Flamingo Diner. Sherryl Woods
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While Emma was in with her mother, Matt watched Jeff warily. The kid was on edge. He hadn’t said a word, but Matt knew Jeff was craving something that would take away his pain. Maybe he’d turn to alcohol, maybe drugs. Either way, Matt could have told him that the pain would still be there. He’d made his own share of mistakes along those lines. He knew the signs and he knew there were no easy answers.
“I’m going out,” Jeff announced to no one in particular.
“Where?” Matt asked.
“None of your business.”
“Your brother needs you.”
“Andy’s fine.”
“Oh, really? He didn’t seem that fine to me when he left the house.”
Jeff’s belligerent expression faltered. “He’s not here?”
“No.”
“He was right here. Why’d you let him leave?”
“Frankly, I thought you’d go after him. I thought maybe you’d see that he was hurting. We’re talking about your kid brother, Jeff. He needs you.”
“He’s probably outside,” Jeff said, half to himself, as he headed for the back door.
Matt considered leaving it to Jeff to look out for his brother, but he didn’t entirely trust him not to run off. He followed Jeff outside. He had a pretty good idea where Andy had gone. Years ago Don had built his sons a tree house in a sprawling banyan tree in the backyard. Matt had spent many an hour up in the hideaway with the younger boys.
With its twisted trunk and gnarled branches, the tree had inspired Jeff and Andy to claim that the tree house was haunted. At night, the fantasy had been especially easy to believe. It had been years since Matt had climbed up into that old tree, but that was the first place a distraught Andy would think to go.
Sure enough, even from the ground, Matt could hear Andy’s choking sobs. Jeff deliberately made as much noise as he could crashing through the higher branches until he emerged on the rotting platform that had once been the scene of their greatest childhood adventures.
From below, Matt could see that Andy deliberately looked away, as Jeff carefully picked his way over to sit beside him, legs dangling over the edge. Matt moved to a spot just out of sight, there if they needed him, but willing to let the brothers work through this painful time on their own.
Sitting on the back step, Matt barely resisted the urge to light up a cigarette as memories flooded through him. As kids, they’d thought they could see the world from up in that tree, but it had turned out that the world was a much bigger place than they’d ever imagined. It wasn’t half as idyllic, either. The past twenty-four hours had proved that.
He listened for the sound of voices and was relieved when Jeff finally spoke.
“It sucks, doesn’t it?” Jeff said.
“I don’t get it,” Andy said, his voice choked. “Dad never drove fast. He couldn’t have missed that curve.”
“Well, he did,” Jeff said angrily.
“Do you think…? Was it because I messed up yesterday morning? I was trying to get up the nerve to ask Lauren Patterson on a date, and I wasn’t paying attention to the customers the way I should have been. He got really mad at me. Maybe he was still mad. Maybe he shouldn’t have been driving.”
“People don’t have accidents because their kid messed up,” Jeff said, poking his brother lightly in the ribs with his elbow. “Otherwise, every mom and dad in the world would be dead before their kids get out of their teens.”
Below, Matt bit back a grin. There was a world of wisdom in Jeff’s words and more than a hint of cynicism.
“Then why did it happen?” Andy asked again. “I don’t get it.”
“Dammit, Andy, give it a rest. Dad’s dead. That’s all that matters,” Jeff said bitterly.
Silence fell then and once again Matt felt an urge to light up the one cigarette he kept in his pocket as a safety net.
“Jeff?”
Andy’s voice was soft and scared, the way he used to sound in the dark of night when he thought there were monsters hiding under the bed. Matt had spent enough nights at the house to recognize it.
“Yeah, kid?”
“What’s going to happen to us?”
“We’ll stick together,” Jeff said finally. “You, me, Emma and Mom. We’ll figure things out.”
“Do you think Emma will stay?”
“Sure,” Jeff said.
“I called her and told her things were all messed up around here and she wouldn’t come home,” Andy said. “What makes you think she’ll stay now?”
“She will, that’s all. She’ll have to.”
Matt wondered if Jeff was right. Would Emma stay? He’d heard the guilt and self-recrimination in her voice earlier and guessed that she would hang around, if only because of that. But he hated that it had taken something like this to get her home.
“Well, I don’t want her to,” Andy said heatedly. “I don’t want her here. She wouldn’t come when I asked her to and it’s too late now.”
He scrambled down from the tree house and ran. Matt stepped in his path and caught him.
“Don’t take this out on your sister,” he told Andy quietly. “She’s hurting, too. You all need to stick together now.”
Andy uttered a curse Matt had never expected to hear cross the boy’s lips.
He leveled a look straight into Andy’s eyes. “What would your dad think if he’d heard that?”
“Well, he’s not here, is he?” Andy retorted, then brushed past Matt and went inside.
Matt sighed. Whatever had happened at the lake the night before, this family’s world was never going to be the same again.
4
Emma was stunned by her mother’s appearance. No matter the time of day or the occasion, Rosa had always taken such pride in herself.
“No one wants to be greeted by someone looking haggard and disheveled when they come in the door for breakfast,” she’d told Emma more than once, when Emma would have settled for a hastily combed ponytail, a pair of jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt to work at the diner. It didn’t matter to her mother that grease and spills were likely to ruin clothes faster than playing outside in the dirt.
Rosa always wore bright colors, skillfully applied makeup and a ready smile, even at 6:00 a.m. And even after a tiring, ten-hour shift at Flamingo Diner, she usually looked as energetic and tidy as she had when she’d greeted the first customer in the morning. Somehow she never spilled anything on herself.
Tonight, though, her thick, dark hair was in disarray, her cheeks were pale and she was wearing the rattiest old robe in her closet, the one she usually wore when she scrubbed the floors. Emma was as shocked and dismayed by that as she was by the lost look in her mother’s red-rimmed eyes.
“Oh, Mama, I can’t believe it,” Emma whispered, crossing the room to take her mother in her arms. Rosa, whose figure she herself had always referred to as pleasingly plump, felt fragile to Emma, as if all the familiar strength had drained out of her overnight.
“Neither can I,” her mother said, clasping her hand. “I’m so sorry, Emma. I should have been the one to call you, but I couldn’t find the words. I didn’t want to believe it had happened. I still don’t.”
“Neither do I, Mama.”
Rosa’s gaze drifted away, as if she were looking at something Emma couldn’t see. “I keep