Once More, At Midnight

“Because I’m hungry, and I want her recipe for bread pudding.” Lilah reached for the phone on Sara’s desk and held it up, waiting for the number. “She wasn’t home, and I would like to see a friendly face after driving across half the country, so just give me the number.”

Sara rose, too, stabbing her index finger into her own chest. “I’m friendly. I’m one of the friendliest damned people you’ll ever meet.”

“That’s right. Ask anyone.” A rough voice and booted footsteps forestalled a comment from Lilah, who turned to see that Nick Brady, a farmer with property that adjoined Sara’s land, had entered the jail. He walked toward them with an ironic quirk on his handsome lips and a lazy roll in his gait.

Lilah would have greeted her old girlhood neighbor if Sara hadn’t grumbled, “Don’t you ever knock?”

“To enter a public building? Not often.” Nick’s half-hooded eyes mocked her ungently. “Besides, you’re so friendly.” He turned to Lilah and offered a smile. “Good to see you back home. You’re as beautiful as ever.”

She wasn’t, but Lilah knew the comment was intended more to infuriate Sara than to compliment the recipient, so she smiled. “I can always count on your charm to see past my flaws, Nick. How’ve you been?” They shared a brief embrace.

“Fine as always.” He nodded toward one of the open cells on the other side of the small, old-fashioned jailhouse. “I see you’ve got company.”

“That’s Bree,” Lilah said. “She’s with me.”

Nick, being Nick, did not press for more information. He simply nodded. “You planning to be in town awhile?”

“Indefinitely.”

Sara’s auburn brows jacked up.

Taking a moment to eyeball his old nemesis and her shocked expression, Nick commented to Lilah, “Chase had to go to New York on business, so Nettie took Colin to see the sights. I assume she didn’t know you’d be here, or she’d never have left. I suppose that means you’re staying at Sara’s?”

The sisters looked at each other with expressions approaching horror. Sara lived in their old family home, and Lilah had stayed there for brief visits, but always with Nettie present to run interference.

“How long will Chase and Nettie be gone?” she asked weakly.

Nick rolled his large shoulders. “Hard to say. Chase told me he wants to surprise Colin with a trip to Disney World.’ Course, you know Nettie. If she knows you’re here, she’ll hightail it back.”

Lilah’s heart sank. She understood what Nick was telling her. If you call, you’ll ruin their trip. Her baby sister had been through so much pain before she’d met Chase Reynolds and his young son. She was married now and happy again. She deserved every carefree moment she could grab with her family.

Lilah stared at Sara, who stared back. Nick’s wry smile mocked them both. “Well, I’ll leave you two to sort out the sleeping arrangements.” He turned toward Sara, who eyed him ferociously. She hated to be made fun of and Nick always managed to do it without saying a word.

Plopping her fisted hands on hips as slender as a teen’s, she groused, “Why the devil are you here, Nick?”

“To tell you that Kurt Karpoun and Sam Henning are fighting again over that strip of land between their places. I saw Kurt sitting on his roof with a rifle full of buckshot.”

Sara swore. “Well, why didn’t you say so as soon as you came in?” Marching to the door, she grabbed her hat off a rack and jammed it on her head. Drawn by their voices, Bree meandered toward Lilah.

“Are we gonna eat or not?” she demanded, sparing only a single dismissive glance in Sara’s direction and no acknowledgement at all for Nick. “You said we’d eat when we got here. Or did you mean when we got to a real town, with, like, an actual mall?”

Lip curled in disgust, Sara dug into her pants pocket. “Polite little thing, isn’t she?” Withdrawing a set of keys, she tossed them to Lilah. “There’s food at my place. You can take your old room and put Miss Teenage America in Nettie’s.”

“I’m not a teenager yet,” Bree said.

“Did I sound like accuracy was my point?”

Bree didn’t know what to make of that, so she resorted to the classic eye roll.

Lilah thought of the balance in her checking account and decided she couldn’t afford to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if the horse did know how to say “I told you so” in five languages.

“Thanks very much, Sara.” Making a bigger effort, she asked, “Are you going to be home for dinner?”

“Doesn’t look like it.” She waved a hand. “Just help yourselves to whatever. See you later.” Swinging open the door, she headed into the evening sun.

“Suppose I’d better follow her,” Nick said, but without much urgency. “When she’s in a bad mood, your sister’s apt to light more fires than she puts out.”

“And yet you’re still hanging around,” Lilah said, curious and feeling an affection for Nick, who had been their next-door neighbor and adopted big brother for years. Sara found Nick utterly infuriating, and vice versa.

He shrugged an eyebrow noncommittally. “It’s a small town. I feel better when I know where the ticking bomb is.” Smiling, he tipped his head. “We’ll grab a coffee soon.”

“That’d be nice.”

Nick followed Sara outside and Bree moved a few steps closer to Lilah. “Who was he, an old boyfriend or something?” True to the perspective of youth, she emphasized “old.” Lilah could have pointed out that she was only twenty-nine, but since she felt ancient these days, she buried her ego.

“Come on,” she said, “we’ll go to Sara’s, and I’ll feed you so you won’t have to complain to the child welfare people.”

Chapter Three

A quick tour of Sara’s kitchen revealed that peanut butter cups, nacho cheese tortilla chips, two jars of bean dip and several cereal boxes—all offering a toy inside—were her idea of “food.”

“That’s not dinner!” Bree protested, echoing Lilah’s sentiments exactly, so they got back in the car and headed to the only restaurant in town.

Ernie’s Diner was dotted with locals when they entered at half past five. Lilah had changed clothes and repaired her makeup quite deliberately. She was now thoroughly overdressed as she led her charge to a booth all the way in the back of the restaurant.

After scanning the pink plastic menu, she decided on a dinner salad for a dollar ninety-five, because before they’d left the house she’d tallied her checkbook again, hoping she’d added it up incorrectly the first four times. They weren’t broke—yet—but she needed a job and she needed it fast.

“I have to go to the restroom. Will you order for me? Thousand Island on the side,” she told Bree as she scooted off the cracked and taped leather of the aged booth.

Bree shrugged, her nose already buried in a tattered copy of The Hobbit.

With a deep breath for courage, Lilah picked her way to the front of the restaurant on high-heeled white-and-gold sandals, the hem of a filmy white sundress swirling around her knees. Shaking back her hair, which she’d brushed and left loose, she reached into her large straw bag for the gift she’d brought Ernie, the owner of the diner—a signed and framed headshot of George Clooney. She’d been supplying Ernie with autographed studio photos for years. He’d hung them all around the restaurant.

The pictures were easy enough to acquire; Lilah simply wrote a letter requesting an autographed eight-by-ten—like any other fan. To Ernie and his regular customers, however, the Hollywood memorabilia was proof that Lilah had hit the big time. They believed she knew all the stars whose photos she acquired. Lilah of course had never disabused them of the idea. Now she hoped to make Ernie’s unmerited awe work in her favor.

In addition to the money left in her account, there remained a couple thousand dollars in a savings account Grace had left for Bree. Lilah was determined not to touch that money, no matter what. Bree needed to know there was something from her mother. Grace had been so worried. Lilah had performed her best acting job to date when she’d tried to assure her friend that their finances were fine. In fact, she’d lost her waitressing job for taking too much time off when Grace was ill. Lying to a dying woman—Lilah wasn’t sure whether she’d committed her first act of mercy or sunk to a new low. The devoted mother had died assuming there was more.

For years Lilah had lied about her acting credits, simply by claiming that she had some good ones. She hoped that if she told Ernie she wanted a temporary waitress position so she could “research a role for the theater,” he might hire her, and she wouldn’t have to admit she was almost thirty, that her bank account ran on fumes and that by most standards, especially her own, she was a big fat flop.

Reaching the cash register, Lilah glanced around the restaurant, spotting Mrs. Kay, the organist at Kalamoose First Baptist Church, along with several diners who were strangers to her, and she saw a waitress she didn’t recognize…but no Ernie.

The waitress, a ringer for a young Natalie Wood, approached the register. Lilah wondered vaguely if Ernie had hired the girl knowing her looks would be good for business. Fresh and glowing with no sign yet of age or disillusionment. Lilah remembered when people had hired her based on youth and beauty alone.

Feeling a lifetime older than the flawless child before her, she fought to dredge up the smile that had made her Miss Kalamoose Creamery 1990-1992 and asked to see Ernie.

The girl stared at her blankly. “Ernie?” Wrinkling her pert nose, she cocked her head. “Um, a guy named Elmer comes in around five most nights for the chicken-fried steak. Do you mean him?”

Gorgeous, Lilah amended her first impression, but thick as a post. “Nooo, I mean Ernie the owner,” she clarified, aiming her thumb over her shoulder. “The one whose name is on the sign out front.”