Everything about the diner was familiar, from the watered-down ketchup to Mr. Fisher’s complaint that the meat loaf used to be better. But today it glowed. Even the dust on the faded plastic flowers in the window ledges caught the sunlight and cast shadows. And Marydale had the feeling the world had gotten larger because everything had come closer: the smooth polish on the plates, the origami of newsprint crumpled on an empty table. Every detail was beautiful, and she tried not to think about the past or the future.
“Marydale, I need you to take table twelve,” Frank called out from the kitchen. “I know it’s Tippany’s section.”
“Sure,” she answered without question.
Four men sat at the table. She didn’t recognize them from town. The youngest must have been nineteen or twenty and the oldest seventy, but they all wore the same pale, starched shirts. The older men wore large wire-frame glasses with lenses that extended down their cheeks, as though they might grow a second set of eyes under the ones they had now.
“Wicked are the ways of the world,” one said as she approached.
“And they let her work here?” The youngest man still had the decency to whisper.
“We are bathed in sin.” His older companion nodded seriously. “But the harlot always wears a tin crown.”
Marydale had met men like this before: voyeurs from little towns like Spent, Hayrail, and Deten. They thought a feeble attempt at proselytizing and some talk about sin pitched so she could hear it excused their curiosity. She didn’t care. If they knew, Kristen knew.
She whipped their plates onto the table with practiced efficiency, noticing that Frank had undercooked their hash browns and left off their bacon.
“You okay?” he asked after they left.
She had almost forgotten about the men. She had barely noticed them. But she said, “It’s slow. Could I take the rest of the day off?”
Frank looked around grudgingly. “Yeah. Go.”
The Firesteed Summit looked almost as beautiful in the daylight as it did at night, although in the daylight she could see the smoke from the California wildfires blurring the distance. Marydale sat in the back of her truck, one arm wrapped around Lilith. She rubbed her knuckles against the dog’s wide, flat head. Lilith looked up at her with beady eyes.
“It’s not going to last, is it, girl?” she said.
Lilith just turned her head to the vista. Marydale did, too, trying to focus on the last detail she could see before the landscape disappeared into the smoke. Was it a barn? The outline of an irrigation circle? A road she wasn’t allowed to drive on because the conditions of her parole bound her to Tristess County the way blood and marriage bound everyone else. She had been ready to leave when Aaron Holten had reared up behind her, his thick arms bowing out at his sides like a cartoon strongman. I’m going to show you what a real man does.
Back at home, Marydale decided not to cook dinner until she had talked to Kristen, but by four in the afternoon, she had been waiting so intensely, her anticipation hung in the air like the high-pitched buzz of long-distance power lines. She went out into her garden and picked greens for a salad, then thawed a breast of chicken. Then she was putting a potpie in the oven. It seemed like time in the kitchen expanded while the clock’s count of seconds slowed to a crawl. Finally, at six thirty, Kristen’s car pulled into the driveway. Marydale froze, a towel in her hands.
“What a fucking day!” Kristen called out as she entered the house. “I am so glad to be home.”
Home.
Kristen slowed down as she entered the kitchen. “Hey,” she said, her voice softening.
Marydale wanted to fall into her arms. “Hey.”
Kristen crossed the kitchen floor, leaned up on tiptoes, and kissed Marydale on the lips, in the kitchen, with the lights on and her briefcase in her hand. Marydale wrapped her arms around Kristen and held her close, trying to breathe in every detail.
Marydale spoke into Kristen’s hair. “We have to talk.”
Kristen stepped back. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“Not like that,” Marydale said quickly. “I just…I want to…We have to talk about my story…my past. I mean maybe we don’t have to, but we haven’t.”
Kristen put her bag down and took Marydale’s hand. “About your parents?”
It was all so obvious. Even the old men from Spent knew. Only the memory of her poor mother, bless her, kept it from the lips of the town gossips. Now, with Kristen watching her, touching her, Marydale didn’t know how to begin.
“I’ve never had a boyfriend or wanted one, not even when I was a kid,” she said. “And I’ve been with women. A lot, I guess. But never like last night.”
“What do you mean?” Kristen asked gently.
“A lot of the girls around here think it’s a sin. We’d kiss, but that’s all. And when I was in, no one was ever gentle with me. There wasn’t time.”
“Someone forced you?” Kristen asked.
“No.” Marydale hesitated.
Kristen’s forehead was smooth, but her face was full of worry. Marydale touched the silky sweep of her hair.
“You know I was in the Holten Penitentiary, right?”
Kristen stepped back. “What?” Shock and confusion spread across her face.
“Oh God,” Marydale said. “They didn’t tell you.”
“Who told me?” Kristen turned like a boxer anticipating a blow.
“Everyone knows.” Marydale was surprised by her own voice because there was no air in her lungs.
Kristen picked up her briefcase. “Tell me what?” Her voice was cold.
“I was in prison.” Marydale couldn’t look up.
“Convicted?”
“Yes.”
“Of what?”
Marydale sank into a chair. The smell of burning potpie filled the kitchen.
“No one talks about it, but they talk about it all the time. They talk about it without talking about it. But they didn’t tell you.”
“What were you in prison for?” Kristen demanded.
“When you came into the restaurant the first time, I liked you so much. And then you came back and you moved in. I thought maybe they’d told you. Maybe it didn’t matter.”
“What were you in prison for?” The question pressed against Marydale’s chest, crushing her breath. “What the hell were you in for?”
“Murder.”
Kristen stumbled back, tripping on a peeling seam in the linoleum.
“Was it a DUI? Were you drinking that shitty whiskey and driving?”
“I would never do that.”
“Then what?”
“I killed a boy named Aaron Holten. He is…He was Ronald Holten’s nephew.” There it was. The newspaper had told a hundred versions of the story, but they all led to that night. “I was young.”
“You’re fucking young now!” Kristen said in a tone Marydale had never heard before. “I am the prosecutor in your town! You asked me to live with you. You fucked me. I’m not even supposed to go into bars. I could lose my job. I could lose my license, everything I’ve worked for! And you didn’t once think that you should mention that you were a felon? A murderer.”
Kristen clutched her briefcase to her chest. “I’m going to go to my room. I want you to leave the house, give me two hours. I won’t be here when you get back, and don’t come after me. Don’t talk to me. I don’t know you. You had no right…” She took another step back. “You don’t have the right to look at me.”
With that she left.
Slowly Marydale undid her apron, crumpling the soft cotton in her hands. She looked around the room at the faded wallpaper and painted cupboards, just old paper and old paint, all of it laid down by her father.
And she remembered Gulu pulling her aside, an arm around her neck, half embrace, half throttle. You’re on the new, so I’m gonna give you some advice, Gulu had said. You cry too much. With that, she had punched Marydale in the stomach, knocking her breath out. While she was struggling to inhale, Gulu had pulled her close and whispered into her hair, Crying works sometimes. Even some of these bitches’ll soften up for a little fluff like you, and the bulls, too. But you’re in it for a dime, and sometimes, in here, the only thing you got at the end of the day is you not crying.