22

Jerry’s Place looked more or less like a stereotypical small-town diner, and Kelli enjoyed the ambiance. It was mostly deserted at dinnertime, so when Kelli took a seat on a stool at the bar, the waitress immediately walked over.

She pulled a menu from the stand on the counter and handed it to Kelli. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Iced tea, please.”

The woman nodded and was quickly back with a tall, red plastic tumbler. “You ready to order?” The waitress was young, younger than Kelli, so there was no way she would remember Mimi. Kelli really didn’t have money to be spending on frivolous dinners, so she looked for the cheapest thing on the menu. “The chicken fingers, please.”

“You got it.” She wrote something on her pad of paper, then hollered back through the opening toward the kitchen. “Got a live one.” And she hung the order on a line in the window.

The TV was on above the bar, a news story about an uprising in the Middle East. Kelli looked around the small restaurant. There was a family at a round table to her left, and a young couple holding hands in one of the booths.

“I’m Siena, by the way. Give me a shout if you need anything and I don’t notice, like that’s going to happen. Not exactly a Saturday night hotspot, huh?” The waitress leaned on the counter across from her.

“Not exactly.” Kelli smiled toward her. “Have you lived here long?”

“All my life. How about you?”

“Just moved to town.”

“Really? Where from?”

“California.”

“What brought you to this dump?” She smiled as she said it, making Kelli think she actually had quite a bit of affection for the place.

“Long story. But a woman I knew in California used to work here, a long time ago. I’ve heard so many stories about the place, I decided I better check it out while I was in town.”

“Really? What’s her name?”

“Suze Huddleston.”

“Hey, Gramps”—she stuck her head through the order window—“do you remember a Suze Huddleston who used to work here?”

Kelli couldn’t hear the reply, but she went into panic mode. Giving Mimi’s real name made an Internet search to find her, and by association, Kelli’s father, a rather easy task. Of course, Huddleston hadn’t been Suze’s name when she was here, nor was it her father’s name when he was here.

Siena turned back toward her. “Jerry says he remembers a Suze, but he doesn’t recognize the name Huddleston.”

An older man appeared at the window and shoved a plate of chicken fingers and fries toward Siena. He had a head full of gray hair and bright blue eyes that seemed to twinkle. “You the one asking about Suze?”

Kelli nodded.

“There was a Suze Larson that worked here, before you were born, I imagine.”

Time to come up with a cover and quick. “That’s probably her maiden name, although I couldn’t say for sure. I didn’t know her that well. But she talked about working here.”

“She was a looker, I remember that. We started getting in a lot more men in our daily lunch crowd.” He grinned and shook his head.

“A looker, really?” Kelli tried to play dumb. “She must not have aged well, because that’s not exactly how I would describe her. Kind of dumpy, I’d say.” Mimi would be rolling over in her grave if she heard that comment.

“Too bad. She was a nice enough girl, just needed to find a decent man. Seemed like she always attracted the wrong kind, if you know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” Kelli looked down at her plate of food and realized she was no longer hungry. “Could I maybe get a box for this? I just remembered somewhere I am supposed to be.”

Kelli walked through the door to her duplex, her mind still working overtime from her visit to the diner. Had her father sat at that same bar? Or did he always sit in a booth so the two of them would have more privacy when he came in?

Knowing better than what she was about to do but needing to do it anyway, Kelli went back to the box of letters from Opal and pulled out the next one.

Great news, Mom! You know how I told you that David has all of these church-related guilt issues about our relationship? I found him the absolute BEST book, written by the pastor of a megachurch. It’s called Putting the Happy Back in Your Life. While the book has lots of good points about a lot of things, there is an entire chapter devoted to issues that make divorce acceptable. One of these issues is if the wife neglects the husband or makes him feel undesirable. Of course, that is exactly the case for David. David has been reading up on it all. I can see that he is finally coming to realize that just because he goes to church, it shouldn’t mean that he has to spend the rest of his life in a miserable and unfulfilling marriage. He is finally starting to see the light. He told me last night that he is sure that God would want him to be happy.

Now that he has started to understand the truth, maybe it’ll be a happy ending for all of us.

I’ll write again soon.

Love,
Suze

Kelli wondered who this megachurch pastor was. She couldn’t remember any religious books in her parents’ library. Maybe after they’d found enough information to justify what they wanted to do, they’d quit looking altogether. She pulled out the next letter.

Mom, I have the most awful news. David finally agreed that it was time to tell his wife about us. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, I mean, they were planning to get divorced.

He went home tonight all prepared to tell her he was leaving and she hit him with her own news first. Mom, you’re not going to believe this. That little witch is pregnant. I know she did this just because she must have found out about us and wanted to mess things up. Of course now David is torn with guilt and says he can’t possibly leave his wife while she’s pregnant, and blah, blah, blah. He didn’t even tell her about us.

To be honest, I don’t understand this at all. They’ve been staying in separate rooms for several years now, so she obviously tricked him into sleeping with her just to try to stage something like this. Why he doesn’t see it is beyond me. I will try to make him come to see the truth. A man shouldn’t be responsible for a woman he no longer loves and a baby he never wanted. Right?

Oh, Mom, I’m just devastated right now. I don’t know what I’m going to do. How could she be so selfish?

Suze

A baby he never wanted? Is that what Kelli was? She picked up the phone. “You’re not going to believe what I’ve found now.” She read the entire letter to Denice.

“Kelli, I know that you know better than this. Everything about that letter tells me that Mimi was only seeing what she wanted to see. All that stuff about your father already planning to get a divorce, isn’t that what married men always say to their younger girlfriends? ‘My wife doesn’t understand me, we sleep in separate rooms, I’m planning to leave her soon.’”

“Maybe, but it makes me wonder. Did my mother get pregnant on purpose so that Daddy couldn’t leave her? Did Daddy really never want me?”

“If that were true, why would he have taken you along?”

“I don’t know. But these are the kinds of answers I need to find before I leave here.”

“Find ’em fast and get out of there before someone figures out who you are and what you’re doing.”

“Agreed. I’ll call and check in tomorrow.” Kelli lay back in her bed, but she didn’t close her eyes in sleep for a long time. She kept rolling the scenarios over and over in her mind. No matter how she looked at it, she always ended up with the same three-word conclusion.

An unwanted child.