits for my certification, I was a terrible paralegal. Filing systems made my head hurt. I could not handle rude clients in the delicate, pacifying manner prescribed by firm policy. And every time I used the Xerox machine, I posed a danger to myself and others.
