I Never Thought I'd See You Again: A Novelists Inc. Anthology (24 page)

Murphy nodded and said, “The honor is mine, sir.” A lone tear slipped unheeded from the corner of her eye.

Sam tipped his hat and grinned. “Ma’am.”

“I guess it’s time,” Paul said. “So long, Gramps.”

“‘Bye, Sam.” Winnie bit down on her knuckles, but tears fell freely down her cheeks. “Thank you.”

“So long, Winnie,” he said. “Take good care of this great-great-grandson of mine.”

She nodded, and Paul took a few steps with Sam and Lucifer toward the golden staircase. “I’ll miss you, Sam.”

“I’ll always be here.” Sam pointed at his head and his heart. He took a deep gaze upward. “Somethin’ different this time, Paul,” he said.

“What’s that, Gramps?”

Sam smiled. “I smell lilacs.” Without looking back, he led Lucifer toward the golden steps. A woman stood halfway up, her hand outstretched.

“Sam, I’ve been waiting,” she said.

“Oh, Paul.” Winnie took Paul’s hand, openly weeping now.

“He’s really going home this time.”

US Marshal Sam Weathers took his bride’s hand at long last as the stairway vanished, and lilac petals drifted to the ground.

“I didn’t see that. Did I?” Murphy asked. “Really?”

“Read the letter,” Paul repeated.

Rosebud, Wisconsin — 1933

“You are not welcome here,” Alison Norris said as she stood in the middle of her diner, a cup of coffee in one hand and a plate of meatloaf and mashed potatoes in the other. “I still have thirty-two hours left. Or are you going to break that promise, too?”

It was twelve o’clock noon on Christmas Eve day and she had legal possession of the diner until midnight tomorrow. She thought Jake Hanson would never come back here. Not now.

Overcast clouds kept most of the eatery in shadows, but the windows still reflected what stood in front of them and Alison could see herself, a tall thin woman wrapped in a white apron and a dark brown dress. At twenty-seven years old, she felt past her prime and so very tired. She was alone now that her mother had died, with nothing but her pride in her diner to get her though the latest sorrows in her life.

“You know I’ve done all I can to make the bank change its mind,” Jake protested mildly as he held his black fedora hat in place and stepped further inside. His long wool gray coat blew in the wind until he closed the door. Then, he took his hat off and his passionate hazel eyes were visible. “And why should the bank wait to foreclose? This whole area is going bust. If you weren’t so stubborn, we would be out of here by now.”

They’d had this disagreement before. Too many times in the past year.

“It’s you. You should be out of here by now,” she said. “It’s your dream. Not mine.”

Jake didn’t answer.

He just sat down at the table next to the door. Alison had hung her deep green coat over the back of a chair at that table, folding it twice so the frayed lining would not be visible. She generally didn’t bring the dress coat with her to work and she didn’t want to hang it in the kitchen where she usually left her work coat. She’d chopped onions and celery this morning and the odor would have clung to her clothes.

Jake looked at the round silver broach on her coat speculatively. “Did you change your mind about going out to dinner with me tonight?”

She shook her head, her hand rising up to the tight waves she’d put in her short chestnut hair this morning. She’d worn her second-best dress today instead of the uniform she generally wore. “I have an errand to run this afternoon.”

“Of course,” Jake said, his lips pressing together when he finished speaking. He didn’t need to say he was hurt or that he disapproved; she could tell.

Still, she didn’t give him more information. Instead, she stepped over to the only table in the place where someone else was seated and set down the food in front of the older man waiting there. Clad in a long-sleeved shirt made of bleached flour sacks and a worn pair of wool pants held up by black suspenders, Anson Balter was a second-generation German farmer with a hard luck story. She’d served him many a meal when he was able to hobble the half mile down to her diner. Like too many others, he lived in the old empty houses left behind when the factory closed down last winter, leaving the employee cottages vacant and boarded-up. The families living there had no plumbing or heat, but they did have some shelter fellow firefighters. y vo from the wind and snow.

“Thank you, miss,” Mr. Balter said as he laid a dime on the table and pushed it toward her with a gnarled hand, arthritic from decades of struggling with the earth. There was a dusty look to the hand as though it still fought the black blizzards that had covered the countryside around Rosebud this past summer and fall.

She took the coin and turned to leave. The cost of the meal would be fifty cents to anyone else and the only reason she took the dime was to save Mr. Balter’s pride.

Alison could see the whole of her diner from here. Twelve red upholstered stools stood in front of the counter. Behind the counter, a wide cut space connected to the kitchen. Today, she was both cook and waitress since her fry cook was out buying a Christmas present for his pregnant wife. A blackboard stood to one side of the counter, with yesterday’s daily special — “casserole of boiled Michigan navy beans and braised salt pork for 40 cents.” A domed container stood on the counter with one of her apple pies beneath the glass. A slice was fifteen cents.

Alison walked over to the table where Jake sat.

“Can I get you something?” she offered. “The coffee’s hot.”

He smiled. “It always is. Nothing’s wrong with the way you run your diner, Allie.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said, but her lips curved anyway. Jake had called her that nickname since they were kids. He’d been three years younger than her and had teased her mercilessly anyway. She had always been more restrained than him, perhaps because she’d been an only child. He, on the other hand, had run around with brothers and dogs in a world of confusion and color.

“Sit with me,” Jake said then, reaching up to touch her hand. Then he looked around. “You’re usually busier than this.”

Alison smiled as she removed her apron and folded it over the back of the chair that held her coat. “Everyone’s coming tonight. For my Christmas Eve Special.”

She was proud of her diner even if it was only hers for another thirty-two hours.

A winter light came in through the square windows that ran along the length of the sheet metal walls. She saw the pinpoints of copper screws that held her Worcester diner together with its double-barreled wood-paneled roof. The place needed extra heat in winter and was warm in summer, but Alison had worked hard to make her eatery a success. She had bought the diner with a loan from the bank five years ago, never thinking a time would come when she’d have to choose between her mortgage payments and medical treatment for her mother.

Later this afternoon, she would decorate with holly and mistletoe and pray that would be enough to make her customers feel like it was Christmas. Then, at the beginning of next year, she’d start her new job as a housekeeper for the Linden family, the only ones in Rosebud rich enough to have such a thing.

Jake shook his head. “You’ve got too big of a heart, Allison Norris.”

“These people — my customers — need me.”

“What they need is a bus ticket out of town.”

Alison had chances to leave Rosebudopyright © 2013 d fas right out of high school, but her mother was ill and she stayed. Her mother had died last month and Jake wanted her to move away with him then, but she couldn’t seem to cut herself free to do that. Not with her mother’s grave fresh in the cemetery.

She had waited too long to leave anyway and now she was planted in the soil of this place as surely as the trees in the town square.

“One simply does not leave one’s home because it’s inconvenient,” she said then not caring that her voice sounded prim. She was too old for the boy anyway. She would be doing him no favors by letting him take her away as though life was some grand adventure. She’d never lived anywhere but Rosebud and he was ready to take on the world.

Jake snorted. “I’d say this town is a sight more than inconvenient. The whole place is withering away. The corn all died, even the seed that managed to stay in the ground instead of being blown away. The factory closed and the farmers can’t make it through these black blizzards.”

Alison glanced over at Mr. Balter. He was hard of hearing, but she lowered her voice anyway. “Yes, they can. The farmers might have needed to come to Rosebud for the winter, but come next spring they’ll be back out to their farms plowing their fields. Maybe there won’t be any more of those sandstorms.”

Jake shook his head. “The bank knows. We get the reports.”

“What reports?”

“Those black blizzards picked up all of the topsoil around here and blew it to the east coast,” Jake said. “There was no sun for days. Nothing but that gray murky air. Then we heard there were mounds of sand piled so high in the fields it suffocated half of the cattle around. Any seeds the farmers planted were blown away. Why would they stay? Nothing’s going to be made right in one year. They can’t pay their mortgages and feed their families.”

“They stay because it’s still their home,” Alison said fiercely. “You should understand. You grew up around here. Don’t you have any memories? Any sense of belonging?”

“You know I have memories,” he said, looking at her in the way he always had. “You’re in them all. I don’t need to look back to know what’s in my heart.”

“Then why?” she asked. “Why do you have to leave?”

“We had twenty-two days of straight black blizzards in March,” Jake said. “My job at the bank won’t be here forever either if this keeps up. We had prairie sand cover cars left too long beside the road. The children were coughing up dust for weeks. And that was after the factory closed down. Only a fool would stay around here.”

Alison stood up. “Then I’m a fool.”

Instead of putting her apron back on, she went over to the window beside the door and flipped the open sign backwards so it said closed.

“You really are going someplace,” Jake said as he stood. “I could drive you if you want. The snow makes the ground slippery. That way you won’t have to walk.”

“We’re talking a taxi,” she informed him.

“We?www.allisonbrennan.comedvo” Jake echoed the word in surprise.

Alison nodded and gestured to the older man. “Me and Mr. Balter.”

Jake didn’t say anything, but she could see the thoughts racing through him. She had always told him she should marry an older man just like he should marry someone younger. It was the way things were in the world. He had laughed and said that was all nonsense.

“But he’s got to be fifty years old,” Jake finally protested.

“Keep your voice down,” Alison whispered.” Besides, you’re the one who always said age doesn’t matter.”

“But?” Jake sputtered again until she smiled.

“I’m taking him to the doctor. That’s all,” she added softly.

“Then I’m definitely driving you,” Jake said. “You might need help getting him inside once you get there.”

Alison nodded. “Thank you. He’s almost finished eating.”

Jake stood and looked at the other man. “So why isn’t he coming tonight? With the others?”

“Someone needs to stay and look after his grandson,” Alison said. “And some of the other babies. It’s too cold for them to be outside that long. Everyone else just bundles up as best they can and makes the walk over from the factory cottages.”

“Maybe the other children should stay back too,” Jake said. “There’s a big storm coming in tonight.”

Alison grinned at that. “The children will come no matter what. I’ve promised them that Santa Claus will be here. Most of them have never met the man.”

Jake stared at her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you more excited.”

Alison could feel the pink in her cheeks. She was looking forward to tonight.

“Christmas is for the young,” she said as she looked over and saw that the older man had finished the last of his food.

“Are you ready, Mr, Balter?” she asked as she stepped over to the other table and picked up the man’s plate, silverware, and cup. “I’ll just set this in the kitchen while you get your coat and hat on.”

Within minutes, Alison was seated in the passenger side of Jake’s black Ford coupe. The older man was in the back seat. Jake tooted his horn before pulling out onto the street.