Flamingo Diner

“It sucks, doesn’t it?” Jeff said.

“I don’t get it,” Andy said, his voice choked. “Dad never drove fast. He couldn’t have missed that curve.”

“Well, he did,” Jeff said angrily.

“Do you think…? Was it because I messed up yesterday morning? I was trying to get up the nerve to ask Lauren Patterson on a date, and I wasn’t paying attention to the customers the way I should have been. He got really mad at me. Maybe he was still mad. Maybe he shouldn’t have been driving.”

“People don’t have accidents because their kid messed up,” Jeff said, poking his brother lightly in the ribs with his elbow. “Otherwise, every mom and dad in the world would be dead before their kids get out of their teens.”

Below, Matt bit back a grin. There was a world of wisdom in Jeff’s words and more than a hint of cynicism.

“Then why did it happen?” Andy asked again. “I don’t get it.”

“Dammit, Andy, give it a rest. Dad’s dead. That’s all that matters,” Jeff said bitterly.

Silence fell then and once again Matt felt an urge to light up the one cigarette he kept in his pocket as a safety net.

“Jeff?”

Andy’s voice was soft and scared, the way he used to sound in the dark of night when he thought there were monsters hiding under the bed. Matt had spent enough nights at the house to recognize it.

“Yeah, kid?”

“What’s going to happen to us?”

“We’ll stick together,” Jeff said finally. “You, me, Emma and Mom. We’ll figure things out.”

“Do you think Emma will stay?”

“Sure,” Jeff said.

“I called her and told her things were all messed up around here and she wouldn’t come home,” Andy said. “What makes you think she’ll stay now?”

“She will, that’s all. She’ll have to.”

Matt wondered if Jeff was right. Would Emma stay? He’d heard the guilt and self-recrimination in her voice earlier and guessed that she would hang around, if only because of that. But he hated that it had taken something like this to get her home.

“Well, I don’t want her to,” Andy said heatedly. “I don’t want her here. She wouldn’t come when I asked her to and it’s too late now.”

He scrambled down from the tree house and ran. Matt stepped in his path and caught him.

“Don’t take this out on your sister,” he told Andy quietly. “She’s hurting, too. You all need to stick together now.”

Andy uttered a curse Matt had never expected to hear cross the boy’s lips.

He leveled a look straight into Andy’s eyes. “What would your dad think if he’d heard that?”

“Well, he’s not here, is he?” Andy retorted, then brushed past Matt and went inside.

Matt sighed. Whatever had happened at the lake the night before, this family’s world was never going to be the same again.

4

Emma was stunned by her mother’s appearance. No matter the time of day or the occasion, Rosa had always taken such pride in herself.

“No one wants to be greeted by someone looking haggard and disheveled when they come in the door for breakfast,” she’d told Emma more than once, when Emma would have settled for a hastily combed ponytail, a pair of jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt to work at the diner. It didn’t matter to her mother that grease and spills were likely to ruin clothes faster than playing outside in the dirt.

Rosa always wore bright colors, skillfully applied makeup and a ready smile, even at 6:00 a.m. And even after a tiring, ten-hour shift at Flamingo Diner, she usually looked as energetic and tidy as she had when she’d greeted the first customer in the morning. Somehow she never spilled anything on herself.

Tonight, though, her thick, dark hair was in disarray, her cheeks were pale and she was wearing the rattiest old robe in her closet, the one she usually wore when she scrubbed the floors. Emma was as shocked and dismayed by that as she was by the lost look in her mother’s red-rimmed eyes.

“Oh, Mama, I can’t believe it,” Emma whispered, crossing the room to take her mother in her arms. Rosa, whose figure she herself had always referred to as pleasingly plump, felt fragile to Emma, as if all the familiar strength had drained out of her overnight.

“Neither can I,” her mother said, clasping her hand. “I’m so sorry, Emma. I should have been the one to call you, but I couldn’t find the words. I didn’t want to believe it had happened. I still don’t.”

“Neither do I, Mama.”

Rosa’s gaze drifted away, as if she were looking at something Emma couldn’t see. “I keep waiting for him to come home,” she murmured, half to herself. Her gaze once again sought Emma’s. “He should be here by now. Don’t you think so?”

Alarmed by her mother’s refusal to accept reality, Emma squeezed her hands. “Mama, he’s not coming back. You know that.”

Her mother regarded her with a bewildered expression. “But that can’t be. He had an appointment after we closed and he said he’d be home right afterward. I’ve been waiting and waiting.”

“Daddy’s gone,” Emma said quietly but firmly. “He’s dead.”

The unexpected sharp slap of her mother’s hand against her cheek shocked her.

“Don’t say that,” her mother said furiously. “He’s not dead.”

Emma was too shaken to respond. Her mother had never hit her before, had never really lost her temper. As kids, they’d always known when Rosa was angry. Patches of color would flare in her cheeks and her eyes would flash, but her words were always cool and reasoned. There had been times when Emma had wished that she would simply yell at them, because that icy disappointment in her tone had been devastating.

Touching her cheek gingerly, Emma stood up and moved away, wanting to cry, but terrified that once she started, she’d never be able to stop. Obviously her safe, secure world was never going to be the same again, not with her father dead and her mother so distraught that she would actually slap one of her own children.

“Emma, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,” Rosa said, sounding as shaken as Emma felt.

“It’s okay, Mama. You’re not yourself right now. None of us are.”

“It is not okay. I just…” She shook her head, as if to clear it. “I can’t think straight. I don’t want to think at all. Could you get me another one of the pills the doctor left? They’re in the bathroom.”

Emma retrieved the bottle and read the label. She had no idea what sort of medicine it was. “What are these?” she asked as she brought them into the bedroom.

“Sleeping pills,” her mother said. “They’re good. They keep me from remembering.”

“I thought you hated taking pills,” Emma said, worried by the eagerness with which her mother was reaching for the plastic bottle.

Her mother frowned at her. “I’ve never been in this situation before. The doctor prescribed them. It won’t hurt to take them for a few days, just to get through this.” She swallowed two and drank some water.

“You mean the funeral?” Emma asked.