DUFFY’S DECISION TO go to the Rise and Shine for dinner had been a small act of rebellious self-preservation. Tootie had invited him over for fried fish and all the fixin’s at her house, but he needed a little time to himself. And if he had to hear his grandma and Aunt Leslie’s “if you put sugar in cornbread, that makes it cake” argument one more time, he’d lose his damn mind.
The Rise and Shine was a traditional diner with worn red vinyl booths and a shiny black-and-white checkerboard tile floor. The jukebox in the corner played exclusively classic country-western like Hank Williams Sr. and Patsy Cline. The race car–themed pinball machines had stood sentinel by the bathrooms for decades.
He spotted several friends as he made his way to his usual booth—George Pritchett, who’d recently been widowed and begun taking all of his meals at the diner, and Dobb Cunningham, who chose to take all of his meals at the diner because he could burn water. He nodded at them and waved. Lana was sitting at the counter, giggling with the very married Gig McHale over a plate of cheese fries. She tossed her hair back as she laughed, something that she did when she was interested in a new guy.
“Hi, Duffy,” she said when she saw him, her tone cool and indifferent, which was something else she did when she was interested in a new guy.
So it would appear that they were back to acquaintance mode. He shook his head, sliding into his usual booth in the back. He perused the menu, as if Ike Grandy hadn’t served the same food since his family opened the diner in the 1960s, and as if Duffy hadn’t been placing the same order since he was twelve—Coke, patty melt, no tomato, with tater tots. He glanced up at a familiar face one booth over.
“Marianne?” he cried.
Marianne jerked, halfway through a bite of her cheeseburger, and whipped her head toward her brother. Her mouth was full of bun as she exclaimed, “Duffy!”
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought you and Margot had book club tonight. You made such a big deal about it being a bonding activity.”
“Well, I went three times and hated it. It turns out that I love reading. I hate listening to other people’s opinions about what I read. But I liked having a Tuesday night all to myself. I mean, I love Carl and the boys more than anything, but sometimes the noise and the constant interruptions and the smell—dear sweet baby Jesus in the manger, the smell of the socks when they’re combined in the laundry room is enough to choke a horse . . . I’m getting off track. There’s something to be said for just a few precious hours of alone time, is all. So I come here and read a book and have a hot meal, onion rings I don’t have to share, and some blessed quiet.”
Duffy stared at her for a long silent moment.
She pressed her lips together in a sheepish expression. “Please don’t tell Carl.”
“Of all the secrets you have told me, that is the saddest.”
“Oh, please, like I don’t know you and Carl are just drinking beer every Thursday when you’re supposedly rebuilding that old truck,” she said, her color and her gumption returning all at once.
“In our defense, we were rebuilding the truck. But then we got stalled a couple of weeks back when an eBay seller failed to deliver on an alternator. We were afraid you would join another book club for Thursdays if we stopped meeting up every week, because you were so damn enthusiastic about going out every Tuesday. So we’ve been working on Lucy’s display cases. If we knew then what I know now . . .”
“Well, my point is that I knew about your little Thursday ritual and I didn’t say anything, because I know that Carl needs his time away from me and the boys, just as much as I need my time.”
“Then why don’t you just tell Carl that you quit the book club and you’re hanging out alone at the diner like some weirdo?” he asked, sitting down across the table from her.
“Because I don’t want to tell him I need time away from him and hurt his feelings!” she said, shaking her head at him. “Carl may know he needs time away from me and I need time away from him, but saying it out loud would be mean.”
Duffy shook his head. “I do not get married people.”
“You say that because you spent so little time being married,” she said, nodding toward Lana at the counter.
“Hey, keep the gloves above the belt.”
“Sorry, that was mean,” she admitted, lowering her voice and glancing at Lana. “So . . . Frankie says you and Lucy are officially courting. You fixed her shutters and everything. And that’s not even a euphemism.”
“Is there no privacy in this family? Have you been going through my texts? Did Frankie put some sort of spyware on my computer?”
“Well, that’s a possibility, but no, we got our gossip the old-fashioned way. Lucy told Frankie, who told me.”
Duffy felt oddly proud that Lucy had told people about their plans before he had. “And you don’t have anything more interesting to talk about than courtship and shutter repair?”
“Something more interesting than getting you involved in a mature, emotionally healthy relationship as opposed to you falling victim to the walking Hellmouth on a weekly basis? I am confident there is nothing more dear to the female McCready hearts. Tootie made a vision board.”
Duffy shuddered. “Change of subject. Did Mama tell you that Tootie finally saved up enough to send them off on their big cruise?”
“Really?” she said as Ike slid Duffy’s patty melt in front of him.
“And she booked the damn thing. Thanks, Ike,” Duffy said. Ike winked at Marianne and put a chocolate malt in front of her.
“So E.J.J. can’t get out of it, huh?” Marianne marveled, sipping her malt. “I never thought I’d see the day. And no, Mama didn’t tell me, because I’m not speaking to our mother right now.”
“Again? What set her off this time?”
Marianne rolled her eyes, much in the way she used to when she was fighting with their mom as a teenager. “What always sets her off? I opened my mouth and sound came out.”
“Did you give her advice again?”
“I never give her advice. I know better than that. I just mentioned that Fred Dodge asked after her and that I thought it was cute that they were still pretending not to like each other after all these years, when they were clearly sweet on each other. And it was like I tossed a match into a barrel filled with Dawson family hooch. Fwoom!”
“But she and Fred Dodge are sweet on each other, have been for years. They are the Sam and Diane of Lake Sackett. It’s obvious to everybody but them.”
“Yeah, well, she said something about me disrespecting Daddy’s memory by suggesting she could ever be with someone besides Daddy. She said I might as well go to his grave and dance on it.”
“She didn’t say anything about peeing on it, right? Because that’s what she says when she says I’ve betrayed Dad’s memory.”
Marianne grimaced. “No, but I have a feeling that this particular nuclear fallout will last a while. She hung up on me. And then mailed me her phone bits, just to emphasize that she was so mad at me that she smashed her cell.”
“Well, that’s healthy.”
“I just don’t know how to relate to her anymore without screaming. Somehow you always manage it.”
“Oh, no, there’s screaming, but I’m smart enough not to keep poking at her after the screaming starts, which is where we’re different.”
“I know, I can’t seem to stop. It’s compulsive. I’m sure Freud would say it has something to do with missing Daddy and resenting Mama for still being alive.”
“No, y’all started this long before Dad died. I’m pretty sure that you started bickering when you were still in her belly.”
“That’s probably true,” she said. “So, to review, Mama’s pissed at me, Tootie and E.J.J. are off to Aruba . . . what else is happening in the family?”
“Kyle’s still trying to wrestle Margot down the aisle,” Duffy volunteered.
She shook her head. “Still no date set yet.”
“Wow, that’s got to sting for Kyle.”
“I can’t blame her. Tootie made more than one vision board. The ‘Margot’s wedding’ board had glitter,” Marianne said. “A lot of glitter.”
“Well, that’s not good.”
“Maybe we can throw Frankie at the vision board as a sort of sacrificial lamb? Get Eric to propose? Surely Frankie owes Margot some sort of favor by now.”
“Getting married to a guy that she’s only been dating for a few months seems like a little more than a favor,” Duffy said.
“Maybe this cruise is coming at just the right time to distract her,” Marianne mused, sipping on her shake. “So does this mean that E.J.J. is retiring?”
“That’s always been the idea.”
“Kind of feels like an ending, which, with our family business, is considerable,” Marianne said, frowning. “You know George is thinking about retiring? Which would put me out of a job. Frankly, I think the only reason that he’s held on practicing as long as he has is because he wanted to keep me working, but the man is damn near eighty.”
Duffy sat back in his booth. Even with the town’s economic downturn, the McCreadys had never faced unemployment. While the marina had slowed some, death was a recession-proof business.
“Carl says I don’t have to work if I don’t want to, the garage is doing much better since he bought that second tow truck. But I don’t know, I don’t think I could be a stay-at-home mom. There’s nothing wrong with it, but I love to work. I love having somewhere to go every day and having adults to talk to.”
“You could always go back to law school. The town’s gonna need a lawyer if George is retiring . . . and Frankie is still living here.”
“It’s an idea. With the tourists coming back and businesses opening up again . . . yeah, the picture’s brighter around here. And the kids are able to be left alone for an hour or so without fires or pestilence breaking out. Well, Aiden is, anyway.”
“You know that Leslie and Bob and any number of relatives, including me, will be willing to watch your kids if it means you can go to law school. I won’t even joke about tying them up or stashing them in the closet.”
For a brief moment, an excited smile broke over Marianne’s face, but then she shook her head. “But law school’s so expensive. I’d have to take out loans and that’s not fair to the boys. They’re the ones with college coming up in a few years. I had my chance and I decided not to go. I don’t regret it. I’ve loved every minute of being married and having kids. So isn’t it sort of a betrayal to go back on that now?”
“Marianne, honey, do you love the law?” Duffy asked. “All the weird legal puzzles that you get to solve digging through dusty old books?”
“Well, we mostly use Westlaw archives on a computer, but yes.”
Duffy frowned at her insistent detail-picking. “So if you love it, you should go after it.”
“I really hate it when you’re right and get to play the wiser brother,” she said, sighing. “And yet, you don’t get to do it very often, so I guess I’ll have to put up with it.”
“Damn straight.”
“Are you going to tell Carl about my secret one-person cheeseburger club?” she asked.
“No, far be it from me to mess around in other people’s marriages.”
“Yeah, leave that to your ex-wife,” Marianne said, nodding again toward the counter, where Lana was still flirting heavily. It was humiliating for Duffy to realize it didn’t even hurt or surprise him anymore. He’d seen this cycle play out so many times, he knew exactly how it would end. Gig would promise her the world. Lana would give him a little piece of her heart. And then he would fail to deliver and Lana would end up on his doorstep with Maybelline Great Lash streaking down her cheeks.
And Duffy was just so tired of it. He didn’t want to be the one to prop her up. He didn’t want to devote hours to cheering her up when he knew he was just going to have to do it all over again in a few weeks. It wasn’t good for him or Lana and it would kill any chances he had with Lucy. It was time to let Lana go. It was time for him to develop a little dignity. But his sister didn’t need to know that, because the “I told you so’s” would be loud and plentiful and probably set to a gospel choir.
“Yes, I’ve said so, several times. But you married her anyway.”
“Not okay, Marianne. Not okay.”
LUCY SWIRLED ONE last swoop of dark chocolate frosting on the devil’s food cupcake. She wanted to perfect her ratios before the opening. Cupcakes were deceptively tricky. Underbake them and they were gross. Overbake them and they were dry and stuck to the inside of the throat like angry lint. Too much frosting made the treats oversweet and noxious, not enough made them underwhelming and sort of sad.
“Hey!” Duffy called, opening the front door of the shop, the glass flashing in the late-afternoon light. “I brought the shelves and cabinetwork by for you to see them.”
“Hi!” she cried, rounding the counter and wiping her hands on her bacon-themed apron.
Duffy was putting those considerable arm muscles into carrying short, narrow shelves painted white through the door. She planned to install several of them around the café area and line them with glass jars filled with sprinkles and nonpareils and Jordan almonds, anything colorful and edible. Additional shelves would be installed in the kitchen to store her cake stands and more architectural pans in a pleasing display.
“Oh, they’re great!” she exclaimed. “The paint job is all finished. We should probably let it cure for a day or two more before hanging them.”
“One more thing!” he said, jogging back out to his truck. Several minutes later, he wheeled in a dolly-load of varnished maple trim that almost looked like crown molding. He had a tool belt around his hips.
Duffy in a tool belt. Holy hell.
It took him no time at all to build a frame around the case, screwing the boards together at the corners. It looked polished and professional and when she hung the shelves and the frames, the shop would be complete.
“Thank you,” Lucy said with a sigh, throwing her arms around Duffy’s neck. “I really appreciate this.”
He smiled down at her and she awkwardly slid her arms away from him.
“So you’re almost ready, huh?”
“The opening is in two weeks, thanks to an anonymous yet effective force that pushed my paperwork through the approval process with the county.” She gestured toward the wall, where her business license and tax ID were proudly displayed. “Everything except the health department, which is supposed to be coming soon. I’m hoping that ‘soon’ means ‘next week.’ ”
“The Lord and small-town bureaucracy work in mysterious ways.”
“And yet, somehow, I think you had something to do with it,” she said.
“So no Specs today?”
“Yeah, he’s been coming in to help out with the prep work, but he had to take off early for an eye appointment. Apparently he has to go through an ‘annual’ exam every six months,” she said, frowning. “They’ve written in medical journals about him.”
“Well, Stan wanted to tell you how tickled he is that you’ve given Specs a job. He’s a real good man. He just needed the chance to prove himself.”
“I’m happy to. He’s got the talent for baking and he’s been a huge help to me,” she said. “I’m looking forward to Friday.”
“Good! Good. Good. Good. Good. Good,” he said, nodding. “That was a lot of ‘goods,’ wasn’t it?”
She laughed, pressing her lips together. “Yes, it was. Are you nervous about our date?”
“I wouldn’t say nervous, because that sort of implies that I’m dreading something. I mean, I get nervous about going to the dentist or paying taxes. And I’m definitely looking forward to our date a lot more than paying taxes.”
“That’s good to know.”
Duffy sighed. “None of this is coming out right.”
Lucy gently twisted her fingers into the neckline of Duffy’s T-shirt and pulled him close. She pressed her lips to his and he seemed to melt around her, pushing her back against the glass of the unframed display case. His large hands bracketed her hips and squeezed lightly. She moaned as he nibbled along her jaw, pressing her earlobe between his teeth.
“I’m really looking forward to our date, too,” she whispered in his ear. “And I’m a little nervous, but considering that kiss, I think we’re going to be okay.”
“Don’t suppose I could have another one?”
“Just one more,” she said, planting a kiss on him. “And then you have to leave, because I have to go pick up Sam from school.”
Duffy poked out his bottom lip, which she kissed one last time. She reached over the counter and presented him with a freshly frosted cupcake. “But I will give you this, to make up for rewarding this lovely cabinetry by tossing you out.”
He took a bite of the cupcake, groaning.
“It’s devil’s food cake. It’s your favorite.”
“Now, this is good. I mean, mind-alteringly good,” he said, licking frosting from his lips in a way that made her want to help him out. “But it’s not my favorite anymore.”
“What? I once saw you stuff two Hostess cupcakes into your cheeks because they were the last ones in the box and you were afraid Marianne would take them. You looked like a damn chipmunk.”
“Well, people change over time, Lucy. My palate has become much more sophisticated.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So what’s your favorite now? German chocolate? Coconut? Ugh, please tell me it’s not something involving raisins. Raisins are the worst.”
His nose scrunched up as he considered. “Nope. I think it would benefit me more to let you try to guess.”
He leaned forward and kissed her, the chocolate frosting making his lips all the sweeter.
“You know how hard it is for me to turn down a challenge!” she cried as he gathered his tools and backed out the door.
He grinned at her. “Yes, I do.”
“I am going to make you so many cakes to try to figure this out,” she growled.
He waggled his eyebrows. “Yes, I know. See you Friday.”
She laughed, shaking her fist at him. “See you Friday.”