Taking out her order book, she seated three regulars at a back table one step behind the young busboy her dad had hired for the summer. The tabletop still glistened from Ethan's towel. After getting the drink order, which she thankfully knew by heart, she got the beverages delivered.
Grabbing a bus tub from the end of the counter, Liz quickly went to one of the tables. As Liz scooped up three glasses in each hand and placed them within the tub, Maria joined her.
"Look, I can tell you're upset." Maria rounded up the silverware and shoved the utensils into one of the drink containers. "Maybe later will be better."
"You told Michael"
"Oh. That."
Liz finished the table and picked up the bus tub.
"My bad," Maria said, following Liz through the tables again. "It's just that it's easier to talk about somebody else's problems than ours."
"Glad to know I could help."
"Cmon, Liz. You want to talk about this," Maria said. "I know you do. It's eating you up."
The truth was, Liz's concern over her mother had gotten worse. Usually her mom came down to make sure the hectic lunches went well. Today there had been no sign of Nancy Parker. Liz couldn't help wondering if her mom was still upstairs talking to herself. The image hurt and confused her, and it made her angry.
"Maybe saying anything to you was a mistake," Liz said, turning from her friend. After all, Maria was still one of the friends of the happy little aliens living secretly in Roswell. Maybe she complained about relationship issues with Michael, whose very human faults seemed more to blame than any extraterrestrial ones, but she remained in the thick of them. Not like Liz.
"Talking to me is never a mistake," Maria said. "Look, maybe there's a reasonable answer for why your mom was having a conversation by herself this morning."
"What?"
Maria sighed. "I don't know. Yet."
Liz went over to the serving window to check on her orders.
Maria followed, catching up with her at the window. "We'll figure this out. I promise."
Overhearing them, Michael turned from the flat grill. "Figure what out? What's up with Liz's mom?"
Maria frowned and shook her head. "I really shouldn't have told you."
Michael looked at Liz, then back at Maria. "You barely mentioned it," he said in a monotone.
Neither Maria nor Liz spoke.
"Doesn't that help?" Michael asked.
"No," Liz and Maria told him at the same time.
"I've got a right to know about your mom," Michael said defensively.
"How do you figure?" Liz demanded.
"I work here too." Michael shook his spatula at the frying burger patties. "I depend on this job. Without this job I have no house. Without a house I'm sleeping in a cardboard box." He shook his head defiantly. "And I'm not sleeping in a cardboard box. You don't have to worry about that if your mom is headed for the loony hotel and the Crashdown closes down."
Liz couldn't believe Michael could be so insensitive. Even after everything they'd been through together, after everything she'd already seen him do.
"Look," Michael said, "it's not like I'm going to run out on you. If you need help… you know, a place to crash for a couple days, somebody to help subdue your mom till the nuthouse people can get there… I'll be there for you."
"Gee," Liz said sarcastically, "that's awfully sweet of you."
Michael shook his head in disgust. "There's about a million guys out there who wouldn't offer to help you subdue your mom without hurting her."
The sad part was, Liz realized, Michael was right. She and Maria took their orders out to their respective tables.
Several minutes passed as she gathered new orders and refilled drinks. One of the things that bothered her most, Liz admitted, was that Max was out there somewhere and didn't even have a clue that she was having trouble with her mom.
Only a short while later, after a flurry of drink refills
and condiment requests, Maria and Liz stood at the pass-through window again. Liz wished the lunch business would hurry and die down so she could go check on her mom.
"I've got an idea," Maria said.
Liz didn't want to ask. "What?"
"How much do you know about the Crashdown Cafe?"
"A lot," Liz answered.
"Was this always a restaurant?"
"Maybe," Liz answered. "I think so. What difference does it make?"
"Maybe someone died here," Maria said. "Maybe the restaurant is haunted."
"Haunted?" Liz couldn't believe Maria was serious. "You think my mom was upstairs talking to a ghost?"
Maria took a step back and frowned. "It's better than you thinking she's gone totally whack."
"I don't think that," Liz objected, feeling guilty because those thoughts had been in her mind. "Thinking my mom is talking to a ghost isn't exactly a hundred and eighty degree turn on thinking she's wigging out."
Maria shrugged. "Depends on whether you believe in ghosts."
"I don't believe in ghosts," Liz said. "Anyway, my mom wasn't talking to the ghost of a previous occupant. She was talking to my grandmother."
"Maybe ghosts attract ghosts," Maria said. "Maybe there's a poltergeist loose in the Crashdown that has drawn your grandmother's ghost here."
"We've been here for years," Liz said. "Why would she suddenly start turning up now?"
Maria frowned, her brow furrowing. "I don't have all the answers. Some of this still needs to be worked out."
"Ghosts don't exist," Liz said.
"Actually," Michael said, bringing plates over to the pass-through window, "they do. I saw one."
"What?" Maria exploded. "You saw a ghost and you never told me?"
Michael looked at her. "Didn't know we were supposed to share otherworldly experiences. Anyway, you weren't really big on discussing anything I did last week. You were kind of mad at me for being gone."
"The geological survey," Liz said, remembering. She'd had to help cover Michael's shifts last week.
"Yeah," Michael replied.
"You were there with Tiller Osborn," Maria said.
Michael nodded.
"I heard somebody saying something about him seeing his father's ghost."
"He did," Michael said.
"And that was the ghost you saw?" Liz asked.
"Yeah." Michael turned back to the grill and started laying out the next orders. Meat sizzled on the grill. "Those orders are ready."
"Wait," Maria said. "You can't just say you saw a ghost and then walk away. Tell us the rest of it."
"That is the rest of it," Michael insisted. "The ghost was there, then it was gone."
"And it was Tiller's dad?" Liz asked.
Michael nodded. "Looked like him to me. Tiller thought so. The experience messed him up pretty bad. We brought him back into Roswell the next day and left him here."
"Has he seen the ghost since?" Liz asked. Somehow the whole story sounded just too bizarre to believe, but after everything she'd been living through the last year and a half, maybe the ghost tale didn't sound as far-fetched as it should have.
"I don't know," Michael answered. "We don't hang."
"And you don't think you should check on him?" Maria asked.
"No. I'm a guy he worked with for a day. Somebody he sees in the hall occasionally. I figure he wants his privacy about now."
"Does he know you saw his father's ghost?"
Michael laid hamburger buns down on the grill to toast. "No."
"Why not?"
"He didn't ask." Michael used the toasted buns and assembled hamburgers with passionless expertise.
"You didn't tell him?"
"No."
"Why?"
Michael piled fries on the plates and pushed them through the pass-through window. "Nobody else saw the ghost. If 1 told Tiller that I'd seen the ghost, maybe he would have thought about it and decided I was lying. In which case he might want to punch me out. If he believed me, that I had seen the ghost and no one else had, then he might have started figuring something was different about me." He eyed Maria. "I'd kinda rather he didn't go there, you know."