The New Hope Cafe

by Dawn Atkins

  “I miss Grandma Price,” Beth Ann said. “I miss her disco songs.” All those nights her mother spent with men in clubs had come to some good, Cara thought. At least her mother had been good to Beth Ann.

  “And I miss Serena…so…much.” Tears welled in her eyes, and Cara’s heart ached for her. “Can I call her one time?” Beth Ann pushed up onto her elbows. “I could use the phone in Rosie’s kitchen. Just for three minutes. Please?”

  “You might slip and say something about where we are and Serena might slip and talk to Grandma Price or your father.”

  “We won’t. We’re good at secrets. Please, please.” The agony in her daughter’s face was almost more than Cara could bear. Beth Ann had lost so much already. She was so vulnerable, so shut down, unable to talk with Cara about what had happened.

  What could it hurt? One three-minute call on a stranger’s phone?

  “We can’t risk it.” The domestic violence counselor had told her of women who’d made one quick phone call home and been caught. If Cara let Beth Ann break the rule once, her daughter would push for more. Better safe than sorry.

  Before they left Barstow, she’d broken apart their cell phones and thrown the pieces in different Dumpsters because of the GPS locators. She’d closed out their email accounts, too.

  “You’re mean.” Beth Ann flopped back into the pillow, angry now.

  “I’m keeping us safe.” Beth Ann didn’t understand the extent of the danger. Barrett was a family lawyer. He hired investigators all the time. His wealthy mother would spare no expense in helping him track Cara down.

  P.I.s had access to all kinds of databases and tricky ways to glean information. Barrett had once crowed that he’d located a deadbeat dad through the man’s subscription to a hunting magazine.

  She couldn’t take a chance. They had to stay invisible. “Remember what we agreed. If you have to tell anyone where we’re moving, say Denver, okay?”

  Cara should have told Rosie that right off. People in small towns were nosy and Cara had roused Rosie’s curiosity by evading her questions.

  She sighed and reached for the cord to close the blinds. Out the window, she saw Jonah sitting on a wooden swing on his deck. A black cat stalked toward him.

  “Look at that,” she said, pointing. “A cat’s sneaking up to Jonah.”

  Beth Ann turned her body to look out the window.

  “Jonah’s pretending not to notice.” He stared steadily ahead.

  The cat slinked up until its head was under Jonah’s dangling hand. Without looking, he scratched the cat. From here, she could see he was smiling. Cara felt a rush of tenderness.

  “Do you think I can pet the cat?” Beth Ann asked.

  “You can ask Jonah tomorrow.” She dropped the blinds, then gazed at her daughter, who still seemed nervous. “Would you rather sleep with me?”

  Beth Ann took a deep breath and made herself be brave. “No, thanks.”

  It broke Cara’s heart every time her daughter refused her comfort. She’d never forget when Beth Ann visited the hospital after Cara came out of the coma. Cara had held out her arms and Beth Ann had backed away.

  Losing her daughter’s trust felt worse to Cara than nearly dying.

  “If you change your mind, I’m next door.” She shut off the reading light. The peace sign sent a golden glow from the doorway.

  “Jonah’s kind of grouchy,” Beth Ann said. “Maybe he won’t let me pet the cat.”

  “I bet he will. He put in the night-light for you.”

  “He did?”

  “So you could see your way to the bathroom. And he made sure you had this lamp to read by.”

  “So he’s grouchy, but nice.”

  “Mostly nice, I think.”

  “I like the light.”

  “You can tell him tomorrow. When you ask about the cat.”

  “Okay.” She sounded calm now, thanks to Jonah’s thoughtfulness. “Good night, Mom.”

  “Good night, sweetheart.”

  Back in her room, Cara undressed and got into the bed Jonah had slept in as a kid. When their father had his troubles. With alcohol, she assumed. And Jonah had been through something awful related to children based on what Rosie had started to say. Had he and his wife been unable to have any? Had he lost custody?

  Not her business at all, but she couldn’t help being curious.

  Cara closed her eyes. She needed all the sleep she could get if she was to start work at five. She was glad, really. Staying busy slowed the churn of dread and panic in her head. Working at the café had distracted her from her troubles. For those hours, she’d felt more herself. She enjoyed meeting the customers, tracking orders, juggling tasks, timing her moves so no one waited too long for a refill or their tab.

  She turned onto her side, hoping to fall right to sleep. Five o’clock came early. What about Barrett?

  He would go to Cara’s mother, of course, where he knew they were staying. Her mother would tell him anything she knew. She’d thought Barrett walked on water from the moment they met, when Cara was sixteen. He was the attorney who convinced her mother’s unstable boyfriend to leave the state.

  Her mother believed Cara had exaggerated Barrett’s behavior, that Cara’s injury had been an accident. But then Deborah Price believed men over women, even to her own detriment. Or her daughter’s.

  The betrayal hurt all the same.

  Cara would have expected it from Barrett’s mother. Alice Warner had despised her from the beginning. The punitive prenuptial agreement she’d insisted on should have been a clue, but Cara had been too blinded by love to realize it. She would never forgive herself for being so trusting, so naive.

  The divorce attorney Alice had hired had kept child support as low as possible. Alice had offered a “supplement,” as long as Cara and Beth Ann moved into her guesthouse and complied with her “house rules.” She was building a case to win custody of Beth Ann, Cara realized.

  The worst blow of all, the most outrageous, was that Barrett had won supervised visitation rights with Beth Ann when he was released.

  The judge’s rationale was that Barrett had never harmed or threatened Beth Ann or struck Cara in Beth Ann’s presence. So, in theory, Cara was breaking the law by keeping Beth Ann away from him.

  As soon as she could save the money, Cara would hire an attorney to reverse that decision, but that was down the road.

  Cara’s mother would help Barrett however she could, Cara knew. She had told her mother nothing of their plans, simply packed up, traded Barrett’s BMW for her mother’s sedan, said goodbye and driven off.

  What if her mother had overheard a phone call with the domestic violence counselor or peeked at Cara’s laptop’s browser history? She’d tell Barrett. What if he was on his way here?

  The thought burned through her.

  They were sitting ducks, trapped here, just off the highway, with a broken car. She gulped air and sat up, dripping with sweat, scared out of her mind. She felt small and helpless, like the mouse she’d been in the marriage.

  Cara heard the whine of a saw. Looking out the window, she saw golden light glowing from Jonah’s woodshop windows. He was working in there. It was a peaceful thought.

  What had he said to her? You’re in good hands.

  The words had felt so right, she’d almost cried. Remembering felt like a cool cloth on a hot forehead.

  She lay back down. Barrett couldn’t know they were here. The shelter expected her so
metime this week, so there was no urgency there. She’d already made over a hundred bucks, which would help pay for the car.

  You’re in good hands. Her muscles loosened, her mind let go, and the next thing she knew her travel alarm was giving out its high-pitched beep.

  She dressed in stretchy capris, a cool yellow blouse and comfortable sandals, peeked in on her sleeping daughter, then followed the smell of coffee to the kitchen.

  “Left you a mug’s worth,” Rosie said, not looking up from her paper.

  Cara filled the rooster-shaped mug Rosie had set out for her and took a sip.

  “Paper guy told me Rusty’s still not back from the bachelor party,” Rosie said, sipping from a matching mug. “Long drive from Yuma.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “I don’t know. You’ll get a better price tomorrow. People with hangovers want someone to pay.”

  Her stomach burned. Another delay. Another day’s wait and she still didn’t know how much it would cost to fix.

  Rosie leveled her gaze at Cara. “You’ve got your troubles. That’s clear. I’ve been there. Like I said, I was swirling the drain when Eddie hauled me up.”

  Her words caught Cara short. She sucked in a breath, nervous about what Rosie had guessed about their situation. Would she tell anyone? The police? Barrett, if he showed up? Or an investigator he sent?

  “I’ll pay cash under the table and you can live here free. That’s the deal.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Rosie, but as I explained—”

  “You’ve got a mysterious job in some secret city. Right.”

  “Denver. It’s not a secret. And I do have a job. No mystery.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Secretarial.” She wasn’t sure, but it was a good guess.

  Rosie looked at her the way her grandmother would have—not buying it, but not minding the lie. “A job in the hand is worth one in the weeds any day. We both know that.”

  “I appreciate that. I do, but—”

  “I can keep my mouth shut when it counts, if that’s your worry.”

  “I’m sure you can, I just—”

  “Think about it. That’s all I ask.” She went back to her paper.

  “I will.” Cara gulped the coffee, rinsed the cup and started to go.

  “There are a hell of a lot of strawberries in the fridge.”

  “I got carried away, I guess.” She’d had so much fun in the garden she’d lost track of all she’d harvested.

  “You going to let them rot in there?”

  “I thought I’d make French toast in the café and use them. Jonah said no.”

  “Your French toast any good?”

  “Very. Plus, baked goods have a big profit margin.”

  “Is that so?”

  “The lady who owned the diner where I worked told me that.”

  “Then get down there and get toasting.”

  “But Jonah said—”

  “Hell’s bells, he’s all bark and no bite. Go down there and tell him that junk about profit margin. Stand up for yourself.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  “Good. And remind him my sink needs fixing.”

  “Will do.” She grabbed the gigantic bowl of sugared berries from the fridge and left. She liked Rosie. She’d taken the same tone that her grandmother would have. Her grandmother had overcome tough times, too. She’d been poor, done most of the raising of her five younger siblings, but she’d plowed ahead, no matter what. She knew who she was and what she wanted. Cara wished she were more like her grandmother. And Rosie, for that matter.

  Rosie’s offer was tempting, it was true. The Phoenix job would be minimum wage, so it would take forever to save for new IDs and legal help. And being around Rosie felt reassuring.

  That was deceptive, though. It was a false sense of security. Phoenix was bigger, more anonymous. Safer. There was the shelter, too, with domestic violence counselors and kids Beth Ann could relate to, people who understood what they’d been through. She would stick to the plan. As soon as Rusty fixed her car, they had to go.

  * * *

  “WHAT THE hell is challah?” Jonah asked, adding a loaf of perfectly fine white bread to the stack that CJ had rejected for her blasted French toast.

  She’d hassled him from the minute she stepped into the café and it was too damn early to be hassled. Rosie must have told her to kick his ass because she didn’t back down one bit, no matter what he said.

  He hoped to hell Rusty Duvall would choke down a raw egg and some Tabasco and get going on her car.

  “Jewish egg bread,” CJ answered, her voice muffled because she was between shelves, pawing through all the breads and rolls he had in stock, her spectacular backside close enough to grab.

  Luckily, his hands were full of rejected bread.

  She backed out with two loaves of thick-sliced French bread. “These will have to do.”

  “Look, this crowd just wants a hunk of bread to soak up their yolks. Don’t expect many takers.” But his words fell on deaf ears. Pretty, shell-like ears that peeked from beneath her flyaway hair, but deaf to good sense all the same.

  She’d made real whipped cream because the canned stuff was gross, doing this really distracting wiggling and bouncing the whole time. He’d been so distracted he hadn’t noticed he had scorched the back of his apron until he smelled burned cotton.

  Now the bell jangled. “Customers.” He bent to look out the pass-through at the construction crew heading for a booth.

  “I need five minutes to get the bread soaking,” she said. “Can you see what they want? Hold the breads until I tell them about the French toast.” She scurried off. He couldn’t help but watch that hitch and jiggle she had when she walked. It wasn’t her fault exactly. What did they call it in the law? An attractive nuisance. Yeah. And he had the charred apron to prove it.

  Soon enough she’d wiggled out with coffee for the workers and returned with a triumphant grin. “They all want French toast.”

  “What they want is you,” he muttered, turning back to the stove.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he grumbled.

  She slapped batter-coated bread onto his griddle, drips and splats flying everywhere. “Flip these when they’re light brown, please. Also, you might use more butter on those fried eggs. The edges are crusting. Where’s the powdered sugar?”

  “Top shelf to the left. With the brown sugar.”

  She set off and he checked his eggs. They weren’t crusty. Or not that crusty. Dammit. He added butter. Everybody was a critic.

  “I don’t see it,” CJ yelled.

  Hell’s bells. He stomped into the pantry. She was reaching up from the ladder, her backside at eye-level, the edge of yellow lace panties peeking above her pants. Did her bra match?

  Focus, man. He hauled his gaze to the shelf, where she had her fingers on the right sack. “You got it.”

  She jerked, surprised by his voice, he guessed, and a cloud of powdered sugar drifted onto him and the floor around them.

  “You scared me.” She scampered down the ladder.

  “You called me in here.” Powdered sugar puffed from his lips with each word.

  “I’m sorry.” She was clearly fighting a grin as she brushed the sugar from his hair, then his shoulders, her breasts swaying gently before his eyes. The woman had a million ways to drive him wild.

  “There. All better.” She met his gaze, mere inches away. Powdered s
ugar sparkled in her hair, on the pale down of her forearms, and on her lips. Could they be as soft as they looked? Would they taste like the cotton candy she smelled of?

  “Something’s burning,” she breathed.

  No kidding. If the powdered sugar were gunpowder, it might have blown them sky-high. Then he smelled what she meant. Scorched bread. Her damn French toast. “Hell.”

  They rushed out together, banging into the doorjamb, bumping shoulders, but they caught the bread while it was still dark brown.

  CJ plated it with powdered sugar, strawberries and whipped cream, added it to the egg dishes and danced out to the workers.

  When she returned, she fixed a slice and held out a forkful for him.

  “I don’t have time to—”

  “Try one bite.” Her sky-blue eyes were lit with pride.

  “If it gets you back on the floor.” He dragged the morsel off the fork. Flavors exploded on his tongue. Tender bread, sweet with a zip of spice, tangy with strawberries and the whole effect made dreamy by the cream.

  “Not bad, if you like dessert for breakfast.”

  “Come on. I can see your pupils pulsating.”

  “You can see my…what?”

  “That’s a sign of pleasure.”

  “It’s a sign we need brighter lightbulbs.”

  “Don’t be such a poop. Admit it’s good.”

  “Did you just call me a poop?”

  “Would you prefer grouch?”

  “Yeah. More dignified.”

  “Deal. Not that you asked, but it’s the flour that makes the batter richer. And the honey gives it that bite.”

  “Big hassle for a side dish. Would you get the sugar off the pantry floor before we get ants?”

  “You’re such a p—”

  “Eh, eh, eh. Grouch, remember?”

  Jonah turned back to his grill, grinning despite himself.

  CJ pitched the new dish to every soul who wandered in and Jonah spent half the morning frying battered bread. The men, especially, went for it. But then what man could say no to CJ? He sure as hell couldn’t.