Once I’d had time to recover from the shock of Kade’s “parting gift,” I saw the logic in what Blane had said. If it was just me, I wouldn’t have touched a dime of that money. But it wasn’t just me. I had our baby to consider. I had to buy things—things a baby needed—and eventually there’d be braces to pay for, and college, maybe a wedding if the baby was a girl. It would be foolish of me not to use the money, so I set aside my pride and did what I needed to do.
I’d returned to my old job at O’Sullivan’s, an Irish pub where I’d worked when my mom had been sick. The owner, Charlie, was a wizened older man of indeterminate age who had owned the place for as long as I could remember. He’d been glad to see me. I think. It was kind of hard to tell with Charlie, but he’d sort of smiled and then asked when I could start. I’d put on an apron the next day.
The sounds of the pub were familiar and comforting to me as I worked—the televisions broadcasting the baseball game, the clink of dishes and the sizzle of the grill from the back, the low rumble of conversation from the dozen or so patrons in the middle of the afternoon.
I’d been lucky when I’d shown up in town. One of the first people I’d run into when I stopped in the little café on the town square for lunch had been Jan, an old friend from high school.
“Oh my God, is that you, Kathleen?” she’d exclaimed, wrapping me in a hug. A cloud of perfume descended. “Are you back or just visiting?”
When I’d confirmed I was, indeed, back in town, she’d wasted no time in telling me everything going on with her, ordering a cup of coffee, and sitting with me while I ate my chicken salad sandwich and chips.
“So I’m a Realtor now,” she said, after a monologue about how she’d married Brian, a guy I vaguely remembered from high school who now sold insurance. She waved a manicured hand as if it was nothing, but I could tell she was real proud of her new job. “I can help you find a place to stay, if you’re looking to stick around.” Her shiny platinum blonde hair bounced around her shoulders as she spoke.
“I am,” I said, and her eyes had lit up like fireflies.
“Wonderful! I know just the place for you! The owner is a widow who’s moved to Florida in one of those, you know, retirement communities. Anyway, she’s looking to sell her house. It’s out by the old Miller place, remember?”
And I did. Jan had taken me to see it right then and I knew instantly that it was perfect. About three or four miles out of the town proper, it was in the country and the last place on a long gravel road. The nearest neighbors, the Millers, weren’t within shouting distance but were within walking distance.
An older home that had been built in the forties, it was a two-story white house with a deep porch that spanned the front, complete with a swing. In the back, another porch was screened in and overlooked a vast yard dotted with big oak trees. Roses climbed a trellis, their blooms perfuming the air, and it seemed they’d been allowed to grow a bit wild and hadn’t been trimmed back in a while.
The downstairs had a living room, kitchen, bath, and bedroom. Upstairs were another two bedrooms and a bath. The place was even furnished, and though the pieces were older, they looked like they’d been well cared for.
I bought it immediately and closed within ten days. It was amazing how fast things could be done when you paid with cash, and thanks to Jan, I’d been allowed to start staying in the house right away, so I hadn’t even had to spend one night at the old Covered Bridge Motel on the outskirts of town. Jan was so pleased and excited with the sale, I thought her perfectly applied cosmetics might crack with the huge smile she sported whenever I saw her in town.
I hadn’t yet gone back to Indy for the rest of my things, and thought I might just get a company to move the stuff into storage for me. Kade had bought all the furniture when he’d had my apartment redone after the fire, and I wasn’t sure I needed the reminder. My personal things I’d brought with me, so the only real reason for me to return was to visit Alisha.
I needed to call her, I decided as I cleared the empty glasses on the bar left by two customers. I hadn’t talked to her in a couple of weeks, not since I’d told her about the house and reassured her that I was doing okay.
And I was. Mostly.
Rushville was a small town and everyone had known me and my family. People I’d grown up around greeted me with open arms, genuinely glad to see me back. Old Mrs. Johnson had even stopped by my place to bring me a casserole she’d made and welcome me home.
No one asked why I was back or inquired too deeply as to what I’d been up to while I was gone. My family was part of the town’s tragedy—my dad’s death hitting the community hard when it had happened nearly ten years ago now, then everyone had known about my mom’s battle with the cancer that had eventually taken her life. No one had batted an eye when I’d moved away. I think most people understood that I’d needed time and space, but they also knew that there was no place like home, so it hadn’t seemed a bit strange when I’d turned up out of the blue.
“Think we’ll be busy tonight?”
I glanced up at Michelle, the waitress. I’d gone to high school with her, too, but she’d been a couple of years older than me and we hadn’t known each other real well. We’d chatted a bit since I’d returned, since we were often on the same shifts, and I liked her.
Her parents were farmers and Michelle had been a bit of a wild child, the youngest of four. Pregnant at seventeen, she’d married the baby’s daddy, but that hadn’t worked out. He’d up and left them when baby number two was on the way, and she’d been on her own ever since.
Michelle worked hard and had a little place of her own. Her mom often helped out, watching John, who was now ten, and little Maddie, just turned four.
“I hope so,” I said, knowing that slow business meant fewer tips. “There’s a doubleheader Little League game tonight, someone said, so we’ll probably get people once that’s over.”
Rushville was small enough that the ebb and flow of town life affected most everyone. If there was a game, chances were you knew somebody who’d be there. Either because their kid was playing, or they were going to support a friend whose kid was playing.
“Is Carol coming in later, do you know?” Michelle asked, sliding onto a barstool.
“Yeah, I think she’s on at six?” I answered, trying to recall the schedule in my head. “Then it’s just the three of us on the floor until close.” Of course, closing time in Rushville was way earlier than in Indy. Here, if no one was in the bar at eleven thirty or even eleven, we closed. Technically, we closed at midnight, but usually the pub stayed open that late only on the weekends.
Carol was a bit over thirty and new to town, having moved here only six months ago. She was single, didn’t have any kids, and I wasn’t sure what had brought her to Rushville but hadn’t pried. She kept to herself and seemed nice enough.
Michelle and I chatted while it was slow, then things started picking up for the dinner rush. There were two other restaurants in town, but one was the café that only served breakfast and lunch. The other was a chain all-you-can-eat buffet place where a lot of families with kids ate. The result was that though O’Sullivan’s was a pub, people came to eat as well as drink there.
The main cook was a guy named Danny, who had an overabundance of personality and was impossible not to like. He was black and about six feet tall, but skinny as a post. Danny fancied himself an undiscovered singer of some talent, so he was often belting out tunes while he worked the grill. In his early twenties, he said he was saving money to head to California, and that he’d made it to the final rounds of callbacks for one of those talent shows on TV that held auditions all around the country.