The Instant Family Man

“Oh, you cute little button!” Vivian Hoffman, the owner of the diner, came bustling around the counter, a petite gray-haired woman who had worked at The Good Eatin’ Café for so long, Peyton figured she had to be close to a hundred, though she moved at the speed of people half her age. Vivian bent down in front of Maddy. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Madelyne.” She drew herself up. “Madelyne Reynolds.”

“Oh, what a cutie. And as serious as a judge in church.” Vivian put out her hand and gave Maddy’s a little shake. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Madelyne. I’m Miss Viv, and if you need anything at all, you just let Miss Viv know and I’ll get it from the kitchen.”

“Can I have pancakes that look like cookies?”

“She means chocolate chip pancakes,” Peyton explained.

“Oh my, of course you can, sweetheart.” Miss Viv’s smile crinkled her eyes. “Why, we make the best cookie-looking pancakes in all of North Carolina. How about some chocolate milk to go with that, too? With one of those crazy bendy straws?”

Maddy started to say yes, but Peyton put a hand on her shoulder. “Apple juice will be fine, Miss Viv. Thank you.”

Vivian looked at Peyton now, really looked at her. “You’re the younger Reynolds girl, aren’t you? Peyton?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said, as if she was still a child and trying on her best manners in front of Grandma Lucy.

“And this adorable angel is your little girl?”

“No, she’s my niece.”

“Niece? That means Susannah...” Her voice trailed off and she dropped her gaze to Maddy’s blond curls. “Well, I’ll be. And I thought I knew ’bout everything that happened in this town.” Miss Viv brightened and put an arm around Peyton, drawing her deeper into the diner and steering her toward a booth that overlooked a shady corner of the park next door. “Best table in the house, though that busybody Mort Williams will say otherwise.”

From the far corner of the laminate bar that fronted the kitchen, Mort, a gray-haired man with a hunched back who owned the Page In Time Bookstore a block away, raised his cup of coffee in Miss Viv’s direction. He had a book in his hands now, a leather-bound volume. Probably a classic he’d read a hundred times before, if Peyton remembered correctly. “Howdy, Peyton,” he said, raising his book in her direction. “Stop on by the bookstore while you’re in town.”

“I sure will,” Peyton said. “I think I spent more time there than at home when I was young.” The bookstore had been her escape, a quiet place with cozy chairs, where she could read and get away from the roller coaster that had been her childhood. An alcoholic mother, a never-present father and two girls who had few, if any, rules or expectations meant Peyton could count on nothing but the happy endings she found in the books she read.

“Looking forward to seeing you.” Mort smiled. “And though that booth Miss Viv gave you is good, if you ask me, the best seat in the house is this one. Lets me watch all the comings and goings.”

Miss Viv leaned in toward Peyton. “He likes to think himself the town gossip. I told him Anna May Robicheaux has had that job for going on ninety-one years and given her constitution, she’s not giving up her title anytime soon. Would that she did, because Mort here is near as old as Methuselah himself.”

“It’s your coffee keeping me young, Miss Viv,” Mort said, hoisting said mug again for a refill. “That and your sweet smile.”

“That man is far too old to flirt. Goodness. Now, you two sit right here,” Miss Viv said, reaching over to pluck two menus from a vacant table and lay them before Peyton and Maddy. “Tell me what you want, Peyton, and I’ll get it started right quick.”

“Uh...just coffee, please.”

Vivian waved that off. “You can’t start your day with just coffee! You’d, like, about die from starvation before ten. ’Sides, I can’t let anyone leave the Good Eatin’ Café saying Miss Viv didn’t fill their bellies from the bottom up.” She stepped back, put a finger on her chin and studied Peyton. “Let’s see if I can remember your favorite order.”

“Oh, Miss Viv,” Peyton began, “it’s been at least ten years since I’ve eaten here with my grandma and—”

“Two eggs, sunny-side up, not too hard, not too soft. With a side of pancakes, and extra syrup.”

Miss Viv had nailed her order, as easily as if the last time Peyton had been here had been last week, instead of over a decade. “That’s...that’s exactly it.”

The older woman patted Peyton’s hand. “I never forget a customer, especially one as pretty and nice as you.” Then she bustled away toward the kitchen, sending over one of her waitresses to give Peyton a hot cup of coffee.

Maddy settled in the booth, dwarfed by the red leather back. “Auntie P, how’s come that lady knows you?”

“I used to come here when I was a little girl with my grandma. I sat at that stool right there.” She pointed toward the one in the middle of the bar, wondering if it still squeaked when you turned right. “And we’d have our Sunday-morning breakfast here.”

Maddy considered that for a while, taking in the seat, the covered platter of sugar-dusted doughnuts beside the glass cookie jar raising money for a local boy whose beaming face filled a photo on the front, then lifted her gaze to Peyton’s. “Do I have a grandma like that, Auntie P? Can she bring me here on Sundays, too?”

Peyton started to say no. Peyton’s grandmother Lucy, the one who Peyton could run to for cuts and bruises and happy moments, had died when Peyton was eleven. And Peyton’s own mother...

She’d never been the motherly type, much less the grandmother type, even after Maddy had been born. Three years ago, Peyton’s mother had died of cirrhosis. The girls had never known their father, so if there were paternal grandparents, Peyton had never met them.

But there was another woman, another grandma, who would take one look at Maddy and spoil her rotten for all the days of her life. The kind of grandma who would take her for chocolate chip pancakes every Sunday and go to all her school plays and exclaim over every handmade lumpy clay ashtray.

Peyton knew that, because she knew that woman well. Luke’s mother, Della, the one woman in Stone Gap who Peyton had wished was her mother from the minute she met her.

Maddy was still watching her, waiting for an answer. If Peyton told her the truth, Maddy would want to meet Della. If Peyton lied, it would be one more blow to a little girl who’d already had too many.

“Yes, Maddy, you have a grandma like that.”

A smile, a genuine, joyful smile as bright as a June day, bloomed on Maddy’s face. “Does she know I like pancakes that look like cookies? Does she know I’m almost four? Does she know I can count to a hun-red all by myself?”

Damn. How to answer these questions without telling Maddy everything? “She doesn’t yet, but she will, when you meet her.”

“When am I gonna meet her? Is she coming to my house? Is she gonna make me cupcakes like Kayleigh’s grandma? Cuz she makes cupcakes all the time and puts sprinkles on them and they’re really yummy.”

“I don’t know when you’ll meet her,” Peyton said. The waitress came by and laid plates of food before them. Peyton thanked her, then nudged Maddy’s plate closer to her niece, hoping to shift the conversation away from a comparison of Maddy’s friend Kayleigh’s grandma and her own. “Why don’t you eat your breakfast, so we can go to the zoo?”