All in One Place (11 page)

Time to leave. “Thanks for saving me from the hope-'n'-scope guys. Enjoy your evening.”

Jack's expression stayed somber, and as I walked away I had to force myself to keep looking ahead. I could feel his eyes on
my back.

W
hat are you doing spending your evenings in a bar, girl?” Cor DeWindt glowered up at me as I set his coffee in front of him.

“Harland, Montana. Where secrets go to die.” I sighed. “I didn't figure Jack for the tattletale type.”

“Jack? Did you see Jack last night?” Cor's eyebrows shot up in interest.

Deflect. Deflect.
“I went to the bar to meet a friend. So how did you know I was there?”

“My friend was telling me about a pretty young girl with curly hair and freckles who looked like she was laughing at some
private joke. I figured it most probably was you.” Cor gave the sugar container an extra shake and set it down.

“I thought you weren't supposed to have sugar.”

“I thought you were smarter than that. Going to a bar in a strange town.”

“Don't change the subject.”

“Father Sam isn't here yet—you don't need to do his job.” Cor wrinkled his eyebrows at me, but I figured his frown was worse
than his bite. “And you, Miss Bar-goer, don't need to lecture me on my habits when it looks like you've got a few bad ones
of your own.”

“Is Father Sam coming?” I needed to get Cor on another topic. This one was heading to nowhere land.

“He's late this morning. Probably listening to some older woman trying to make her confession, and then he'll give her some
job to do, and she'll think it's all over until she sins again.”

“At least she has some supervision,” Father Sam said, coming up behind me.

“So, Father Sam. Got the flock all sheared and herded up?” Cor asked, giving the half-empty sugar container a surreptitious
push back to its original resting place. “Now they're shriven so they can go out and do it all over again.”

“It has been a busy morning.” Father Sam slipped into his booth and gave me a conciliatory smile. He wore his collar today,
and a dark jacket, which gave him a very official air. But official in a comfortable way. He looked like a man a person could
trust.

Cor glanced up at me. “You're not Catholic, are you?”

“She has the look of a Protestant, I think,” Father Sam said.

I wasn't sure how a Catholic or a Protestant looked, but I wasn't about to become either. God and me—not so much with the
talking. He didn't bother me; I didn't bother Him. “Father Sam, would you like tea with your pie? Banana cream is back on
the menu.”

“That would be lovely. Thank you.”

The smile and the extra warmth in his voice touched a forgotten emotion and created a deep, inexplicable yearning for a father
I never knew, and for my sister, whom I did know but who was embarrassed by me.

I hurried away, discomfited by my reaction. He was just being polite. And I was speed-reading more into his comment than was
meant.

On my way back to the kitchen, I refilled the cups of an older couple buried in their newspapers. The rest of the diner was
empty, and Helen had taken advantage of the quiet to duck out to the bank.

The sun shone brightly. The day was off to a promising start. Then I walked into the kitchen and into the whirlwind.

“You're lazy, that's what. Fiddling with that computer when you should be doing books. Reading when you should be prepping.”
Mathilde's face had turned an alarming shade of purple as she shook her fist at Lennie, her shrill voice piercing the morning
quiet. “If it wasn't for me, this place would go down the tubes.”

What was Mathilde doing here? The kitchen was supposed to be a no-Mathilde zone for at least another hour.

“Our only customers are Father Sam and Cor and the Dubinskys, and all they do is camp and drink coffee.” Lennie rubbed the
side of his nose as he spoke, then scratched the side of his head.

“Stop doing that. You look like a moron when you do that,” Mathilde screeched.

I was about to make a strategic retreat when Mathilde whirled around and caught me in her crosshairs. “And you!” she shouted,
stabbing the air with her pudgy finger, little bits of saliva silvering the air between us as visions of tuberculosis and
influenza danced through my head. “Lazy. Sneaking food in the bathroom.” She nodded, her eyes narrowing as she glowered at
me. “Don't think I don't know about that burger Helen slipped you your first day here.”

I should have taken Helen more seriously when she warned me about Mathilde's X-ray vision.

“I'm sorry. I hadn't eaten anything, and I didn't want to eat in front of the customers.” I kept my voice even, hoping that
reasonableness would do what sucking up wouldn't.

Mathilde's sour look showed no promise of reconciliation.

I swallowed back the retort I so longed to give her as my hands crept instinctively back to the ties of my apron, ready to
undo the knot and pull it off. A symbolic gesture that, in the universal language of waitresses, says, “I quit.”

And then what? I thought of Leslie—of the money I owed her and of my mostly empty wallet. Of Jack's intent look when he told
me I had to stick around.

Whether I liked it or not, for the first time in my life, I was in a situation where I couldn't really afford to quit a job,
to walk away. Against my own will, I was stuck. And because I was stuck, I had to find a way to work with this horrible woman.

The idea choked me almost as much as the words I forced through my tight throat. “I'm sorry, Mathilde. It won't happen again.”

“You bet it won't.” She held my gaze a beat, driving her point home, and I conceded by looking away, giving her the tactical
advantage.

I slipped out of the kitchen before she had a chance to ask me where Helen was. The coffee wasn't ready, so I stared at the
dark liquid dripping into the pot and wondered what I was doing to myself. When I left Seattle, I promised myself that I was
never going to let anyone humiliate me again. I was never going to let anyone have control over my life.

Now, a week after making that promise, it was happening again. The only way to get through this was to find a way to get into
Mathilde's good graces.

The laughter from the television mocked my morose mood. I glanced up at the television set that Mathilde insisted stay on
while she was working. A rerun of
Laverne and Shirley,
Mathilde's favorite show, flickered back at me. I pulled a face at their relentless cheerfulness.

And then I had a sudden flash of rare and brilliant insight.

T
he time was right. The breakfast rush was over, and the lunch rush was still an hour away. The diner was almost deserted except
for Father Sam and Cor, who were locked in an intense theological debate while playing their usual game of cribbage.

I punched Cor's and Father Sam's lunch orders into the POSitouch, glanced at Mathilde, who was, as usual, glaring at the computer
screen and muttering. Then I took a breath and took a chance.

“Mathilde! A stack of Vermont. Burn one; take one through the garden and pin a rose on it. And frog sticks in the alley.”

Mathilde stared at me. The three customers within hearing distance stared at me.

Then, while I stared down Mathilde, wondering if maybe this time I had truly lost my job, I saw the most peculiar sight. Mathilde's
face lost its scowl, and—could that be? Was I seeing things? No. There it was.

The glimmerings of a smile.

“You put that into the POSitouch?” she said, catching herself in time, her glare slamming over the glimmer.

“Didn't even have to 911 it,” I replied.

She nodded, acknowledging my comment, pushing a plate under the warming lights. “Order up, soup jockey.” Then she started
making Father Sam's pancakes, the stack of Vermont, and Cor's hamburger and fries, the burned one and frog sticks.

Helen was on her break, and as I walked past her to get coffee and hot water for Father Sam and Cor, she looked up from the
crossword puzzle she was doing. “What have you started?” she hissed, sticking her pencil behind her ear.

“Get to memorizing, Laverne,” I said through the side of my mouth.

The bells above the door jangled, and a peculiar, unwelcome lift rose in my chest as Jack stepped in.

He gave me a little wave as he walked over to his father's table.

I snagged the pot of Java and walked over, determined to be a mature adult woman in charge of her life. Or at least taking
charge of her life.

“Terra's been giving her orders in that old-fashioned diner talk,” Cor said to Jack. He gave me a grin. “What do you call
apple pie and ice cream?”

“Eve with a lid, cold cow in the alley.”

“You're making that up,” Jack said.

“Just the cold cow part. Couldn't find a reference to ice cream,” I said, pouring his coffee.

“Well done,” Father Sam said. “I think it's fun.”

I gave them all a mocking curtsy and as I rose, caught a smile from Jack that didn't bode well for the detachment I was still
cultivating.

Then the lunch rush came in earnest. I had a chance to use a few more slang terms, which garnered me an ice-age thawing from
Mathilde. Polar ice caps do not melt in a day.

Helen and I picked up the pace, and Mathilde redirected her energy to getting orders out, but the third time I came to Father
Sam and Cor's table to give refills, Jack was gone. Cor must have noticed my surprise. “Jack got a call but he left his money,
and said to keep the change.” Cor handed me a sheaf of bills and added a smirk.

Normally, I'd be thrilled with a tip that high, but knowing it came from Jack created a mixture of embarrassment and discomfort.

I pocketed the money, filled Cor's cup and Father Sam's pot, and ran off to take care of the next tableful of customers.

The rush slowed to a trickle. Kingdoms rose and fell, and still Father Sam and Cor sat, secure in their preeminence over anyone
who might want that table.

“I hear confession as a sacrament,” Father Sam was saying, leaning back in his chair as I lingered, cleaning up the tables
close to them. “Community needs to celebrate God's love in a tangible way, and confession is a part of it. Spoken confession
releases sins to the community of believers. As Karl Adams says, ‘The absolution granted in confession is more than an expression
of hope; it is a consolation.’”

Those words were as much a foreign language to me as the diner slang I had used was to most of the patrons of the diner. But
I tucked them away, liking the way Father Sam spoke them. Something small and unformed was resurrected with the words
consolation
and
confession.
I couldn't see my way clear to consolation; my life was too full of mistakes and sins. But maybe Amelia, who had her baby
to think of, could use some solace. Some consoling. Some comfort.

“Hey, Terra,” Cor asked me as I filled their cups again, “how do you get an elephant into a matchbox?”

“Open it up?” I hazarded.

“Take all the matches out.”

I laughed obediently, but as I looked up, my heart fluttered.

Through the large plate-glass window that Cor and Father Sam usually sat beside, I saw Leslie getting out of her car.

T
here she is,” I heard Anneke's energetic cry, and then my niece was dodging the chairs in the diner, her arms wide open as
she ran toward me. “I missed you, Auntie Terra,” Anneke said, catching me by the waist and throwing me off balance. “I missed
you so much.”

I gave Anneke an awkward pat on the head as patrons in the restaurant gave us both an indulgent smile. I realized that I looked
the part of the doting aunt being embraced by a loving niece, but I knew the reality was that Anneke had a forgiving nature
mixed with a flair for the dramatic.

“Hey, Leslie,” I said to my sister as I gently extricated myself from Anneke's spindly grip. “Good to see you.”

Leslie's curt nod told me that in spite of my very responsible phone call before she left for Virginia City, my name was still
written in pencil on the birthday calendar, to allow quick removal in case of further familial disappointment. But as she
came closer, I caught the heartening glimpse of a faint smile teasing the corner of her mouth.

I pulled myself away from Anneke, grabbed a couple of menus, and led them to an empty table.

“After you hike-hitched, we had a wiener roast,” Anneke said, trotting alongside me, her words spilling out as fast as her
lips could move. “And Tabitha fighted with Jennifer, and Auntie Judy burned her tongue on hot chocolate, and I gave her a
kiss but didn't give a kiss to Joseph when he got a bloody nose. Auntie Gloria made s'mores, and Uncle Gerrit said they were
lec… lecable… What was that word, Mommy?”

“Delectable. It means tasty,” Leslie replied.

“Would you like something to drink?” I asked Leslie as Anneke paused her play-by-play long enough to wiggle onto her chair.

“Sweet tea for me, and Anneke will have a chocolate milk.”

“Auntie Terra, Nicholas ate a worm,” Anneke informed me, folding her hands primly on the table. “And Mommy said his tapeworm
would give it money for the run.”