Yours, Mine...or Ours?

“Three?” Darla, the other waitress, finally got out, gawking at the taller man as though she wouldn’t mind clutching him to her flat little bosom like one of the front-door-size laminated menus in her arms.

“Yeah, three,” he said, and Violet more felt than heard his voice, deep, not from around here, felt it seep into her skin, through her pores…

No more romance novels for you, she thought, shrugging off two years’ worth of unused hormones, about the same time she realized Darla had seated the trio in Violet’s station because hers was all filled.

Great. Just great, she thought as Darla passed around the menus, her long face sagging with disappointment.

But a gal’s gotta do what a gal’s gotta do. So, jerking her pencil out of her hair, Violet marched over to take their orders.

“Smile,” Darla hissed at her as she passed, and Violet reminded herself that her sore feet and bitching back were not these peoples’ fault. And that the grumpy approach was probably not the best way to get a tip.

Both men were slouched heavily against the padded booth backs, the girl’s face folded into the standard issue adolescent glower. Without even knowing the particulars, Violet felt a tremor of sympathy for her. Orders taken, she called them out to Maude—burgers and fries, the special, spaghetti for the girl—then asked, “So what brings you to Mulligan Falls?”

Those sharp blue eyes swung to hers, and assorted body parts quivered, remembering. Then he said, “I just bought the old Hicks Inn, up on the hill.”

And presto-chango, Mitch fell to second place on Violet’s Men Who Screwed Me Over list.

“Your food’ll be here in a sec,” the redheaded waitress said, her voice like needles as she snatched up the menus, and Rudy thought, Huh? But the needles had pricked him awake, at least enough to notice her as something other than the means by which food would eventually reach his stomach. Enough to catch the sparks of anger, of hurt, in her big, silvery-green eyes, before she wheeled around and tromped off, the diner’s overhead lights tangling in a thousand tiny ringlets the same color orange as in the wallpaper in his “new” kitchen.

Then the haze of exhaustion cleared enough for him to notice the body underneath the curls, short and curvy and compact in the pale green uniform, like one of those VW Bugs, he thought, stronger and far more crash-resistant than one might think.

“What was that all about?” Kevin asked, and Rudy shook his head, half-annoyed, half-relieved that he hadn’t imagined it.

“No idea,” he said. But after a flurry of murmurings and gasps, Rudy noticed several heads had turned in their direction.

“Dad?” Stacey whispered. “Why’s everybody looking at us?”

“Beats me, honey.”

Kevin leaned forward. “Why do I feel like we just landed in the middle of a Stephen King novel?”

Stacey sidled closer as Rudy kicked Kevin under the table.

Until three minutes ago, Rudy hadn’t had too much trouble keeping his good mood aloft. Much to their surprise—and Rudy’s profound relief—three of the upstairs bedrooms were in fairly good shape, as were the bathrooms. Yeah, the downstairs needed a lot of work, but no huge surprises. So he’d decided—especially after four hours of nonstop cleaning and inspection and plugging up unplanned critter doors—that nobody, including him, was up to canned Dinty Moore stew warmed up over a camp stove. And besides, promising Stacey any dessert she wanted might earn him enough points to see them through at least the next twenty-four hours.

So, with the U-Haul trailer unhitched, they’d piled into his edging-toward-classic-status Bronco and headed to town, “town” being Main Street, basically, five blocks long and anchored by an old-fashioned square, across from which sat Maude’s. Applebee’s, it wasn’t, but—as he explained to his sneering daughter—the sooner they started mixing with the locals, the sooner they’d stop feeling like outsiders.

“Never happen,” she’d muttered as they’d walked in. Although he already knew she had her eye on a piece of chocolate cream pie in the old-fashioned display tower on the counter.

He hadn’t counted, however, on being regarded like their ship had just cut swathes in the crop fields. Unnerving, to say the least. And frankly annoying. For God’s sake, the minute he or Kev opened their mouths it was pretty clear the Vaccaros hailed from the same good, solid working-class stock as the majority of Mulligan Falls’s residents. So what the hell?

Their waitress returned with their drinks, which she clunked in front of them, her mouth pressed tight, and Rudy saw the pinch of frustration and exhaustion in those squeezed lips. Although what that had to do with him, he had no idea. His cop senses sprang to attention, that this was someone about to blow, and he thought, I could fix, you, too.

What the freaking hell?

“Oh, and, miss?” he said, gently, “my daughter would love a piece of that chocolate pie, if you could add it to our order?”

“Sure thing,” she said, not meeting his eyes but smiling just enough at Stacey for Rudy to see through at least some of those suffocating layers of resentment.

Then one of the old biddies at the booth across the way called her over, in that imperious way people have when they think you exist solely for their comfort, complaining about her food being cold or something, and at the back of the restaurant a little boy yelled, “Mom! What’s twelve take away seven?” as the woman behind the serving counter dinged an obnoxiously loud bell and hollered, “Violet! Order up!”

He saw her—Violet—stop for a second, her back expanding with the force of her breath, before yelling, “Use your fingers!” to the boy (there were two of them, Rudy now saw, practically buried by books and things in the booth), grabbing the old lady’s plate and carrying it back to the kitchen, where she exchanged it for the three plates waiting for her.

The plates precariously balanced, she spun around again at the precise moment the youngest boy darted out of the booth and into her path. On a yelp, the waitress—Violet—stumbled, the plates leaping, flying, crashing magnificently onto the tile floor as, catching her son in her arms, she went down, too.

Rudy and Kevin were instantly out of their seats, Kevin snatching the child out of the pile of shattered plates and splattered spaghetti and scattered fries and roast beef and gravy as Rudy grabbed for the crumpled waitress.

“Leave me alone!” she cried, close to meltdown, slapping at his hands as she struggled to her knees and grabbed her chick. “Zeke! You okay? Does anything hurt?” Heedless of the spaghetti sauce and gravy clinging to her breasts, dribbled down her skirt, she frantically checked for blood and bruises. A noodle dangled from her hair; she yanked it out and tossed it on the floor, then clamped one tiny shoulder with a short-nailed hand, holding the other one three inches from the kid’s nose. “How many fingers?”

“Th-three,” the kid said, small-voiced, trembling. “I’m sorry, Mama, I had to pee! I didn’t see you!”

“It’s okay, baby, it’s okay.” The boy momentarily vanished into her bosom to have a dozen kisses rained upon a crop of short blond curls. “It’s okay,” she said again. “Accidents happen, it wasn’t your fault.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Rudy saw Stacey pick her way through the carnage. “If you want, I could take your little boy to the restroom and get him cleaned up,” she said, and Rudy gawked at her.

“Thank you,” Violet said, nodding, only now seeming to notice the extent of the mess, which verged on epic proportions. As Stacey led Zeke away, Violet sat back on her haunches and moaned. A tall, shapeless, hairnetted brunette in a grease-splotched apron appeared out of nowhere, bringing with her a deathly silence. Rudy glanced over his shoulder: Every eye was trained on the scene.

“This makes what, Violet?” she said. “The third time this month?”

“I know,” she said, flushing red as she began gathering the jagged pieces of earthenware, their soft clanking like screams in the deep hush. Rudy squatted to help her; she glared at him, then shrugged. “Zeke ran out in front of me—”

“And didn’t I say you could only bring the kids here while you worked as long as they weren’t a nuisance?”

“It was an accident, Maude.” The waitress kept her eyes on the floor, tense fingers clutching two neat halves of a broken plate, weariness and embarrassment stiffening her back. Kevin appeared with a gray plastic tub, started tossing the mess into it; Rudy tried to pry the broken plate from Violet’s hands, which earned him another glare. She tossed the destroyed crockery into the bin, saying, “I’ll pay for the loss. Like always.”

“I’m sorry, Violet, I really am,” the older woman said, not sorry at all. “This isn’t working out—”

“No! Maude, please!” Tears bulged in Violet’s eyes when she looked up. “I promise it won’t happen again—”

Rudy was on his feet, staring down whoever the hell this Maude was, his steady, now-we-don’t-want-any-trouble cop’s voice barely masking his irritation. “Like she said, it was an accident. So how about cutting the lady a break?”

“You stay out of this,” Violet said, now standing as well, the eyes inches away, as were the breasts, like double-dip mounds of pistachio ice cream, or maybe mint, the image almost enough to neutralize a tone meant to shrink gonads in a hundred-yard radius. Too bad for her Rudy’s were the nonshrinkable variety. He may have turned in his badge and gun, but not those. “I don’t need some stranger fighting my battles for me!”

“Then let me introduce myself,” he said, extending his hand. “Rudy Vaccaro.”

For a second, he thought she might spit at him.

“Who?” Maude said.

“He bought Doris’s place,” Violet said, and something in her voice brought his head around. Then, to add to the bizarreness, Maude laughed. Rudy’s head swung back to Maude. Who was smirking.

“No, mister, I sincerely doubt she wants your help,” she said, as Stacey returned with the younger boy, who immediately plastered himself to his mother’s side. As Violet cupped the boy’s head, her boss said, “So what’s it gonna be? You gonna find somebody to babysit your brats or what?”

The waitress flushed again, the deep pink a weird contrast to the orange hair, then turned, wagging her hand at the older boy. “Get your stuff together. We’re leaving,” she said softly.

Kevin tugged Rudy’s sleeve and whispered, “Not your problem, bro, let’s get back to the table, okay? Rudy!”

Torn, Rudy frowned into his brother’s eyes. “Obviously, you hanging around is only making this harder for her,” Kevin said under his breath. “Come on.”