by Kylie Logan
Over the last months, I’d pared down most of the clutter. I’d given some of Rocky’s mementos to Sophie, the sister of my foster mother and the owner of the Terminal at the Tracks, because Rocky and Sophie had been friends since college and I knew no one treasured Rocky’s memory like Sophie did. Other things—mountains of lace tablecloths, piles of linen napkins, stacks of floral handkerchiefs—I’d offered to Inez and Dolly, the waitresses over at the Terminal, and to Declan’s various sisters, sisters-in-law, and cousins because really, there was only so much I needed and I figured I might as well spread the beauty. The parlor where Rocky had died I’d completely redone; I’d bought new furniture, painted the walls, switched out the area rug Rocky loved so much—one with a white background decorated with huge pink and blue roses—for a tasteful Oriental in shades of maroon, tobacco, and sage. The bedrooms that had been packed with gorgeous things, artsy things, whimsical things, were pared down to the essentials. The kitchen . . .
Well, I’d been busy at the Terminal, and I hadn’t gotten to the kitchen yet. It wasn’t a big room, but Rocky had made sure to pack as much of her French heritage as she could into every corner. Whitewashed cupboards, a floor made of wide, oak planks, walls covered with things like a Grateful Dead poster, a painting of chickens in a farmyard, and a framed photograph of Julia Child. Autographed, no less.
Declan knew how I felt. But I guess it never hurt to remind him once in a while.
“This is home,” I told him.
“I just always wondered . . .” He shrugged his wide shoulders in a sort of uncertain movement that didn’t mesh with his intelligent, take-charge personality. “I guess I’m just worried that one day you’re going to wake up and realize that life on a farm in Ohio is nothing like life in Hollywood.”
“Thank goodness!” I said it and I meant it. While I was at it, I gave his hand a playful little slap. “You’re falling down on the job.” I held my coffee cup out to him. “How about a refill?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He got up and filled my cup and his own then came back to the table. “You know . . .” He held out my cup to me. “As long as you’re planning to stick around . . .”
I knew what he was going to say. He was going to ask me to marry him. Again. And this time, like every one of the other times, I was going to be tempted to say yes.
Until I remembered that I was not the marrying kind.
“We’ve been through this,” I reminded him. “You know what I’m going to say.”
“You’re going to tell me that growing up in the foster system, you never had a really good role model as far as what happy families are like. That’s why the Fury clan is here, you know.” He gave me a broad wink. “To show you how it’s done.”
I couldn’t leave it at that. “You know how I feel about you.”
He sipped his coffee before he said anything. “Exactly why it’s maddening.”
“It’s just as maddening for me! Maybe if I was on more stable footing when it comes to relationships—”
“Maybe you just need to give it a chance. You know, step out of your comfort zone. Take a chance. Try something new.”
My wet clothes might have been discarded, but my hair was still soaked and a giant drop of water plopped on the table between us. “Something new? You mean like growing my own tomatoes? You see how successful I’ve been at that.”
“I see that you’re the type of woman who’s determined enough to try again.”
He was right. I was, and I would order more tomato plants, and I would plant them after the middle of May, and I would make sure I got tomatoes from them if it was the last thing I did.
But growing tomatoes and getting married—those were two different things.
Chapter 2
I might not know squat when it comes to tomatoes, but I was right about the Terminal—the first day we featured Italian specials on the menu, we were slammed.
This, of course, is a very good thing. Before I’d arrived from California and had the brainstorm of featuring a new ethnic food each month, the Terminal was, to put it kindly, floundering. There are only so many folks in Hubbard, Ohio who enjoy old-fashioned foods like fried baloney and onions, meatballs over rice, and tuna casserole. To please them, we still kept those dishes on the menu, but these days, we featured new foods, new recipes, innovative combinations. It hadn’t exactly put the Terminal on the map when it came to up-and-coming trendy restaurants, but it brought in a steady stream of customers and, truth be told, that was fine by me.
Ever since I’d left Meghan’s Malibu mansion in the middle of the night, I’d been flying under the radar, culinary-wise. I didn’t want publicity or the high life. I’d found a home in Hubbard and friends I could share my life and my dreams with (and Declan, of course!) and that had made me realize I didn’t need the prestige of A-listers drooling over my vanilla bean crème brûlée and swooning like they did the time they showed up in the wee hours after the Oscars presentation and I was so bold as to serve peanut butter and jelly sandwiches along with Argentine Torrontés.
These days, I was happy providing good food to nice people. Yeah, I know, it sounds corny and a year ago, I wouldn’t have believed it myself, but the truth is, it was enough for me.
In the Terminal kitchen, I considered the thought as I paged through the cookbook I’d used to take bits and pieces of one recipe, dribs and drabs of another, and come up with a recipe for tagliatelle pasta with asparagus and marjoram. It was a popular menu item and sold well all day and I’d use the recipe again later in the month, so I stuck the piece of paper where I’d scrawled my version of the recipe in the book and tucked the cookbook in a drawer rather than put it back on the shelf. The orecchiette with broccoli, chili, and anchovy sauce . . . well, I thought it was as delicious as it looked in the picture in the other cookbook I put back on the shelf, but it hadn’t gone over so well. Something about anchovies just turns people off.
Finished reshelving, I took a quick look around the kitchen. The Terminal wouldn’t close for another hour and a half and if that day was like every other Thursday, orders would be slowing down, but that didn’t mean customers would stop coming, or that we would stop working. There were still enough breadsticks, I could see that, and a big bowl of salad that could be dished out as it was ordered.
“Got everything you need?” I asked George, our cook.
George is a man of many tattoos, a lot of muscle, and few words. He grunted, nodded, and went back to stirring a pot of minestrone.
That was good enough for me. I pushed through the swinging kitchen door. Right outside it was our overflow area and I was pleased to see that two of the tables there were occupied. We’d need to push all four tables in that area back against the walls the next day when Luigi Lasagna and His Amici (yes, I know, corny name for a band but they were actually pretty talented) would play and our customers would take to the small dance floor like they did every weekend we featured ethnic music. On my way through, I checked the tables to make sure they all had centerpieces of tiny Italian flags stuck into mason jars filled with dried pasta and headed into the fifteen-by-fifteen entryway, where I assured the two groups of customers waiting to be seated that we’d be right with them, gave them menus so they could start looking over our selections, and slipped behind the front counter, where Sophie Charnowski, wearing a green, white, and red scarf, was seated on a high stool and ringing up sales.
“We’re having a good night.” She gave my arm a squeeze. “Everyone’s thrilled about this month’s menu. They say it’s the best Italian food they’ve ever had and they’re going to tell all their friends and they can’t wait to come back again.”
Sophie was older than middle-aged, rounder than plump, and so in love with the Terminal, her eyes glowed with excitement. She leaned nearer to me. “You’re a genius.”
“Not so much,” I told her. “It’s just that everyone loves Italian food.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said, and while Sophie took care of the sale, I went into the main part of the restaurant, stopping to chat with customers, making sure our waitresses had everything they needed.
As its name implies, the Terminal at the Tracks is housed in an old train station. Before I’d arrived and taken over management of the place for Sophie when she had knee-replacement surgery, the decor had been . . . ahem . . . well, if Sophie knew what I really thought, it would break her heart and I adore her too much to let that happen. Let’s just say the decor was homey and as long as I’m saying that, let’s add that I don’t mean that in an especially complimentary way.
Sophie’s was a wonderland of old posters, old teddy bears (most of them wearing Victorian outfits), and old lace.
Lots and lots of old lace.
Sure, the decor fit in with a building that had been erected more than one hundred years earlier, but lace and greasy spoon restaurants are not exactly a good combination, aesthetics-wise or when it comes to cleaning.
Little by little, I’d gotten rid of most of the bears and all of the lace, and if Sophie minded—or if she even noticed—she didn’t say a word. I have a feeling she’d been wanting to purge the place of its flamboyant decorations for years but never found the time and never had the energy. I’d left the old railroad photographs in place—timetables and pictures of hulking old engines and the crews of hardy men who ran them—because trains were one of the things people loved about the Terminal. Heck, six times a day, a train still rolled by outside the back windows and shook the old place to its foundation, and every single time, customers stopped eating and talking and just oohed and aahed and watched in wonder.
Here in the main part of the restaurant, we had eight tables lined up against the far wall next to the windows that looked out over the railroad tracks and more tables on the other side of the jut-out wall that marked the back of the waiting area.
There was a man, alone, at one of the tables. Though he was concentrating on the newspaper in front of him and his head was down, I could see that he had bulging cheeks and although it was still nasty outside after the morning’s ice storm, it was comfortable enough inside the Terminal that I was surprised to see him wearing a tattered gray overcoat dotted with raindrops. His black fedora looked like it had seen better days, too, and there were smudges of mud from his shoes on the floor near his table. He had nothing in front of him but that newspaper and a cup of coffee.
“Inez!” When our waitress breezed by, I buttonholed her and lowered my voice. I glanced at the man. “I haven’t seen him in here before.”
She shook her head. “New one.”
“Did he order dinner?”
“Just coffee.”
“Did he even look at a menu?”
Another shake of her head made Inez’s dark curls gleam in the light. She looked where I was looking, then pulled me farther from the table. “I’m thinking homeless.”
“I’m thinking hungry.” My mind made up, I zipped back to the kitchen and when I came out again, I was carrying a plate of tagliatelle.
“Excuse me.” I stopped at the man’s table. “I wonder if you could help me out.”
The man didn’t look up at me. Instead, he tucked both his hands in his lap and glanced to his side just enough for me to see that he wore dark-rimmed glasses and behind them, his eyes were rheumy. His eyebrows were dark and bushy and one corner of his mouth twitched. His voice sounded like tires crunching over gravel. “Whaddya want?”
“Some help.” I gave him a smile I was pretty sure he couldn’t see since he refused to make eye contact. “You see, this is our first day of featuring Italian foods on our Ethnic Eats menu and—”
He sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
I kept on smiling and while I was at it, I lied like a pro. “I’m developing this recipe, you see. For pasta with asparagus and marjoram. And I’m anxious to include it on our menu but I’m not sure it tastes exactly right. I was wondering if you’d try it out for me.”
“You wan’ me to—”
“Eat the pasta, yes.” I set the plate down in front of him.
“But I . . .” He kept his gaze on the steaming plate in front of him. “See, I’m not very hungry and—”
“And you really would be helping me out. I know I’m being pushy, but I get really nervous when I’m trying out a new recipe. Oh, it’s not like I’m going to charge you for it!” I pretended this had just occurred to me. “I’m asking you as a favor, so your meal is on the house. Won’t you give it a try? You don’t even have to eat the whole thing. Just a few bites. And when you’re done, let me know what you think, okay?”
Rather than make him feel even more uncomfortable, I turned and went back up front and when I did I saw that the entire Thursday-night bowling league from over at Bowladrome Lanes in Struthers was waiting for tables. After that, things got a little hectic, what with dishing up fourteen salads and popping more breadsticks into the oven and helping George plate ten tagliatelle, two liver and onions, a hamburger, and a fried baloney (and not one orecchiette). I never even thought of the man in the fedora again until we were just about to close. That’s when I was going to duck into the office to look over the day’s receipts and saw him peeking into the window in the kitchen door.
“Hi!”
At the sound of my voice, the man winced. He wasn’t quite as tall as me and when he turned around, he didn’t look up, so pretty much all I could see was the top of his hat.
He scraped one shoe against the wooden floor. “I was uh . . . That is, I, uh . . .”
I hoped my voice was enough to convey my smile. “So how did you like the pasta?”
“That’s what I come to tell you. To find you. To tell you, yeah, I wasn’t hungry or nothin’, but it was ah . . . it was pretty darned good.”
And with that, he darted around me and took off and I watched him dash out the front door.
“Well, that was weird.”
“Weird?” Dolly, our newest staff member, had bleached-blond hair that she wore piled on top of her head and a love of red lipstick and sparkly earrings. She was short and stocky and she’d been a waitress since forever so I wasn’t surprised when she said, “I’ve seen it all. That one, at least he was pleasant.”
“Was he?” I craned my neck to try and get a better look out the front windows, but the man was long gone. “He seemed pretty sullen to me.”
“Chatted up a storm with me!” Dolly was efficient and never backed down from a job, no matter what I asked her to do so I cut her some slack when it came to the fact that she thought herself the world’s greatest waitress. “It’s all on account of my gift, I suppose. I could make that there wall talk if I had a mind to. It’s a talent, you know. After you’ve been serving people as long as I have, oh yes, it’s a talent you develop, all right.”
This I did not dispute. Besides, she was right. I hadn’t gotten Mr. Fedora to say more than a couple of words at a time. If she’d gotten him to open up and brightened his evening, three cheers for her.
I left her and Inez to the last of the cleanup and went into the office, where Sophie already had her butt down in the desk chair and her feet on the guest chair.
“What a day!” Her sigh was monumental, but then, so was her smile. “Laurel, you’re the best thing that ever happened to this place.”
“I seriously doubt it.” When she swung her feet off the guest chair, I sat down and while I was at it, I rubbed a fist to the small of my back.
“If it wasn’t for the ethnic foods—”
“I never would have had a chance to put ethnic foods on the menu if it wasn’t for you keeping this place going over the years,” I reminded her. “Speak
ing of which . . .” With one hand, I urged her to get up and get moving. “You won’t be around to keep it going for more years if you don’t get home and get some rest. It’s late. Go ahead. Go! I can take care of counting out for the day.”
She did her best to look uncertain at the same time she reached for her purse. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Just make sure George and the girls are gone and everything’s locked up when you leave. I’ll be done in another hour.”
“And then you’re going home?”
It wasn’t what Sophie said, which was, on the face of it, an innocent-enough question.
It was the way she said it.
With that little lilt to her voice, the one she used when she was poking around, looking for answers even though she figured she already knew them.
It was the way she tilted her head so that her shaggy bangs fell into her eyes.
It was that smile of hers, small and bright and knowing.
“Sophie!”
“I didn’t say a thing, did I?” She jumped out of her chair with far more energy than a woman of her age should have had at the end of a long day. “I just asked if you were going home.”
“Yes.” I grabbed the pile of receipts on the desk and started flipping through them. “I’m going home.”
“Alone?”
When I looked up, it was to find Sophie with her mouth pursed, staring up at the ceiling.
“The innocent act isn’t going to work,” I told her.
She wrinkled her nose. “It’s not an act.”
“And it isn’t innocent, either.”
“Oh, come on!” She flopped back down in the chair, the better to look me in the eye. “I know Declan’s been going home with you most nights.”
