LITMIR.BIZ

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sure did.” Galen’s eyebrows lifted, encouraging an explanation. Eddie shifted in the same seventies-era molded plastic chair his butt had warmed during more than one lecture all those years ago. “They were all temporary jobs, ma’am. Fill-ins, just like this one. Which is the way I like it, seeings as I don’t like getting tied down to one kind of cooking for too long.”

      The phone rang, cutting off further interrogation. Galen mouthed a “sorry” and took the call. Eddie crossed his ankle at the knee in the don’t-give-a-damn pose that Al Jackson, Eddie’s septuagenarian boss back when this had still been the Spruce Lake Diner, had seen straight through. An odd, rusty emotion whimpered way in the back of Eddie’s brain; he frowned slightly at the scuffed heel of his boot, concentrating instead on the early season snow snicking arrhythmically against the office’s tiny, high-set window. He hadn’t mentioned his former ties to the place to his prospective employer—what would be the point?—but now that he was here, this odd, unsettled feeling kept nagging at him, like maybe there were answers here to questions he’d never bothered to ask before. Never wanted to.

      Galen hung up the phone, picked up a pen and started twiddling with it. Her plain gold wedding band glinted in the flat light. “If I hire you, can I trust you won’t leave me high and dry?”

      He kept his gaze steady, almost sighing in exasperation as a telltale blush swept up the woman’s cheeks. All he was doing was looking at her, for God’s sake. And if it was one thing Al had drummed into him, it was that if you want respect—if you want folks to take you seriously—you had to look them in the eye when you talked to them, a philosophy only reinforced by four years in the Marines. “I may not be in the market for anything permanent, ma’am, but I don’t leave people in the lurch. I’ll stay as long as you need me to.”

      After a moment, she apparently decided to believe him. “Glad to hear it,” she said, then awkwardly pushed herself up from her chair. Eddie stood as well, ducking underneath the still too-small door frame as he followed the woman back out into the immaculate kitchen, where a half-dozen assistants were preparing for the evening rush. The restaurant/pizzeria had taken over the building next door as well, making Galen’s twice the size of the original diner, but the kitchen didn’t look much different than it had. Oh, some of the equipment had been updated—a bigger, fancier stove, a pair of new Sub-Zero refrigerators—but otherwise, it, too, was just like he remembered. A shudder of déjà vu traipsed up his spine; it was right here that an old man had cared enough to show a displaced Southern boy with a two-ton chip on his shoulder how to channel all that resentment into making apple pie and hamburgers and beef stew and real milk shakes.

      To do something with his life, instead of bitchin’ about it.

      He realized Galen was looking at him, her smile slightly apologetic. “You know, we don’t have to do this right now,” she said. “I mean, you probably want to find someplace to stay first, get settled in?”

      Eddie shoved back his open denim jacket to hook his thumbs in his pockets. “Already did that, as a matter of fact. Got a room in a motel right outside of town. Figure I’ll look for a furnished apartment or something, once you hire me.” When she didn’t take the bait, he added, “I can cook in my sleep, ma’am. So now’s as good a time as any.”

      “Well, if you’re sure…”

      “I’m sure.”

      “Okay, then. Well, we agreed on three dishes, right? Your choice, except that one of them needs to pretty standard—red spaghetti sauce, lasagna, ravioli, something like that. I don’t care about the others, as long as they’re Italian. If they pass muster—”

      “They will.”

      “—if they pass muster,” Galen repeated, “you can start tomorrow.”

      Eddie stuck out his hand, quickly shook Galen’s. “Deal,” he said, then shrugged off his jacket, shoved up his sweater sleeves and slipped into the only world he trusted.

      This morning, it had been nearly sixty and sunny. Now, at four-thirty, it was barely above freezing, and had been spitting snow for two hours already. And Mala Koleski, whose thirty-seven-year-old body’s themostat didn’t take kindly to sudden temperature changes, was freezing her hiney off. She wished.

      “Come on, guys,” she said through chattering teeth as she hustled the kids down her mother’s ice-glazed walk and into Whitey, her ten-year-old Ford Escort, blinking against the tiny snow pellets needling her face. She usually tried to meet the school bus herself in the afternoons—a definite advantage to working from home—but it had taken her far longer than she’d expected to unearth last month’s receivables from the garden center’s new computer program after one of their employees decided to be “helpful.” So now she was running late. And freezing to death. And grateful she’d gotten away from her mother’s before the woman could scrutinize her for signs of physical and emotional decay.

      “I need to stop at the restaurant for a sec,” she said, yanking open the back door, “then we’ve got to get home or else there’s gonna be a couple nekkid Pilgrims in the school play tonight. For God’s sake, Carrie—button your coat!”

      “I’m not cold,” her seven-year-old daughter announced through a toothless gap as Mala practically shoved them both into the back seat.

      “Why can’t I sit up front?” Lucas whined.

      “B-because it’s not safe,” she said to Lucas, clutching her sweater-coat to her chest. Her nipples were so rigid, they stung. “Carrie. Now. Button up.”

      Underneath a froth of snow-kissed, coppery curls, a pair of big blue eyes blinked back at her. “No.”

      “Fine. Freeze.” Mala slammed shut the door and scurried around to the driver’s side, hurtling herself behind the wheel. Yes, she knew the child would moan about how cold she was in five minutes, but tough. Mala had more pressing things to occupy her pretty little head about. Like finishing up those damn costumes. Thawing out her nipples. Figuring out how to finance Christmas without putting it on plastic. Again. Finding a new tenant for the upstairs apartment before the first big heating bill came. One who maybe wouldn’t just up and leave, stiffing her for two months’ back rent—

      “Mama?” Lucas said behind her. “I gots to pee.”

      “Hold it until we get to Galen’s, ’kay?” She gingerly steered the car onto Main Street, tucking one side of her hopelessly straight pageboy behind her ear. The bright red hair, the kids had clearly gotten from their father, but Carrie’s curls were a total mystery.

      The car’s rear end shimmied a couple inches to the right; silently cursing, Mala carefully steered with the skid, pulled out of it. New tires—ones with actual treads—had just officially been promoted to the top of the priority list. Tires she might’ve had already if that jerk hadn’t—

      “I’m gonna wet my pants!”

      “Do and you die,” Carrie, ever the diplomat, cooly replied.

      “Carrie,” Mala said in her Warning Voice, despite feeling pretty much the same way. “Two more blocks, Luc—cross your legs or something.”

      Lucas started to whimper; Carrie started in about wussy, crybaby brothers, and Mala turned on the windshield wipers, thinking of all the joy Scott had missed by walking out of their lives three years ago. Okay, so maybe Mala had given him a push, but still.

      She eased the car through a four-way stop, then glided into a parking space in the alley behind the restaurant, casting a brief but appreciative glance at the snow-speckled, pepper-red Camaro parked a few feet in front of her. Lucas was out of the car before she’d turned off the engine, hauling his bony little butt toward the propped open kitchen door.

      “Lucas! Don’t run—!”

      “I told him to go before we left Grandma’s,” Her Supreme Highness intoned from the back seat, “but would he listen to me? Noooo—”

      Splat! went the kid on the

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