Three Wishes (2 page)

The last was from a trucker, one of the regulars. Another round of applause broke out when she wrapped her icy hands around his bull neck and gave an affectionate squeeze on her way to the kitchen.

Flash, the diner's owner and executive chef, met her at the swinging door. A near-f gallon of milk hung from his fingers. “It's bad again,” he said, releasing the door once she was inside. “What're we gonna do? Look of the roads, no delivery's coming anytime soon.”

“We have extra,” Bree assured him, opening the refrigerator to verify it.

Flash ducked his head and took a look. “That'll be enough?”

“Plenty.”

“Seventeen's up, Bree,” the grillman called.

The diner sat fifty-two, in ten booths and twelve counter stools. At its busiest times, there were lines out the door, but bad weather slowed things down. Barely thirty-five remained now. LeeAnn Conti was serving half. The rest were Bree's.

Balancing four plates holding a total of twelve eggs, twelve rashers of bacon, six sausages, six slabs each of maple nut and raisin toast, and enough Flash browns to crowd everything in, she delivered supper to the men in seventeen, the booth to the right of the door. She had known the four all her life. They, too, had gone to the local schools and stayed to work in the area, Sam and Dave at the lumber mill three towns over, Andy at his family's tackle store, Jack at the farm his father had left his brother and him. They were large men with insatiable appetites for early-evening breakfast.

The Littles, two booths down, were another story. Ben and Liz had fled a New York ad agency to run their own by way of computer, fax, and phone from Vermont. Along with seven-year-old Benji, five-year-old Samantha, and two-year-old Joey, they hit the diner several times a week to take advantage of Flash's huge portions, easily splitting three orders of turkey, mashed potatoes, and peas, or biscuit-topped shepherd's pie, or American chop suey. They were currently sharing a serving of warm apple crisp and a large chocolate chip cookie.

At Bree's appearance, the two-year-old put down his hunk of cookie, scrambled to his feet on the bench, and opened his arms. She scooped him up. “Was everything good?”

He gave her a chocolaty grin that melted her heart.

“Anything else here?” she asked his parents.

“Just the check,” said Ben. “That snow keeps coming. Driving won't be great.”

When Joey squirmed, Bree kissed the mop of his hair and returned him to the bench. At the side counter, she tallied the check, then put it on their table and set to cleaning the adjacent booth, where the drivers of the newly departed big rigs had been. She cleared the dirty dishes, pocketed her tip, wiped down the black Formica, straightened shakers, condiment bottles, and the small black vase that held a spray of goldenrod. She set out new place mats, oval replicas of the frying pan from the logo, with the regular menu printed in its center. Specials—“The Daily Flash”—were hand-written on each of two elliptical chalkboards high behind either end of the counter.

She moved several booths down to Panama's power elite —postmaster Earl Yarum, police chief Eliot Bonner, town meeting moderator Emma McGreevy. Before them were dishes that had earlier held a beef stew, a pork chop special, and a grilled chicken salad. All three plates, plus a basket of sourdough rolls, were empty, which was good news. When sated, Earl, Eliot, and Emma were innocuous.

Bree grinned. “Ready for dessert?”

“Whaddya got?” Earl asked.

“Whaddya want?”

“Pie.”

“O-kay. We have apple, peach, and blueberry. We have pumpkin. We have strawberry rhubarb, banana cream, maple cream, maple pecan, pumpkin pecan, lemon meringue—”

“Anything chocolate?” Earl asked.

“Chocolate pecan, chocolate mousse, chocolate rum cream—”

“How about a brownie?”

She might have guessed they were headed there. Earl was predictable.

“One brownie,” she said, and raised questioning brows at Emma. “Tea?”

“Please.” Emma never had anything but tea.

Eliot played his usual game, letting Bree list as many ice cream flavors as she could—Flash owned part of Panama Rich and stocked every one of its twenty-three flavors—before ordering a dish of plain old strawberry.

Working around LeeAnn, the grillman, the cook, the dishwasher, and Flash, Bree warmed the brownie and added whipped cream, hot fudge, and nuts, the way Earl liked it, and scooped up Eliot's ice cream. She served a chicken stir-fry to Panama's only lawyer, Martin Sprague, in the six spot at the counter, and pork chops and chili to Ned and Frank Wright, local plumbers, two stools over. With carafes in either hand, she topped off coffees down the row of booths, then worked her way along the counter.

At the far end sat Dotty Hale and her daughter, Jane. Both were tall and lean, but while Dotty's face was tight, Jane's was softer in ways that had little to do with age. Not that Bree was impartial. Jane was one of her closest friends.

LeeAnn had her elbows on the counter before them. In contrast to the Hales, she was small and spirited, with short, spiked blond hair and eyes that filled her face. Those eyes were wider than ever. “Abby Nolan spent the night
where?
But she just
divorced
John.”

“Final last week,” Dotty confirmed, with the nod of a bony chin. “Court papers came in the mail. Earl saw them.”

“So why's she sleeping with him?”

“She isn't,” Jane said.

Dotty turned on her. “This isn't coming from
me.
Eliot was the one who saw her car in John's drive.” She returned to LeeAnn. “Why? Because she's pregnant.”

LeeAnn looked beside herself with curiosity. “With
John's
child?
How?”

Bree smiled dryly as she joined them. “The normal way, I'd think. Only the baby isn't John's. It's Davey Hillard's.”

Dotty looked wounded. “Who told you that?”

“Abby,” Bree said. She, Abby, and Jane had been friends since grade school.

“Then why'd she spend the night with John?” LeeAnn asked.

“She didn't,” Jane said.

“Were you there?” Dotty asked archly.

“Abby just went to talk,” Bree said to divert Dotty's attention from Jane. “She and John are still friends. She wanted to break the news to him herself.”

“That's not what Emma says,” Dotty argued. Emma was her sister and her major source of gossip. “Know what else she says? Julia Dean got a postcard.”

“Mother,” Jane pleaded.

“Well, it's
fact,”
Dotty argued. “Earl saw the postcard and told Eliot, since he's the one has to keep peace here and family being upset can cause trouble. Julia's family is
not
thrilled that she's here. The postcard was from her daughter in Des Moines, who said that it was a
shame
that Julia was isolating herself, and that she understood how upset she had been by
Daddy's
death, that they
all
were, but three years of mourning should be enough, so when was she coming home?”

“All that on a postcard?” Bree asked. She didn't know much more about Julia than that she had opened a small flower store three years before and twice weekly arranged sprigs in the diner's vases. She came by for an occasional meal but kept to herself. She struck Bree as shy but sweet, certainly not the type to deserve being the butt of gossip.

“Julia's family doesn't know about Earl,” Jane muttered.

“Really.” Bree glanced toward the window when a bright light swelled there, another eighteen-wheeler pulling into the parking lot.

“And then,” Dotty said, with a glance of her own at that light, “there's Verity. She claims she saw another UFO. Eliot says the lights were from a truck, but she insists there's a mark on the back of her car where that mother ship tailed her.”

LeeAnn leaned closer. “Did she see the baby ships again, the squiggly little pods?”

“I didn't ask.” Dotty shuddered. “That woman's odd.”

Bree had always found Verity more amusing than odd and would have said as much now if Flash hadn't called. “Twenty-two's up, LeeAnn.”

Bree stayed LeeAnn with a touch. “I'll get it.”

She topped off Dotty's coffee and returned the carafes to their heaters. Scooping up the chicken piccata with angel hair that was ready and waiting, she headed down the counter toward the booths. Twenty-two was the last in the row, tucked in the corner by the jukebox. A lone man sat there, just as he had from time to time in the last seven months. He never said much, never invited much to be said. Most often, like now, he was reading a book.

His name was Tom Gates. He had bought the Hubbard place, a shingle-sided bungalow on West Elm that hadn't seen a stitch of improvement in all the years that the Hubbards' health had been in decline. Since Tom Gates had taken possession, missing shingles had been replaced, shutters had been straightened, the porch had been painted, the lawn cut. What had happened inside was more murky. Skipper Boone had rewired the place, and the Wrights had installed a new furnace, but beyond that, no one knew. And Bree had asked. She had always loved the Hubbard place. Though smaller than her Victorian, it had ten times the charm. She might have bought it herself if she'd had the nerve, but she had inherited her own house from her father, who had inherited it from his. Millers had lived on South Forest for too many years to count and too many to move. So she contented herself with catching what bits of gossip she could about restoration of the bungalow on West Elm.

None of those bits came from Tom Gates. He wasn't sociable. Good-looking. Very good-looking. Too good-looking to be alone. But not sociable.

“Here you go,” Bree said. When he moved his book aside, she slid the plate in. She wiped her palms on the back of her jeans and pushed her hands in the pockets there. “Reading anything good?”

His eyes shifted from his dinner back to the book. “It's okay.”

She tipped her head to see the title, but the whole front looked to be typed. “Weird cover.”

“It hasn't been published yet.”

“Really? How'd you get it?”

“I know someone.”

“The author?” When he shook his head, the diner's light shimmered in hair that was shiny, light brown, and a mite too long. “Are you a reviewer?” she asked.

He shifted. “Not quite.”

“Just an avid reader, then,” she decided. Not that he looked scholarly. He was too tanned, too tall, too broad in the shoulders. Coming and going, he strode. Flash bet that he was a politician who had lost a dirty election and fled. Dotty bet he was a burned-out businessman, because Earl told of mail from New York. LeeAnn bet he was an adventurer recouping after a tiring trek.

Bree could see him as an adventurer. He had that rugged look. His buying a house in town didn't mean much. Even adventurers needed to rest sometimes, but they didn't stay put for long. Panama bored men who loved risk. This one would be gone before long.

It was a shame, because Tom Gates had great hands. He had long, lean, blunt-tipped fingers and moved them in a way that suggested they could do most anything they tried. Bree had never once seen dirt under his nails, which set him apart from most of the men who ate here, and while he didn't have the calluses those men did, his hands looked well used. He had cut himself several months back and had needed stitches. The scar was nearly two inches long and starting to fade.

“I just finished the new Dean Koontz,” she said. “Have you read it yet?”

He was studying his fork. “No.”

“It's pretty good. Worth a shot. Can I get you anything else? Another beer?” She hitched her chin toward the long-neck on the far side of his plate. “You know that's local, don't you? Sleepy Creek Pale. It's brewed down the street.”

His eyes met hers. They were wonderfully gray. “Yes,” he said. “I do know.”

She might have been lured by those eyes to say something else, had not the front door opened just then to a flurry of flakes and the stamping boots of four truckers. Shaking snow from heads and jackets, they called out greetings, slapped the palms of the men in seventeen, and slid into sixteen, which meant they were Bree's.

“Nothing else?” she asked Tom Gates again. When he shook his head, she smiled. “Enjoy your meal.” Still smiling, she walked on down the line. “Hey, guys, how're you doin'?”

“Cold.”

“Tired.”

“Hungry.”

“A regular round for starters?” she asked. When the nods came fast, she went to the icebox on the wall behind the counter, pulled open the shiny steel door, and extracted two Sleepy Creek Pales, one Sleepy Creek Amber, and a Heineken. Back at the booth, she fished a bottle opener from the short black apron skimming her hips and did the honors.

“Ahhhhh,” said John Hagan after a healthy swallow. “Good stuff on a night like this.”

Bree glanced out the window. “How many inches would you say?”

“Four,” John answered.

“Nah, there's at least eight,” argued Kip Tucker.

“Headed to twenty,” warned Gene Mackey for the benefit of a passing, predictably gullible LeeAnn.

“Twenty?”

Bree nudged Gene's shoulder. “He's putting you on, Lee. Come on, guys. Behave.”

“What fun is that?” Gene asked, hooking her waist and pulling her close.

She unhooked his arm. “All the fun you're getting,” she said, with a haughty look. “I'll be back to take your order
once
I'm done scraping down plates.”

“I'll have my usual,” T. J. Kearns said fast, before she could leave.

“Me, too,” said Gene.

John pointed at himself and nodded, indicating beef pot pie topped with mashed potatoes and gravy, served with hunks of bread for dunking and whatever vegetables Flash had that day, buttered.