A Daughter's Homecoming

The dog whimpered again.

“Hang on, buddy.” Gabi swallowed hard as she redirected her attention to the matter at hand. She aimed the flashlight toward the dog. “This might be uncomfortable for a minute, but I can’t help it. Let’s see what we can do for you.”

With the help of the light, Gabi and Zach soon realized the container leaned at a slender angle away from the wall, wider toward the top than down where the dog was stuck. Gabi handed Zach the light while she eased the little guy to freedom.

“There!” She sat back on her heels and nuzzled the dog. “You poor thing.” The pleasant scent of cleanliness met her nose. “Oh! You washed him.”

At her side, Zach chuckled. “He needed it. He was a mess.”

“And then he got himself into a different kind of mess out here.” She flashed him a smile. “Thanks.”

He shrugged and smiled back. “I thought your help would improve our chances of catching him, so thank you.” He tipped his head to the side. “Are you sure you really want to surrender him?”

“He has to go back to the shelter with you.” She blinked hard against the sudden tears stinging her eyes.

With nothing more to say, they sat in awkward silence, the stray who’d brought them together on Gabi’s lap. Seconds ticked by.

Her awareness grew.

Again.

She met Zach’s gaze. Couldn’t look away.

What was this...this crackle between them all about? Why him? And why now? Here in Lyndon Point?

Chapter Four

Gabi wearily pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes. She’d spent the past three hours sorting through three shoe boxes full of receipts. Funny how it had taken an hour per box.

Funny? Yeah, right. There was absolutely nothing amusing about this whole situation.

She’d never expected to find the business records of Tony’s in such a shambles. Worse still, after sorting and separating, adding and even more subtracting, she now had tangible proof that the restaurant’s financial outlook wasn’t particularly stellar. Costs had gone way up with the price of ingredients sky-high in the tough economy, and people weren’t eating out as much as they had even as recently as a few years earlier. Something had to be done to improve the fiscal picture or her parents would be in serious trouble.

And she was the woman to do it. The trick would be for her to find a way to convey that truth to Mama and then not let Papa find out where things really stood. It wasn’t the best time to alarm him, to say the least.

Gabi squared her shoulders. “Mama! Can you come to the kitchen for a minute? I’ve a couple of questions for you.”

Questions, and a whole lot more.

“Sono qui,” her mother answered. Lively steps rang out on the stairs, and a moment later she walked into the cheery kitchen. “I’m here,” she repeated, then went straight to the counter, where the coffeemaker always held at least half a pot full of rich, dark brew, to pour herself a steaming hot cup. “What you want to know?”

“Have you looked at—” she waved at the receipts “—all this?”

Mama took a long drink of her coffee, set the cup down carefully on the matching saucer, then sighed, never once letting her near-black eyes meet Gabi’s gaze. “No. You know your Papa always does this. He and your cugino Ryder take care of accounts.” As though for emphasis, she shook her head, making her short, graying curls bounce.

Gabi fought back a snicker. Calling Lyndon Point’s mayor, Ryder Lyndon, her cousin was stretching family ties a tad far. While the two of them had grown up as the closest of friends, Ryder was actually the son of Mama’s second cousin who-knows-how-many-times-removed. He didn’t even refer to her parents as aunt or uncle. But then, her family was all about...well, family. Sometimes—often—too much.

“This time,” she said, serious, “you don’t get a choice. Papa can’t take care of the business end of things any more than he can run the kitchen. You and I are the ones who have to take up the slack.”

Mama’s gaze flew to the window over the sink, and Gabi didn’t miss the shuddery breath she inhaled. “But he’s better now. Soon, he can—”

“No, he can’t. Not yet, not for a while, and you know it.”

She hated to push, aware how much it would upset her mother, but she had no choice. As long as she was in Lyndon Point she could take on the management, including the bookkeeping and accounting, of the pizzeria. But before she left, and she would as soon as she could, she had to have someone in charge. Mama had run the dining room like a smoothly oiled machine for years, and at all of fifty-two, she was nowhere near too old to handle the expanded responsibilities—no matter how she tried to avoid work she didn’t feel suited her talents. After all, these weren’t normal times.

Although Gabi didn’t doubt her mother’s capability for even one moment, her mother had taken advantage of Papa’s insistence on pampering her over the years. But this couldn’t be circumvented. He needed them to step up.

“You do want to help Papa, don’t you?”

Mama sighed. “Yes, but—”

“Good,” Gabi cut in. “So here’s the deal. I have a good idea what we need to do to turn this around. For one, we have to be careful with costs—”

“Bah! Everything too expensive all the time now. How they want people to live, every time a dollar more here, ten more there?”

Oops! That hadn’t been where she’d intended the conversation to go. “Um, yes, and that’s why we have to be smarter than the economy. It means we need to make a few...ah...adjustments. I have some ideas that should help.”

Mama turned back to her, eyes narrowed. “Ideas?”

“Yes, ideas. We can adjust things a little and jump on current trends. I think we could tweak Tony’s a little and turn it into the perfect Italian bistro. Bistros are everywhere, and doing very well. If we did that, we would bring in customers from Seattle, and we wouldn’t have to count only on Lyndon Point residents. They can only eat a steady amount of pizza.”

“Bistro? Seattle?”

From her mother’s tone of voice, one would think Seattleites were nigh unto Venutians or something. This wasn’t the way Gabi had hoped her suggestion would be received. Before she could press her point, though, her mother scoffed.

“Bah! Tony’s is pizzeria, not bistro. It does fine.”

Gabi turned her notebook toward Mama. “Not so fine these days. Take a look at the numbers. We’re barely making a profit after you pay all the bills. Papa’s medical costs are high, and they could wipe you out if we don’t change something.”

Her mother gave the pages nothing more than a brief glance and a dismissive wave. “But—”

“You know what I’m talking about, Mama,” she said. “Remember that TV show you like so much? The one where the restaurant expert walks into a place that’s about to go under, changes everything that’s wrong, and then opens it up again, only better? That’s what we need to do with Tony’s.”

A momentary hesitation told her Mama at least was thinking about it. Then she said, “Tony’s not failing, Gabriella. We no need the Brit. È troppo—too much, that is. We do make money like we are.”

“Nowhere near enough to keep you and Papa going.” She tapped the open notebook with her index finger. “Here. You have to take the time and look at this. Carefully.”

As her mother read the figures, the color in her face vanished. She shook her head slowly as she continued to stare. Then she snapped the notebook shut and met Gabi’s gaze, her jaw firm, her shoulders stiff.

“Fine. Change what you want, but not Tony’s. It’s a pizzeria. Always was.”

Before Gabi could come to grips with that kind of logic—or lack thereof—Mama stood and marched away, mumbling something about it being time for Papa’s medicine.

Frustrated, she collapsed back into the kitchen chair. Now what?

Reality hadn’t changed, even though her mother had said she could change whatever she wanted. But what could she really do, since in her next breath, Mama had put the brakes on any meaningful change?

Where did she go from here? “Lord...? Is Mama in denial or just stubborn? I think I know what I have to do, but help me out, please. Show me how to reach her, how to win her over to my way of seeing things. Or they could face financial disaster in no time at all.”