I didn’t make it into the diner that day, but this time, a bell dangling off the doorknob announced my entrance. The cash register sat in the same place, although the counter now sported wood pallets and metal sheeting, giving it a modern, industrial look. It didn’t fit with the country décor in the rest of the diner, but it was a step up from the old red laminate counter. The place was quiet with only a couple other customers. I found a booth by the door and scanned the menu sitting on the table. On the back of the menu was a note in memoriam:
DEDICATED TO ED AND JENNY JENKINS, THE ORIGINAL OWNERS OF JENNY’S DINER. WE LOVED THEM AND WILL KEEP THEIR MEMORY ALIVE.
“Miss Jenkins?” The voice came from the other side of the diner. I scanned the room until I saw a vaguely familiar man holding a hand up in greeting. He heaved himself out of his booth and lumbered toward me. It wasn’t until he stood by my table that I recognized him as Sammy Grosvenor. I smiled, but it was short and tight.
“Condolences for your loss, Miss Jenkins.” He wiped his hands on a napkin. Cornbread crumbs dotted the front of his shirt just under the Middle Bay Land Development logo.
“Thank you.”
“I remember your grandmother well. Was she still living in that delightful little bed-and-breakfast on the bay?”
“She was, and I’m the owner of the bed-and-breakfast now. Although I feel certain you already know that.”
He nodded. “Ah yes, that’s right. I do remember hearing that ownership had changed hands. Now would be a great time to sell, you know. Property values in Sweet Bay are on the rise. I’m sure you’d find a willing buyer if you were to ask around.”
“Let me guess. You’d prefer if I started with you.”
“Only if it strikes your fancy.” He smiled sweetly.
“I’m not selling, Mr. Grosvenor.”
“I don’t give up easily, Miss Jenkins.”
“Neither do I.”
He balled up his napkin and tossed it in the trash can on his way out the door. I released my breath and sat back in my seat.
“Sara, is that you?” I turned to see Mrs. Busbee, the new owner of the diner, walking toward me, tucking a dish towel into the apron tied around her waist. She hugged me, her doughy arms smelling of fried chicken, and set a glass of lemonade on the table in front of me.
“It’s good to see you,” she said. “Don’t you worry about ol’ Sammy. He’s always blabbering on about something or another. My opinion is it’s always best to just ignore him.”
“That’s my plan.”
“I was so sorry to hear about your grandmother. She was a big part of life around here.”
“Thank you. We got your chocolate pie at the house.”
“Good, good. Are you here for long, or will you be heading back to New Orleans? I’d sure love to get over there one day and see your shop. I bet I’d find a million things there I’d just have to have.”
It was a funny thing about small towns. People knew too much about me when I lived in Sweet Bay, so I left. Years later, people still knew my business, but now I didn’t mind as much. It was kind of nice to hear the pride in Mrs. Busbee’s voice.
“I’m sticking around for a bit. I’m doing some renovations at The Hideaway that’ll keep me in town for longer than I expected.”
“That’s wonderful. It’ll be nice to see your face around here again. I wasn’t sure if you’d ever want to come back in this diner. It must hold a lot of memories for you.”
Another customer waved at Mrs. Busbee. She tapped my menu with her finger. “Let me know if you want to order anything else.” She turned and, after grabbing a tea pitcher off the counter, made her way to the thirsty customer.
A small picture of my parents accompanied the memorial on the back of the menu. I’d never seen this particular photo before. They stood next to each other behind the counter, red aprons around their middles, my mom holding a metal spatula. Smiling, heads tilted toward each other, they looked satisfied with their life of running a small-town diner, living with a young child, and checking in on the family matriarch and her dusty old house.
They didn’t need much extra money—which was good, because the diner didn’t bring it in—or prestige, even though they had a lot of that. Everyone who came through Sweet Bay—especially tourists on their way to Gulf Shores—stopped at Jenny’s for a bite to eat. Everyone knew them. Everyone loved them.
I was staring into nothing, thinking about my parents, when the bell rang and a group of boys rushed into the diner, all laughs and jeers. They pushed each other around, joking about a teacher. One of the boys came too close to my table and bumped it. My lemonade tipped, and before I could grab it, the sweet liquid spread over the table.
“Oh . . . sorry,” the boy mumbled, before sprinting to his group at the counter.
I scooted to the side, but not before some of it dripped onto my lap. I moved farther over and tried to wipe the liquid from the seat.
“You don’t seem too upset about it,” said a voice from the edge of the table. I looked up. Crawford Hayes stood next to my table, eyes crinkled and smiling.
“Not much I can do about it now.” I pulled at the napkin container to keep him from seeing the pink flush creeping up my cheeks, only to find one napkin left in the box.
“Here, let me help.” He swiped a box from a neighboring table and dried the table, then grabbed a clean towel from Mrs. Busbee. “For your pants.” He handed it to me.
“Thanks. I can’t be too mad about it. Aren’t kids always jumpy after being cramped in school desks all day?”
He smiled. “Yeah, I remember that. You probably do too.”
“Not really.” I glanced at the boys now congregated at a booth in the back. “I was more of a homebody. Even though my home was—well, you’ve seen it.”
“You lived there? I didn’t realize.”
I nodded. “Not always, but I did for a while. My parents died when I was twelve, and I moved in with Mags. Living in a house like that with a bunch of old people is a great way to alienate yourself from people your own age.”
He was still standing next to my table, so I gestured for him to sit. Under the table, his legs brushed against mine. I moved my legs out of the way, then slid them back an inch or two.
“Wow, both your parents died? I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“So you left town the first chance you got?”
“Something like that. I moved away for college and kept the holiday visits short. I think in my mind, I’d already escaped, so I didn’t want to stick around too long.”
“Were you afraid you might stay? Because I have to tell you, as an outsider moving to Sweet Bay, this town seems perfect. It’s something about being right on the water and . . . I don’t know, maybe there’s something in the air too. I’m not sure I could ever leave.”
I must have sat on the end of Mags’s dock as a kid a thousand times while the rest of the world floated away—pelicans gliding overhead, fish jumping, the tide creeping toward the Gulf. Even back then, I couldn’t deny its allure.
“Sweet Bay is magical in its own way,” I said. “But it wasn’t for me—at least not when I was eighteen and ready for more than fish fries and pep rallies. I don’t think I worried I’d get pulled back in. I think I felt guilty because I knew I didn’t intend to move back.”
“And yet here you are, back in Sweet Bay. And you’re doing what your grandmother asked you to do. Not everyone would follow through with it.”
I shrugged. “Maybe you’re right.”
I sat up straighter in my seat and smoothed my hand down my hair. “Enough about me. Charlie said you’re the best contractor in Baldwin County, and you love old houses the best. Where’d that come from?”
He laughed again, the sound of it calming something inside me. “I told you he sticks his foot in his mouth.”
“No, he just sounded proud.”
“To answer your question, my parents used to live in a ninety-year-o
ld house back in Tennessee. They worked on it for my entire childhood. That thing was never finished—they were always working on some project or another. Once I was old enough to hold a hammer or use a hand sander, they put me to work. I guess that’s where I got my passion for old houses, for loving on them and giving them the attention they deserve. That probably sounds weird.”
His eyes turned down a bit at the sides when he smiled, making him look younger than he probably was.
I shook my head. “It’s not weird. Or if it is, it describes me too. I get it—it’s a passion you either have or you don’t.”
“Exactly. I did something similar to my house here. It was built in the 1920s as an old fishing house, and it was a train wreck when I bought it. The real estate agent thought I was crazy, but I promised her a gourmet meal in my new kitchen when I finished. She never thought she’d actually get the dinner.”
“Did she?”
“Sure did. I’m not much of a cook, so I overpromised. I ended up ordering from a restaurant and serving it on nice platters so she’d think I cooked it myself.”
“That’s terrible,” I said, laughing.
“She wasn’t there for the food anyway.”
I smiled. “I see.”
“No, I don’t mean that. She’s sixty years old and happily married. She only wanted to see what all I’d done to the house.”
“Was she impressed?”
He nodded. “It’s a fine house, I have to admit. Now it is, anyway. It took a long time and a lot of patience digging through years of ugly updates. I did most of the work myself, and I’m proud of it. It was a hard time in my life, and I was thankful for the distraction.”
He grew quiet and looked away for a moment. The bell rang again and two old men entered. They lowered themselves into a corner booth and one pulled out a deck of cards.
“I need to get back to the house. Bert is waiting on this.” I picked up the grocery sack I’d laid by my feet.
We walked out of the diner and I turned toward my car parked a few spaces up. The late-afternoon sun was warm on my face. The air was that perfect spring temperature when it’s hard to tell where your skin stops and the air begins. A faint Southern breeze lifted wisps of my hair.
He moved toward his truck parked across the street, then stopped. “We’ll probably be seeing a lot of each other at the house with everything that’s going on, but . . .” He cleared his throat.
He’s nervous. The thought caused a pleasant tightening in my stomach.
“I’d love to see you again like this. Separate from the house, I mean.” He jangled his keys in his pocket.
Why not? My life in New Orleans was a flurry of phone calls, customers, and client meetings. I pored over cash register receipts until late at night, mulling over every dollar made and lost. I often ate takeout because I wasn’t home enough to go to the grocery store. Mitch was the closest I’d come to having a boyfriend in a while, but my life was so taken up with the shop, I hadn’t even stopped to consider whether I wanted him to be my boyfriend.
But here in Sweet Bay, I had nothing taking up my time except the house. No late nights, no early mornings. I had all the time in the world. Plus, Crawford seemed genuine. For one thing, he ate chocolate pie with Bert at nine in the morning because he didn’t want to seem unappreciative. And I’d found that people who loved old houses tended to be trustworthy.
I nodded. “I’d like that.”
He smiled and headed for the truck, turning once to look back at me over his shoulder.
18
SARA
MAY
Bert still couldn’t decide what to make for dinner even after he spread all the possible ingredients on the kitchen counter. He waffled so long, Major put his foot down. “Gumbo, minus the teriyaki. There’s your decision, old man. Oh, and use chicken. That shrimp was practically cooked by the time Sara got home with it. I don’t want a late-night run to the ER with food poisoning.”
“I can make it with chicken, but don’t forget, the roux—it takes a while,” Bert said, his hands already reaching for the peppers and onions.
“You mentioned gumbo, and now I’ve got a hankering for it,” Major said.
Dot and I watched the exchange from the doorway. “Major’s the only one who can get away with pushing Bert around in the kitchen,” Dot whispered. “Bert usually won’t stand for it, but I think he secretly wanted to make the gumbo to impress you. He just needed a reason to do it.”
I followed Dot out onto the porch. Glory was already there knitting and purling, a long strand of red yarn trailing from her fingers down into a basket on the floor next to her chair. Dot sat on the wicker love seat, but I was too jumpy to sit still. Both Crawford and Mags—the one from the old photo—danced through my mind. I stood by the screen door and surveyed the backyard.
After a few minutes of listening to Glory and Dot’s conversation, I sat down. I pulled out the old photo of Mags that I’d stuck in my pocket earlier. During a lull in their chatting, I held the photo out to Dot. “This is the picture I mentioned this morning.”
Dot pulled her glasses off the top of her head and settled them onto her nose.
Glory leaned over to take a peek. “Gracious. Is that Mags?”
I kept my eyes on Dot. I wanted to see her reaction. If she was as surprised as I was, she didn’t show it. She just stared at the photo and gave a slow nod. Then she reached up and wiped the corner of her eye. Glory patted her knee.
“Did you ever know Mags to look like this?” I asked.
Dot shook her head. “I moved in here in ’61. By then, she was a little . . . freer. Granted, she was nine months pregnant when I got here, so that might have explained her not wearing nice dresses and expensive jewelry. Even after she had Jenny, though, she never dressed like this. Now, Robert . . .” Dot cleared her throat. “He always dressed as if he could be called away to an important board meeting at any moment—or maybe he just wanted to look that way.” Dot rubbed her thumb over the date along the edge of the photo. “Nineteen fifty-seven,” she murmured.
She handed the photo to me and leaned back in her chair. She seemed to choose her words carefully. “Mags didn’t always dress and act like she did as we knew her. She had a different life before she arrived here—wealthy parents, high society, fancy parties.”
She might as well have been talking about some woman I’d never known. Mags in high society? I would have laughed had I not been so surprised.
“She was mostly quiet about that part of her life—quiet about much of her life, mind you—but she let things slip from time to time.” Dot smiled and tapped her finger on the arm of her chair. “I remember the first time she mentioned anything about her old life. It was my wedding day, about a month after Mags had Jenny. I’d picked out a beautiful orange taffeta number for her to wear as my one bridesmaid, and she was not happy about it. She had a hard time zipping up her dress in the back, so I helped her get it up the last couple of inches. She moved and twisted, trying to get comfortable in the dress. Finally, she flopped down on the bed and said, ‘Lord, I’ve always hated tight dresses.’
“I laughed, thinking she was kidding. I’d never seen her wear anything other than baggy blue jeans, big tops, and wool socks. What in the world would she have to do with tight dresses? So I asked her.
“‘Oh, I used to wear them,’ she said. ‘Formal dresses, pearls, and an embarrassingly large diamond ring.’ You can imagine my shock. Probably much like yours now,” Dot said.
I nodded. I thought of the ring in the box in the attic. It was a diamond, but it wasn’t large or embarrassing.
“She lay on the bed, fiddling with the boned bodice of that frilly orange dress. She said, ‘I thought I was done with these things for good. No offense—it’s a nice dress.’ Then she hopped up off the bed and pulled me out the door, saying I wouldn’t be late to my own wedding on her watch.”
“Did she say anything else?” I wanted to hear more.
“Later that night
after everything had died down, she told me it had been a perfect wedding. Now, it wasn’t much—just the other guests in the house, a few friends from the neighborhood, and Bert’s brothers from Florida. I wore a dress from Irene’s Dress Barn on Main Street, and Bert and I exchanged rings we bought at an estate sale. I didn’t need any more than that, but I was a little embarrassed in light of what Mags had said about that large diamond ring of hers. I figured such a ring would have called for a rather large wedding, much fancier than the one we’d just had. I told her as much, but she laughed and said, ‘Dot, you can’t imagine the wedding I had.’ I started to defend our little wedding, but I’ll never forget what she said next. ‘I never knew how much I wanted uncomplicated love and a simple wedding until the chance was gone.’ I don’t know what her wedding was like, but she was so wistful, it made me appreciate what I had with Bert even more.”
I picked up the photo of Mags again. It was hard to imagine her life had ever included fancy parties and an elaborate wedding. The ring from the box would have fit in perfectly with a simple wedding and uncomplicated love. Why didn’t she get what she wanted?
I pulled the postcard out of my pocket and handed it to Dot. “This was in the box too.”
She read the words on the back, her lips barely moving.
“You made the right choice.”
Dot cut her eyes over to Glory, who leaned forward to see. Dot handed the card back to me. “I don’t know what that means,” she said, but her eyes said something else.
Somehow, Mags had gone from wearing fancy dresses and pearls to a bird’s-nest hat and rubber waders. Did it have something to do with her parents? Her mother? I wanted to ask, but Dot stood and called back into the house.
The Hideaway Page 12
