The waitress’s eyes widened. “You’re Eby Pim’s niece! I heard you were out there for a visit.”
Kate was surprised. “You did?”
The waitress laughed. “Small town. I’m coming to the party. Be right back with your slice.”
In minutes, Devin’s pizza was in front of her, and she dug in.
Kate sipped her tea, aware that people were watching them curiously. There was some commotion in the kitchen, and suddenly the door swung open and Wes stood there, his eyes finding them immediately.
“I told you she was out there,” a male voice from inside the kitchen said.
“Hi, Wes!” Devin said, strings of cheese stretching between her mouth and the pizza slice.
“Nice place you have here,” Kate said. He was dressed in soft, worn jeans and a long-sleeved T. His hair was a lighter red than it had been, wet with sweat the day before yesterday. It made him seem more real, here in a place that wasn’t the lake. It was the first time she’d ever seen him outside that context, and it was strange to realize that her fond feelings for him were the same here as they were there. It wasn’t just situational. It was him.
He walked over to them, looking a little embarrassed by his entrance. “Thanks.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
He leaned against the counter. “Sure.”
“Why do you call it Handyman Pizza when it’s totally eighties in here?”
He smiled. She could see the boy inside best when he did that, guard down. “That confuses a lot of people the first time they come in here. When this building went on the market, I wanted it because it has a large alley garage entrance downstairs, which was perfect for me because I’d finally saved enough to make my handyman business a brick-and-mortar company instead of one I ran out of my foster mother’s house. There are three stories. The third floor is my apartment.” He pointed his thumb at the ceiling. “The man who owned the place before me ran this restaurant here on the street entrance. He called it Flashback Pizza. I didn’t have any interest in running a restaurant, so I thought I would lease the space out. But the restaurant was popular with the locals, and they campaigned to keep it open. The previous owner had died suddenly, and people kept putting his vintage green high-top sneakers on the steps outside my apartment at night. Sometimes I’d find them in the garage downstairs. A couple of times they were even in here in the restaurant when I came down from my apartment in the mornings, on the floor at that table”—he indicated a neon orange table in the corner—“like he’d just been sitting there, then got up and left.”
A man whose whole face seemed to be made of whiskers appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “I keep telling you, we didn’t do it,” he said. “It was his ghost. He wanted the place to stay open. He was buried in those shoes! Hi there, Kate, I’m Grady. Tell Eby I’m bringing chicken wings to her party, okay?”
Kate smiled and nodded, but Wes ignored him. “Thus Handyman Pizza was formed. Two businesses in one. I have an employee and a dispatcher for my handyman business downstairs. And I kept the employees of the restaurant here, which Grady oversees.” He nodded to where the cook had disappeared back into the kitchen. “But there are weird crossovers, like when people call for a handyman and ask that a pizza be delivered, too. Or when customers in the restaurant bring in broken lamps, and eat here while the lamps are rewired downstairs.”
“That’s very clever,” Kate said.
“I just fell into it,” Wes said.
“You always were pretty easygoing.”
Wes snorted. “Meaning I let you boss me around.”
Devin finished her pizza slice and said, “Hey, Wes, look what the alligator gave me.” She lifted the knobby piece of wood she’d set on the counter earlier. She carried it around with her like a flashlight everywhere she went. “I think it’s a clue.”
Wes took the piece of wood and gave it due consideration. “A clue to what?”
Devin shrugged. “Something the alligator wants me to find.”
“It looks like part of a cypress knee,” he said, handing it back to her.
“You know … it does,” Kate agreed.
Devin looked excited. “What’s a cypress knee?”
“It’s the part of a cypress tree root that sticks out above the ground or water. Your mom and I used to go diving around the cypress knees at the far end of the lake, looking for treasure.”
“Not that you can do that,” Kate added quickly. “It’s too dangerous. My mother would have had a fit if she’d known what I was doing. I remember how tangled those roots were underwater. It’s amazing we didn’t get trapped.”
“But we grew gills, remember?” Wes said.
Kate actually reached up and touched a place behind her ear. “I remember.”
She also remembered the story she’d made up about the three girls who went swimming in the cypress knees and got trapped, about how they had stayed there forever and grown up underwater, their hair floating like seaweed as they watched their parents look for them every day. And how, when they were grown, they figured out how to harness the fog and appear above the water. Ursula, Magdalene, and Betty. The ghost ladies.
Devin hopped off her stool. “Let’s go back to the lake. I want to check out these knees!”
“Are you coming to Eby’s party?” Kate asked as she stood. She called for Devin to wait by the door.
“I’ll be there,” he said.
“So will most of the town, apparently. It’s snowballed into something bigger than Bulahdeen expected.”
“I can come out later today, if you’d like. I can help get the place ready.”
“I think everyone would be grateful for that,” Kate said.
“Mom, come on!”
Kate smiled as she walked away. “I’ll see you then.”
*
“Does she know you’re a part of this development deal, the one that’s going to take Eby’s property?” Grady asked, his timing perfect as he poked his head out of the kitchen the moment Kate and Devin left.
Wes shrugged. “Unless Eby has told her, no.”
Grady hooted. “You’re going to be in hot water when she finds out.”
“Why?”
“Has it really been that long?” Grady shook his head. “I keep telling you, you need to date more, son.”
“I date enough.”
“Going bowling with me doesn’t constitute dating. You never even buy me dinner.”
Wes grabbed a wipe from under the counter. He paused, then asked, “What makes you think I’m even interested in Kate?”
“That right there, what just happened, is called attraction. A-trak-shee-un. Look it up in the dictionary.”
Wes smiled and turned to buss the counter. Grady knew that Wes had had girlfriends in the past. Not that they’d ever lasted very long. Everyone his age always seemed to be in such a hurry to leave. His longest relationship had lasted two years. He and Anika had fallen in love their senior year in high school. But not long after graduation, Anika had started making plans for them to leave. They had jobs that could travel, she’d said. He could fix anything, and she could waitress anywhere. His foster mother Daphne had encouraged him to do whatever his heart told him to. The problem with that was that his heart didn’t belong to Anika. Not all of it, anyway. A big part, sure. He did love her. But he also loved Daphne and Eby and the town. And Billy.
It really all came down to Billy.
If he left this place, he would have to leave his brother. And he couldn’t do that. He and Billy had been inseparable. Wes had never minded changing his diapers or teaching him to swim or walking through the woods with him to the lake every morning. Everything Wes did, Billy did. Everything Wes liked, Billy liked. Wes had almost died trying to find him in that burning house. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t find him. Maybe he was still looking for him. Maybe he always would be.
There had never been a single force, a single person, who could compete with that memory, with that place in his heart. Except Kate. She’d made him want to leave all those years ago. Even then, he’d been planning to take Billy with him. But even she couldn’t make him leave now. Not that that would ever happen. No matter what Grady said, what he and Kate had now was just a memory of something good.
It, and she, would be gone before he knew it.