Once More, At Midnight

They spoke over each other then hesitated and did it again.

“Thank you,” he said.

“What?” she asked.

“Nikki said you asked to speak to me,” Gus said. “What about?”

Lilah looked genuinely confused. “Nikki?” She glanced to the dining room. “The waitress?” Shaking her head, she corrected, “I asked to speak with Ernie.”

Gus scratched his temple and tried to appreciate the irony. So Lilah hadn’t sought him out? And here he’d been enjoying the indecency of power.

“Nikki said you wanted to speak to the owner,” he told her, putting two and two together for both of them. “She obviously thought you meant me. I bought the diner from Ernie a month ago.” This time he tried to keep the pride and challenge out of his voice. It finally began to sink in that standing here, hoping to inspire envy with news of his new home and wife-to-be was not only immature, it was hardly fair to his fiancée.

“If you need to speak with Ernie,” he said with a customer-service politeness he had seldom exercised, “I’m sure we can help with that.”

Lilah felt her heart lurch, indecisive and arrhythmic. She wasn’t sure her exhausted body could take any more surprises than she’d already had today. “This is your business? The diner? I thought the gas station—”

“Also mine.”

She tried to smile, to look as if she were pleased, but her face felt stiff, as if she’d overdosed on BOTOX. She knew she should be happy for Gus; he had apparently succeeded in the areas of life she had somehow managed to bungle—career and romance. But every new nugget of information he revealed complicated her situation more and more. Rather than being happy, she felt more scared, more lost, more alone by the second.

“Do you have Ernie’s home number?” Gus broke into her thoughts. “I’m sure he’d enjoy hearing from you,” Gus said with all the personalization of a cruise director pairing people up for a square-dance class. “Or if you prefer, he comes in for breakfast most mornings. You could catch him then.”

And risk seeing Gus again before she had a chance to think…or take a large valium? “That’s not necessary. Thanks, anyway. I only stopped in to…to give him this.” She thrust the wrapped publicity photo out to Gus. “It’s more for the diner. It’s another photo. You’re welcome to it.” She made a face. “Or if you’re going to change the decor, perhaps you could pass it to Ernie next time you see him.”

She began to back up toward the booth where she’d left Bree. So much for a job at the only restaurant in town. Lilah decided swiftly and definitively that she’d made a mistake—another one—by coming home. Bree didn’t like it here, anyway…not that Bree was going to like any place without Grace.

“I’ve got to get back to my—” She hitched a thumb over her shoulder. “To…Bree.”

Instantly, Gus’s eyes shifted to the booth where Bree sat with her head still bent over her book. Lilah cursed herself for calling attention to the girl. Pointing her out would only invite questions and more conversation.

“Well, good to see you again, Gus,” she said, trying hard to convey the dispassion he seemed able to portray quite easily. “Best of luck with everything.”

To underscore her nonchalance, she managed a classic hair flip when she turned away. The one she’d perfected in high school. The flip that said I’m confident, I’m free, nothin’s botherin’me. To reinforce the image, she made herself swing around one last time, flashing a smile she didn’t feel. “Is the chicken-fried steak still the best in North Dakota?”

Gus nodded. “Everything’s the same.”

Not hardly, Lilah thought, but she nodded, turned and walked back to the booth, where she intended to encourage Sabrina to eat without chewing so they could get the hell out of here.

Chapter Four

“Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-four…”

Lilah pushed coins across the scarred butcher-block table in Sara’s kitchen. She counted all the way to forty-eight dollars, looked at the money sitting in front of her and slumped until her cheek rested on the old pine.

The heavy thump of her heart and steady march of black hands across a cow-shaped kitchen clock provided the only background music to the impending disaster that had become her life.

It was ten minutes to 12:00 a.m. Between sips of hot cocoa laced with Irish Crème Liqueur, Lilah had counted and recounted every crumpled dollar bill and every sticky piece of change she’d scrounged from the bottom of her purse. She’d have to make another with-drawal from her checking account soon.

Groaning, she pounded a fist on the table—just once, because she was exhausted.

When Grace was sick, Lilah had asked her coworkers to sub for her so many times that eventually the manager had hired someone else. Then there had been the enticing dinners she had bought from the gourmet market to tempt Grace to eat, and the aromatherapy candles and food supplements and Chinese herbal remedies and organic potions and all the other ways Lilah had fought to keep Grace alive, to pretend they actually had some power in an ultimately powerless position.

Lilah’s bank account had dwindled, and she hadn’t been able to catch up. Still, she would learn how to cook cardboard boxes before she’d spend what was left of Grace’s savings. She’d counted on getting a job at Ernie’s. Jobs were not plentiful in rural North Dakota.

“I’m screwed. I’m just screwed,” she said, shaking her head as she pushed away from the kitchen table.

She’d gone to bed around nine—before, thank goodness, Sara had come home from her final patrol of the night. Lilah simply hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone, not until she’d had at least a little rest and could make some sense of her situation. Unfortunately, she hadn’t slept a wink, and her situation wasn’t looking any more sensible at 12:00 a.m. than it had when she’d gotten home from the diner.

Heaving her exhausted body out of the chair, she shuffled to the pantry, wondering if Sara had any Scooter Pies. May as well ditch the diet she’d been on for the past twelve years. Her career was dead, her romantic life was a non-issue, and when everyone discovered the lie she had been living with for more than a decade, it was possible that no one, not even her own sisters, would want to speak to her.

Settling for a handful of Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Berries, she ate over the sink, listening to her teeth grind the cereal and watching pink Crunch Berry crumbs dapple the scratched porcelain basin. When she finished, she stared through the window at the high half moon. She’d come home for comfort.

She’d come home hoping that her sisters—and she figured Nettie was her best bet—would see that taking care of Bree was wearing her nerves down to nubs. Look at you, her baby sister would say, you’re exhausted. This is too much for someone who is not used to children. Let me help.

The thought that had brought transient relief on the drive to North Dakota now turned the cereal sour in her stomach.

Standing still, Lilah covered her face with her hands. She wasn’t the one who had died, wasn’t the one who had slipped unwillingly away from a daughter she’d raised and nurtured and needed like a star needs the night to shine. Yet here she was, filled with worry, feeling sorry for herself and wanting someone to rescue her.

When she saw Gus at the restaurant and heard that he was building a home and a business in Kalamoose, there had been a part of her that thought—for a split second—that perhaps fate had decided they were not through after all. Perhaps that angry boy who had been all wrong for her at seventeen, but whom she had never been able to forget, was going to be her knight in shining armor now that they were both adults.

Maybe, she’d thought before he’d mentioned a fiancée, everything that’s happened was supposed to bring us together again.

Turning on the faucet, Lilah splashed her face with cold water. “You have become a poor excuse for a woman with a brain,” she muttered.

Twisting the squeaky knob again and drying her hands on the dishtowel Sara left draped over the faucet, Lilah braced her arms against the sink and hung her head. Gus Hoffman had spent the past twelve years creating a life that would give him contentment while she had morphed from a girl who had planned to conquer the world into a woman who wished someone would rescue her.

Pathetic.

All night she’d been fighting the memory of his expression as he told her he was getting married. He’d looked proud, but more importantly, satisfied. In the past, albeit the distant past, he had looked that way only when he was with her.

Hot and restless, she pulled at the neck of her tank top then reached over the sink to open the window and let in some air. Grunting, she pushed ineffectively at the frame until she realized that Sara had installed some funky new lock.

Dang Sara and her security measures. This is Kalamoose, not freaking L.A.

The thought had barely formed in her brain when she saw a shadow through the window. The shadow of a person standing in their yard.

At 12:00 a.m.

Lilah’s first impulse was to yell for her sister, but she didn’t want to alarm Bree, and she felt a sudden surge of adrenaline that told her to fight, not flee. She lived in Los Angeles, for crying out loud; she’d had her car broken into three times. She could deal with one small-town Peeping Tom.

Racing barefoot to the kitchen door, she grabbed the battered baseball bat that had stood sentinel for years—ever since Sara had placed it there to threaten the raccoons that routinely made a mess of their garbage cans.

Dousing the lights, Lilah peeked through the curtain covering the kitchen door window. The helpful moon bathed the person in the yard in an eerie glow, outlining the silhouette of a rather large man. Clearly, he’d seen her through the window. Now that she’d turned off the lights, he appeared to be waiting, though for what she had no idea. He stood stock-still, neither approaching the house nor turning to leave before he was caught.

The arrogance, Lilah thought and then immediately was struck by a rush of déjà vu so strong she felt transported to another time. Another time…but the very same place.

Unlatching Sara’s collection of dead bolts, she turned the knob on the kitchen door and stepped outside. Cool air bathed her bare legs and whispered softly around her shoulders and arms. Still clutching the bat, she shivered.