Flamingo Diner

“And you’re not picky enough,” Emma retorted, as she always did.

“But at least I play the game. You can’t find gold if you’re not willing to sift through all the other stuff. Trust me, the right man is not going to fall from the sky.”

“Try telling that to my mother,” Emma said, laughing.

The story of the night her father literally fell into her mother’s arms on a dance floor was family legend. Don Killian and Rosa had been inseparable from that moment on. That was probably what had fueled Emma’s romantic expectations. She wanted that same kind of bolt-from-the-blue feeling to strike her one day. It wasn’t likely to happen with a guy who had one eye on the restaurant door to see if anyone important was coming in, and the other checking out his next day’s schedule on his handheld computer screen.

“Kim, do you really like this guy you’re going out with tonight?”

Her friend hesitated, then sighed. “He’s handsome. He’s smart. And he’s very nice. What’s not to like?”

“Handsome is superficial,” Emma said, dismissing it. All of the men Kim dated were handsome. They were all intelligent, too. Some weren’t so nice. She was relieved to hear that this one was. “Nice is fine. Nice can be terrific, in fact, but I worry that you’ll decide that’s the best you can do. You deserve spectacular. You deserve fireworks.”

“I know,” Kim said, her good cheer back as quickly as it had faded. “Which is why I keep looking. Stop worrying, Emma. I won’t settle for anything less. If I were willing to settle, I’d have married Horace Dunwoodie the Fourth. He was handsome, nice and disgustingly rich.”

“But boring,” Emma reminded her.

“My point exactly.”

“Okay, then. Now I’ve got to get back to these boxes,” Emma said. “Have fun tonight.”

“If I didn’t think I would, I wouldn’t be going on a second date with the guy. I have less patience than I used to. Some men don’t even make the cut after the first date.”

“By the way, why haven’t you told me his name?” Emma asked. “Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure the last time you told me the name of one of your dates was back in college. In fact, it was old Horace, who followed Dirk. There have been dozens and dozens of nameless men parading through your life since then.”

Kim laughed. “Why make you remember somebody who’s not likely to last, anyway? This way, if I ever do call a man by his name, you’ll know we’re at least to the fourth-date stage. If I introduce you, you’ll know that picking a wedding date is imminent. If you recall, I had five dates with Horace.” She uttered an exaggerated sigh. “I had high hopes for him for a time. It must have been the size of his bank account that blinded me to his obvious flaws.”

“At least you have a sense of humor about it,” Emma said. “If I had to endure as many bores as you do, I’d be totally depressed.”

“There’s no point in crying, not when all it does is leave your eyes red and puffy. By the way, did you really call because you’re worried about your social life or is something else on your mind?”

“Just a little homesick,” Emma admitted. “I couldn’t wait to get away from Winter Cove and Flamingo Diner and my family, but there are still times when I miss it all like crazy.”

“Then you should have called home, instead of calling me,” Kim chided. “Do it now and tell your folks hi for me. Are they doing okay?”

“They sounded good when I spoke to them over the weekend. I need to get down to Florida, though. I really do miss them.”

“Then go,” Kim said, suddenly serious. “Take it from someone who’s lost a parent, you don’t get a second chance. I’ll come with you. It’s been a long time since you’ve taken me down there for a visit. There’s not a restaurant here in town that can make arroz con pollo as good as your mom’s.”

“We’ll do it,” Emma promised. “The weather starts to break down there in October.”

“October’s good. We’ll talk about the specifics when I see you Sunday morning. Bye, sweetie.”

Emma hung up feeling better than she had before she’d called, even if she was facing another dateless night alone with a good book. There were worse fates. She could list at least a hundred of them while she was checking in the rest of the new inventory.

But before she could get back to work, the phone rang. Wiping the sweat from her brow, she picked it up and tried to inject a gracious note into her voice. “Good morning, Fashionable Memories.”

“Sis, is that you?”

“Andy?” Her sixteen-year-old brother was a quiet, well-mannered kid who was not in the habit of making long-distance calls to chat with his big sister. “Is everything okay?”

“I guess.”

“You don’t sound very sure. What’s happened?”

“Can you come home, Emma? Please.”

If hearing her brother’s voice had been a surprise, hearing him plead for her to come home sent a shudder of alarm through her. “Andy, what is it? Is Mom sick? Dad?”

“No.”

“Then what? You don’t call out of the blue and ask me to fly down to Florida unless there’s a reason. Talk to me.”

He sighed. “I guess it was a mistake to call. I’ll see you.”

“Wait!” Emma shouted, suddenly afraid he was about to hang up on her before she could get to the real explanation for his call. “Andy?”

“I’m here,” he said.

“Come on, talk to me. You obviously didn’t call just to chat. Something’s going on. Spill it. If Mom and Dad are okay, is something up with Jeff?”

Her other brother was in college in a town not far from Winter Cove, but was home for the summer. It was a point of friction with her father that this year Jeff had refused to work at Flamingo Diner, the family business, choosing instead to work at a clothing shop at the mall. He’d had a dozen valid excuses for the decision, but the unspoken reason was his inability to get along with their father. He thought Don Killian was too controlling, the family business too confining. The truth was, Jeff hated Flamingo Diner even more passionately than Emma had.

“Jeff’s okay, I guess. He’s not around much.”

“Are you disappointed about that? I know you like having your big brother around during the summer.”

“He’s not as much fun as he used to be,” Andy said. “Besides, he and Dad fight all the time, so it’s better when he’s gone.”

Emma was running out of ideas to explain her brother’s unexpected call. “Tell me about you,” she said finally. “Are you having a good summer?”

“I guess,” he said without enthusiasm.

“Got a girlfriend?”

“Not really.”

She searched her memory for the name of the pretty girl Andy had had his eye on. “What about Lauren Patterson? I know you like her. Have you asked her out?”

“No.”

His refusal to answer in anything more than monosyllables was getting to her. “Come on, sweetie,” she pleaded. “Help me out here. I know you called for a reason. Tell me.”

“I did tell you. I asked you to come home,” he said.

He sounded angry, maybe even a little frantic. It was so unlike her easygoing brother, Emma was more alarmed than ever. “Okay, I hear you,” she said carefully. “Why is it so important to you that I come home?”

He hesitated. “It’s Dad,” he said finally. “He’s acting really weird.”