“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”― Shel Silverstein
M L E T. I typed the letters in a decorative font on my laptop. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself by planning a menu for my food truck and/or cafe that I wanted to open, but it was all I felt like thinking about right now. Work today had been unpleasant and awkward.
I didn’t see Benny after my outburst the night before and I avoided him and Uncle Rob as much as a person could avoid people they worked with and needed to interact with professionally all day. I gave them tickets, relayed customer concerns, got feedback, relayed that to the customers, and that was it.
It sucked.
All because of Lexie James.
Scromlet - A cross between an omelet and scrambled eggs, a scromlet is what many people end up with when they try to make an omelet. At Tess’ Cafe (work on the name later), we decided to skip the stress and embrace the beauty of the scromlet. Three eggs scrambled to fluffy perfection and topped with the ingredients of your choosing and then smothered in your favorite cheese.
I italicized the description and eyeballed my handiwork. All in all, I was pretty happy with it. Tess’ Cafe was a nice name for an actual brick and mortar building but less so for a food truck. As I still wasn’t sure which way I was going to swing - and that largely depended on funding - I needed a name that would work for both.
Laying my head back on the porch swing, I sighed and looked up at the stars that were really starting to show in all their glory in the darkening night sky.
It was getting late. Benny still wasn’t home.
I was about to break down and try to call him when I heard the familiar sounds of gravel crunching under tires. A couple of seconds later, I saw headlights shining way down the driveway from a very familiar-looking Jeep. Benny was home.
I watched as he slowly made his way up the driveway and parked next to my car. When he got out, he had a paper bag in his hand. I set my laptop aside as he came up on the porch and sat down next to me.
He handed me the bag. Opening it, I saw my favorite ice cream, Rocky Road, inside.
“Peace offering,” he mumbled.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m sorry, too. To you and Uncle Rob. I hate being in arguments with you both, and it’s not either of you I’m mad at.”
“I know. So does Uncle Rob.”
We sat there quietly for a minute. I had a thousand questions going through my mind and an inner debate on whether I could ask them. My good side was making the argument that this wasn’t something I could pry into. If Benny wanted to share with me what was going on between him and Lexie, he would’ve talked to me about it already. My bad side wanted to tell my good side to shut its pie hole, because I wanted some answers on why the hell he was letting her back into his life.
After a few minutes of absolute silence, Benny opened the door. Admittedly, he only cracked it open, but that was all I needed.
“There was a lot you missed while you were away, Tess,” Benny said.
“I understand that, but I was there when she abandoned you, abandoned us, when we needed her the most,” I replied. The anger was building up again. I could feel it rising from my gut and making its way to my chest.
Breathe. Tess, just breathe. I repeated this to myself in my head as I took many deep breaths. Benny must have thought I lost my mind.
After taking a few breaths and counting to 256 in my head, I beat the anger down so I didn’t blow up again. Truthfully, my anger surprised me. I wasn’t a person who normally showed my anger in explosive, door slamming, glass breaking types of ways. I was the silent, angry type that bottled everything up for a therapist to work out an indeterminate amount of time later in my life. Though, perhaps my running away from home and alienating everyone I knew and loved for years had proved that not to be the healthiest method for handling emotions.
After gaining some semblance of control, I felt like I could contribute to the conversation in a productive manner again.
“When did she come home?” I asked calmly, though my voice sounded a little strained and odd, even to my own ears.
“She got back about six months ago,” Benny replied. “Her house has been shut up this whole time. They had a cousin or something from up in Staunton come check on the place every couple of months, but that’s it. No one had been there to stay until Lexie came back.”
I nodded, and the anger inside quieted down. Wow, I guess I was so wrapped up in my pain back then that I didn’t know Lexie’s whole family had packed up and left.
“You didn’t realize it wasn’t just Lexie that left, did you?” Benny asked.
When did he become a mind reader?
“Her whole family packed up and left overnight,” Benny continued. “No notice to jobs, no goodbyes to friends, not even a forwarding address. They were just gone.”
“Wow, I guess I didn’t know that. How did I not know that?”
“Your entire world had just been flipped on its head Tess, I don’t think you were aware of much else going on around you,” Benny replied.
“Did she explain what happened? Where she went? Why she came back?” I asked, now more curious and, frankly, concerned than angry. “They must have been in some sort of trouble to up and leave like that.”
“That’s what everyone thinks, and they aren’t wrong,” Benny said. “She hasn’t told me much, just that her dad had got caught up in something and got in over his head. He feared for his family’s safety, so they picked up and left.”
“Is there no more fear of danger?” I asked quietly.
“I don’t think so. Her mother passed three years ago, sick with cancer, and her father passed last winter from a heart attack. Whatever sins he had, he’s paid for them.”
“Lexie was their only child, so she inherited everything. She came back to check out the house and see what she was dealing with, and she hasn’t left,” Benny finished with a shrug.
I let everything Benny said sink in and realized I was probably the one in the wrong here.
“I’ll apologize to her,” I said.
“I don’t think she expects an apology, but I would appreciate it,” Benny said.
We sat there quietly, pushing my grandmother’s swing back and forth with our feet and staring at the stars.
“I’m tired,” I said, as a wave of exhaustion washed over me.
Benny nodded. “Me too.”
“I have something to run by you tomorrow, you and Uncle Rob,” I said.
“Does it have anything to do with Tess’ Cafe?” Benny asked and nodded at the laptop still sitting open next to me. I had forgotten it was there.
“That’s a working title,” I said. “But, yes. It’s an idea I’m kicking around.”
“Good,” Benny said. “Kick those ideas around long enough and you end up doing something with them. Put some work into it, and you might have a good thing started.”
I smiled at him. “You would know.”
“Come on, kid, let’s get some shuteye,” Benny said. “Tomorrow’s another busy day.”