The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

Myra May sighed. “Maybe you just better do one, Mama. If we don’t have any customers, we can fry it up and eat it ourselves.”


Raylene was Myra May’s height, with heavy dark eyebrows, a firm mouth and chin, and short auburn hair streaked with gray. A quick glance would tell you that the two were related, but it wouldn’t tell you the rest of the story: the tragic truth that mother and daughter had been separated for almost all of Myra May’s thirty-some years. They had discovered each other the previous summer, when Raylene showed up to try out for the cook’s job after Euphoria Hoyt (the diner’s previous cook) had signed on to cook at the Red Dog juke joint, on the other side of the L&N tracks. Raylene had known that Myra May was her daughter before she came to Darling—in fact, that was her reason for coming. It took a while, though, for Myra May to figure out their relationship, and the truth came as a colossal surprise. And a nearly incomprehensible happiness, as well, since her father and the aunt who raised her had told her that her mother was dead. Now, Myra May had more family than she had ever imagined: her friend Violet and little Cupcake and her mother. You’d think she’d be happy, wouldn’t you?

“If you ask me, we should plan for our usual crowd,” Violet said stoutly. “It’s Saturday night, and Mr. Greer is showing The Mummy, with Boris Karloff. You know how people love horror films, and this one is supposed to be a jim-dandy. It’ll bring out a crowd and some of them will want to stop and eat first.”

The bell over the diner’s front door dinged and Charlie Dickens stumbled in.

“See?” Violet crowed. “There’s Mr. Dickens. The lunch crowd is on its way.”

“Three customers hardly constitute a crowd,” Myra May muttered, frowning. She could tell from the rakish tilt of Charlie’s fedora that he was three sheets to the wind. Well, two and a half, anyway. It seemed that she’d seen him that way more and more often lately, after Fannie Champaign got fed up with his tomcatting around and took off for Atlanta. She wondered if he knew that Fannie was back.

“I think things will pick up,” Raylene said serenely, and Violet nudged Myra May with her elbow.

“You listen to your mama,” she said. “She knows what she’s talking about.”

“Oh, I do,” Myra May replied, and swatted at the fly on top of the napkin dispenser. This time she got it. “I definitely listen.”

Myra May did, too, for her mother had a special and rather surprising gift. She was psychic. Raylene knew what people wanted to eat and surprised them by having it ready when they walked in and sat down at the counter. She knew when certain things were going to happen, and when certain people had certain feelings that were going to cause them to behave in certain ways. She explained all this by saying that it was sort of like tuning a radio to a station that came through loud and clear. The signal was powered by people wanting, or planning, or hoping. It didn’t work 100 percent of the time, because sometimes there was static, when people were conflicted or guilty or apprehensive. And sometimes there were competing signals, and she had to figure out which was which and what it meant.