“I’m so glad that’s over,” Cole exhaled as he collapsed into a wooden chair at a table in the center of Cassidy’s, laid his head back, and closed his eyes. He’d finally been chased into the dining room to join Brynn and me. Sebastian could cook pretty well and would do just fine preparing some burgers for the four of us, but Cole was never a fan of giving up his kitchen. Nevertheless, relief seemed to permeate through him as he allowed himself to relax for the first time in days.
“Do you need a drink or something? Can I get you anything?” I asked.
His eyes remained closed as he shook his head. “Thanks, I’m good. It’s just nice to have a moment to myself.”
Brynn and I looked at each other and smiled, completely understanding he wasn’t passive-aggressively hinting for us to go home. To spend a little time with just the Sudworths and me was to be able to completely unwind. There were no pretenses or polite-smiles-for-the-sake-of-appearance necessary among the four of us.
“Hey,” Brynn started, sitting up straighter in her seat. “Was that Lottie Carlson I saw pulling out of the church parking lot right about the time Seb and I got there? How’s she handling things? I bet she’s heartbroken.”
Cole chuckled, head still back and eyes still closed. “She told me to call her if I need a grandma hug.”
Laughter burst from Brynn. I thought I’d gotten my own giggles out after overhearing her say it—and overhearing Cole respond by asking, “How is a grandma hug different from a normal hug?”—but I found myself losing it all over again.
Charlotte Carlson had been a few years ahead of us in school, so she had to be all of forty-five now, at the oldest. She’d had three short-lived marriages to increasingly exotic men who always whisked her away from Adelaide Springs. Each time, the people of the town had been cajoled into big au revoir send-offs and bridal showers before she got married in some far and distant land. And each time she got divorced, she’d suddenly just reappeared in the flow of everyday life again, like none of it had ever happened. After the third divorce, she’d changed tactics and begun pursuing local men. Cole had been in her crosshairs for a while and had kindly but efficiently communicated his fears of ending up the subject of an unsolved mysteries podcast if he so much as had dinner with her.
Let’s just say that from there, Lottie had started chasing an older demographic. And since Cole’s grandfather was the oldest, most financially solvent single man in town, it hadn’t taken her long to zero in.
“She wore a veil, Brynn.” I was still giggling as I pictured it. “Like, an actual black veil like you’d see in the movies.”
“No!”
Cole nodded and opened his eyes. “Yep. She was straight-up dressed like Diane Keaton at Vito Corleone’s funeral in The Godfather. It was quite remarkable.”
“Who?” Sebastian asked as he came from the kitchen carrying a platter of burgers on buns. “Lottie?”
“Got it in one,” Cole answered. He adjusted his posture to get ready to eat, loosening his tie as he did.
Seb set the platter in the center of the table and took his seat between Brynn and Cole. “I suppose poor Doc will be next in her widower crosshairs.”
“Well . . .” We had the restaurant to ourselves, but that didn’t stop me from looking around to make sure no one would overhear. “I suspect Doc may not be on the market much longer.”
Brynn’s eyes flew open, and she leaned in to get the scoop, but Cole shook his head. “Don’t encourage her, Brynn. She’s about to fill your head with theories based on zero evidence and no semblance of fact whatsoever—”
“Jo?” Seb asked as he reached in, grabbed a burger, and placed it on Brynn’s plate and then got himself one.
“Yes!” I squealed and pointed at Cole. “Yeah, no semblance of fact . . . Whatever! You see it, too, don’t you, Seb?”
“Of course.” He jumped up as he realized he’d left the bag of potato chips on the bar. “I’ve always seen it.”
Cole rolled his eyes. “They’re just friends. They’ve been friends for—what—sixty-some years?”
“At least,” Seb confirmed.
“So what makes you think that all of a sudden—”
“Except it wouldn’t really be all of a sudden, would it?” Brynn interjected. “Seb’s always seen it. I see it. Laila sees it. Something’s been developing for a while.”
Cole seemed to consider the possibilities for a moment. “Still,” he finally said between bites. “When you know someone that well, what would it take to flip that switch?”
Sebastian raised his hand. “Am I the only one who would rather not think of Doc and Jo flipping any switches?”
“If you know what I mean . . . ,” I said in the most innuendo-laced tone I could, causing Seb to shudder and Cole to cover his ears and call out, “La-la-la-la-la-la! I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you!”
“As fun as it is to picture the senior citizens in our lives in flagrante delicto—”
“Gross,” Cole muttered just as Sebastian asked his wife, “Is that really necessary?”
Through her giggles, Brynn stood and raised her glass. “To Old Man Kimball, who may not have always been a barrel of monkeys but who made a huge impact in my life and the lives of so many. He came through for me more than once, and I’ll always be grateful. Most important, he helped shape one of my favorite people in the world. Any man who can raise you to be the man you are, Cole, can’t be all bad.”
Cole chuckled and cleared his throat before standing and raising his glass. Seb and I joined them.
“To Old Man Kimball!” we all said in unison before taking a drink.
We began sitting back down, but Brynn shot up again. “Ooh! I almost forgot!” She dug into the pocket of her black pencil skirt and pulled out some crumpled bills and some coins and set them all on the table.
“What’s that for?” I asked as Seb began laughing.
“That,” she responded, “is six dollars and forty-two cents I owed Bill for some whiskey glasses I broke in 2001.”
Cole laughed as he reached across the table and scooped the money into his hand. “I know it’s a symbolic gesture, but you’re rich, and I have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about taking your money.”
We sat around laughing and eating and sharing memories of Bill for a few more minutes until the bell over the front door began ringing.
“Sorry,” Cole called out as he turned to face whoever was entering. “We’re not open today. Family situat—” A familiar face appeared around the doorframe. “Oh, hey, Doc.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt.”
“Not at all.” Cole stood. “Why don’t you join us?”
Sebastian was already heading to the kitchen. “It will just take a minute to throw another burger on the grill.”
“Nah, thanks, Seb. I appreciate it, but Jo already fed me.”
Brynn and I looked at each other knowingly—mischievously—causing Sebastian to roll his eyes at us before he said, “How about a cup of coffee, then?”
“That I won’t say no to.”
Cole had already pulled a fifth chair up to the table, between him and me, by the time Doc finished his walk across the room to us. I leaned in and hugged Doc as he sat, and Brynn stood from her chair to come around and do the same. We had all just seen each other not even an hour ago, but Doc had been like another parent to all of us. There was just something about losing one of the parental figures in your life that made you want to hold the ones you had left a little closer.
“Thanks, Seb,” he said with a nod as Sebastian set the cup of coffee in front of him and went back to his seat on the other side of Cole. “I really am sorry to break up your time together. I know it’s a little more difficult to come by these days.”
That was true, though Cole and I had all the time in the world together, of course. We’d worked together at Cassidy’s at least four days a week, every week, since he’d convinced his grandfather to invest in his dream of turning it into a restaurant. And what had that been? Ten years now? Fifteen, maybe? There had been lots of times over the course of those however many years that he’d apologized there weren’t other opportunities for me there. That there weren’t ways for me to “move up.” Well, no . . . there wouldn’t be, would there? Moving up in Adelaide Springs wasn’t really a thing.
Someday, maybe I’d be able to convince him I was okay with that. I loved waiting tables at Cassidy’s. I loved having the opportunity to chat with pretty much every tourist passing through town—because, seriously, where else were they going to eat? I loved our constant carousel of regulars, be it Fenton Norris, who always watched whatever ball game was on television and talked about the weather with whoever else wandered in, or Neil Pinkton, twenty years old and inching toward his own definition of adulthood by sitting at the bar with the old men, drinking a soda. Mostly I loved playing my small part in Cole’s success.
For a few years, the team had gotten even better. I really wouldn’t have thought that was possible, but having Sebastian behind the bar had made the whole thing click into place at a new level. I mean, he’d resurrected the karaoke machine, for goodness’ sake.
Once in a while we still got him behind the bar and on the stage, but of course he and Brynn lived in New York a good part of the time these days. And now that Sebastian was a journalist again, even when they were in town, we didn’t see them nearly as often. He was writing or working on his podcast. Now that they were newlyweds, it seemed unlikely their time would magically free up for their friends. And how long would it be before they had kids?
Would they have kids? Did they even want kids? It was sort of difficult to imagine, honestly. They’d both be great parents—I was absolutely sure of that—but with their busy lives, I didn’t expect they’d make time to add a kid to the mix anytime soon. They already had Sebastian’s dog, Murrow, who traveled the globe with them—or at least with him when they traveled the globe in separate directions. A little human Sudworth child might not travel so well. And if they didn’t expand their family soon . . . Well, they weren’t exactly spring chickens.
None of us were, of course, though I was a few months younger than Brynn and Cole, and we were all a few years younger than Sebastian. What did that make me? A summer chicken? Early summer at best. Though, really, who was I kidding? The countdown to forty had begun. I’d be thirty-nine in a week, and then we’d start turning forty. Forty. Cole, then Brynn, then me. Nope, not a single spring chicken in the bunch.
Though . . . should I think of myself as a late-winter chicken rather than an early-summer chicken? We’d had a lot of animals growing up, but never chickens. I couldn’t say with absolutely certainty that I understood the metaphor.
“Earth to Laila, “ Cole teased melodically from across the table. “You still with us?”
I looked up in surprise at the sound of my name. “I was just . . .” I shook away the stupor. “Sorry. What did I miss?”
“Doc was telling us his reason for stopping by.”
“As I was saying, after the funeral, I went to the bank to get Bill’s will out of my box.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Not sure if you knew he asked me to be his executor?”
Cole chuckled. “I didn’t even know he had a will.”
“Yeah, always has had. This one is new. He updated it just a few months ago.”
Cole eyed the yellow envelope with curiosity. “A few months ago? Why? Nothing’s changed.”
Doc shrugged. “The only thing that changed, I figure, is he finally started believing he was a mere mortal after all. After the strokes and everything. The other one was pretty old, I think. He probably just wanted to make sure everything was current and in order.”
“Do you know what’s in there?” Cole asked.
“No. We can find out now, if you want . . .”
I raised my hand. I’m not sure why. I just wasn’t sure I was part of the moment enough to speak freely during it, I guess. Still, I didn’t take it so far as to wait to be called on.
“Sorry, but does there not have to be some sort of will reading or something? I always picture these things taking place in an attorney’s office.”
“That’s just a device invented for the movies.” Sebastian smiled. “Certainly more dramatic than an envelope being pulled out of Doc’s pocket, but unless there are beneficiaries contesting bequeathments or things being held up in probate, it’s typically a pretty nondramatic thing.”
“I did call your mom,” Doc said to Cole. “As next of kin I figured she had the right to know everything first. She said to just go ahead and get with you—”
“And I can let her know how much money she gets?” Cole filled in the rest of the thought. When Doc raised his hands in a way that clearly communicated, “Nothing so crass as that, but for all intents and purposes, you nailed it,” Cole laughed. “Well, alright, then. Let’s do this thing. Let’s find out how many more orphans can have their lives changed by a generous endowment from the Cassidy Dolan-Kimball Foundation to Save the World.”