“How is school?”
“Good.”
“Looking forward to OSU?”
“Yes...”
Not that it was new. Over the years she had honed omission into an art form, and the subtle bending of the truth into a tool she could wield with ease. She’d become skilled at recognizing things that might add weight to her mother’s already heavy burden.
She couldn’t remove a whole boulder, but she could carry around life’s pebbles all on her own without her mom having to worry about them.
Yes, and sneaking out for coffee and a hopeful glance at Luke is definitely in your mother’s best interest...
She sighed and killed the engine, then got out of the car and looked around. The town was bustling with people on their way to work, getting coffee from their preferred spots.
The town of Sunset Bay consisted of two main segments—the utilitarian segment of town just across the bridge that led to the highway that ultimately connected them with I-5, and the rest of the state. There you could find big-box stores, dentists’ and doctors’ offices, auto-body repair and larger restaurants.
But if you turned right off the bridge that carried you off the coastal highway, you could get to Old Town, the original main street of Sunset Bay, which ran along the Yachats River, extending nearly to where the river met the sea.
There were tourist traps, with an excess of bright wind socks hung outside, and driftwood animals all in a row. Art galleries, a specialty kitchen shop and little farm-to-table restaurants, coffeehouses and fish-and-chips shacks.
Emma had told her mother that she had an early class, and it was kind of a crappy thing to lie about where she was going, but she had to get out of the house.
The grief didn’t feel like she expected it to.
She’d expected a sense of finality. She’d spent her life dreading her father’s death. She’d been so aware of the fact her parents were mortal from the time she was young. Her dad was sick, but if her strong, brilliant dad could be so sick, then anyone could be. There had been a sense of fear in her childhood over every sniffle.
And to an extent she’d thought... She’d thought this would be an end.
She had done her best not to build up hopes of what she might have had with her dad. Had let go of the idea that he might give her away at her wedding someday, or even sit in the front row during her graduation.
Those stages of acceptance that had all hurt. This was just living in the future she’d been expecting all along.
But she hadn’t guessed all the little things she’d miss. Like him teasing her about all the sugar she’d put in her coffee. Or him texting her throughout the day to check in.
Sometimes she’d found it annoying. Now she kept scrolling back through every text he’d ever sent, taking screenshots of them so she wouldn’t lose them.
It came in waves. An ebb in the pain, where she’d forget, then look at her phone. And remember.
Going toward her parents’ room and then stopping because she suddenly remembered he wasn’t there.
She just couldn’t stand to be home.
The diner was like a strange oasis. A collection of small-town clichés that was comforting in its way. The tile floor was scuffed from work boots, the wallpaper border—with pictures of cars from the 1950s—had seen better decades and no one sat on two of the eight red swivel stools at the counter because the tops were irredeemably lopsided.
But everyone ate at J’s, and had ever since Jack Campbell had opened it years ago, and they came still, with his grandson Adam at the helm.
It provided comforting kitchen noises, muffled conversation and familiarity. It also provided an excellent view of the mechanic shop across the street. Which was where Luke would be.
Normally, she would think it was silly to pine after a guy who didn’t know she existed. But there was something nice about a relationship that had no expectation on it. A relationship that wasn’t a relationship.
These feelings had become a talisman. Something to hold and examine, something else to think of. Away from her house, away from her family. Even from her friends, in a way.
Adam usually asked how she was, but he took her answer at face value and never pressed for information.
She winced. Right. Adam. If he mentioned to her mom that she’d been in today...
She and her mother had been pretty dependent on dinner from here, especially over the past few months.
When things were crazy, Mom always stopped by to pick up burgers or a salad, depending on whether or not she was pretending she wasn’t eating her feelings.
Maybe Emma could offer to pick up dinner tonight...
“Good morning,” Adam said, his mouth set into a neutral position, the lines on his face giving a suggestion of facial expressions he’d made in the past, but not giving much indication of what he was thinking—or feeling—now.
He’d been in town about three years, which made him brand-new, by the standards of this town. So seldom did things change around here that a fifteen-year-old piece of road construction connecting Sunset Bay with the inland town of Pinecroft was still referred to as “the new overpass.”
And Adam was most definitely still “the new diner owner.”
If Emma had to guess, he was somewhere around her mom’s and dad’s ages. But he wasn’t married, and as far as she knew he didn’t have any kids.
She waited for him to ask about Anna. If he did, she was ready to get in a fight in defense of Anna. If anyone asked.
But he didn’t ask about Anna.
She waited for him to ask about the funeral. He didn’t.
She wasn’t sure that Adam had been there.
Adam might have been one of the few people in town who didn’t know her dad in some capacity. Maybe that was another reason she liked the diner. It felt like a different town sometimes.
Maybe that was why this was her mom’s preferred dinner spot.
She hadn’t really thought of that before.
“Coffee and a doughnut?” she asked.
“No protein?” he asked.
“I didn’t ask for a side of judgment.”
“The judgment is on the house.”
The front door pushed open, and her friend Catherine came in, breathless and red-cheeked. They’d been in pretty constant text contact since the funeral and they’d exchanged a few OMGs about church and Anna, but they hadn’t actually talked. Catherine sat down at a table in the corner, the one with the clear view across the street. “Thanks, I...”
“I’ll bring it to your table. Hold the judgment.”