“Love you, too, buddy!” As I closed the door, I could have sworn I heard one more “Mrr,” which wasn’t surprising since cats have an innate need to have the last word.
“Well, Eddie does, anyway,” I said to myself as I started the car. One of these days I was going to have to compare notes with other people who lived with cats. Maybe Eddie wasn’t so unusual. Maybe all cats ate bread, dropped toys in their water dishes, and held complete conversations with their human companions.
I was still thinking about it when I pulled into the Red House Café’s parking lot. My aunt had spent the night at Otto’s house, and upon waking, I’d decided that a big breakfast was what I needed to fuel me for the rest of what was going to be a long day. And since I obviously wasn’t going to cook my own food, what better place to go than Sunny’s?
There were no other cars in the parking lot, but that almost made sense. It was half past eight, a little late for the early Sunday morning breakfast crowd and too early for folks who liked to sleep in.
Still, it was eerie walking into a completely empty restaurant. Really, really empty. No one was at the front counter; no one was in the dining area. “Hello?” I called. “Is anyone here? Sunny?”
The front door had been unlocked and the lights were on; it was all a little too much Mary Celeste. “Someone’s here, right?” I asked, primarily to hear a human voice. “Anyone?” Back behind the swinging kitchen door, I heard . . . something. Relieved to get a sign of life, I headed back, but when I raised my hand to knock on the door to the inner sanctum, I stopped.
The noise was someone crying. The kind of deep sobbing that racks your insides, the kind that makes you feel as if you’ll be weeping the rest of your life, the kind that comes from despair.
I pushed the door open.
Sunny was on a stool, her face in her hands, shoulders heaving. She looked up and wiped her face with her fingers. “Minnie,” she managed to say. “Sorry, I’m just—” A sob overtook her and she put her face back in her hands.
I hurried to put my arms around her. “It’ll be all right,” I said. “Whatever it is, it’ll be all right.”
She shook her head against my shoulder and talked through her sobs. “No, it won’t . . . It hasn’t been right in years, but I didn’t know . . . I can’t believe I didn’t . . . I’ve tried so hard, but there’s nothing . . . nothing I can do.”
I hugged her tight as she continued to cry. Her sobs eventually subsided and I released her, rubbing her back gently. “If you want to talk about whatever this was about,” I said, “I’m here to listen. If you don’t, that’s fine, too.”
Sunny gulped down a final sob and looked at me. “Come to the Red House Café, where you come in for breakfast and end up with a front full of tears.”
I looked my coat, which was indeed a bit damp. “It’ll dry.” Eventually.
“Sorry you had to see this.” Sunny pulled in a deep breath and let it out shakily. “Breakfast on the house.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“Of course I do.” She stood, expertly tore a single paper towel off a handy roll, and blew her nose. “Let me wash my hands and I’ll make you whatever you want.”
A few minutes later a plate heaped with chocolate chip pancakes was placed in front of me, with a jug of real Michigan maple syrup alongside. I took a bite and moaned with pleasure. “This is amazing. Better than Kristen’s, and I can’t wait to tell her so.”
“Kristen?” Sunny’s eyebrows went up. “You’re not talking about Kristen Jurek, are you?”
I chewed and swallowed, and said, “She’s my best friend. Do you know her?”
“She’s my idol,” Sunny said reverently. “I want to be her when I grow up.”
That, I would not pass on to Kristen. “Well, you make better pancakes than she does, so I’d stick with who you are.”
Sunny looked into the dining area. She’d propped the kitchen door open while she cooked for me, but it was still empty of life. “Not sure that’s a very good choice.” She pulled a stool over. “And not just because I don’t know if my restaurant will make it to summer. I owe you an explanation for my crying jag.”
“Not if you’re uncomfortable with talking about it,” I said.
“Tell you the truth, it might be a relief.” Sunny stared at the counter. “Do you have siblings? Are you close?”
“A brother.” Were we close? Matt was nine years older and he lived in Florida with his wife and three children. “Middling close, I guess.”
“Then maybe you’ll understand and maybe you won’t.” She sighed. “My sister and I are only eleven months apart. We grew up almost like twins. Together all the time, hardly ever fighting. We finished each other’s sentences, traded clothes, all that.”
Her smile faded. “Three years ago, she was in a car accident and hurt her back. To make a long story short, she got addicted to opioids and we’re afraid she’s going to start on heroin.” Sunny’s voice wobbled. “We’re trying to find the money to get her into rehab. The only places with beds open are private facilities, and they’re so expensive. I tried getting a loan, but that didn’t work, so now we’re scraping together what we can. I mean, even a week has to help, right?” Her expression begged me to agree.
“Absolutely. And no matter what, it can’t hurt,” I said.
“That’s what I say.” Sunny nodded. “Mom isn’t so sure, but the rest of the family is on board. We’re trying to keep my sister’s addiction quiet. She works for a big company, she’s in line for a big promotion, and if this gets out . . .” She pounded one fist on top of the other. “We can’t let it get out, we just can’t. It would ruin her reputation.”
The front door opened and closed and the voices of prospective customers trickled into the kitchen.
“Looks like I get to cook some more,” Sunny said, attempting a smile. “Thanks for listening.”
With my fork I speared another small wedge of pancakes, thinking that I’d finally found an answer to the question of why she hadn’t admitted to having an alibi, an answer that I wouldn’t have guessed in a thousand years.
Which led me directly to another question: What else hadn’t I guessed?
• • •
The man sitting at the center of the long curved table banged a small wooden hammer. “The regular meeting of the Wicklow Township Board is now called to order.” He laid the gavel down. “We will now recite the Pledge of Allegiance.”
As one unit, the audience of about thirty people stood, me along with them, hands on our hearts. When the pledge was done, we all sat down. I settled into my hard plastic seat, trying to find a comfortable position and failing completely, and looked forward to an interesting evening. Up front were the five members of the township board. I recognized two: Charlotte, the clerk who’d given the bookmobile permission to stop in their parking lot, and the supervisor, who’d walked out with Hugh Novak.
The board’s names were spelled out in nameplates sitting in front of them, so I could see that the supervisor’s name was Ralph Keshwas. The nameplates of the other board members were hidden by the heads of the many people sitting in front of me, so I mentally gave them names of Young Man (he looked about my age, which made him about thirty years younger than all of his fellow board members), Serious Lady (she was reading the pile of papers in front of her with great concentration), and Eyebrow Guy (his were remarkably bushy).
“Next is approval of the agenda,” Ralph Keshwas said, dropping his reading glasses from the top of his head onto his nose. “Are there any additions to the agenda?”
It turned out there were. Charlotte requested the addition of a budget amendment, Eyebrow Guy asked to add a grant application, and I started to get the feeling this was going to be a long meeting. To my left, a woman was using her purse as a clipboard as she wrote on a piece of paper. I peered at it surreptitiously, and I realized it was a copy of the meeting’s agenda.