They took a booth near the back of the Courthouse Diner, which sat on the south side of High Street, three blocks from Diana's apartment building. An indifferent looking waitress brought them coffee, and Diana added cream then sipped from the mug, hoping to prevent herself from blurting out the questions that swirled in her mind. She wanted to know what this woman wanted, but she also knew that the best way to find out was to simply wait. The story would come.
The diner was mostly empty. A couple of old-timers sat at the counter, bitching about gas prices, their voices gruff and gravelly. Diana knew they, like her, simply had too much time on their hands and used it to cook up increasingly reactionary solutions to the world's problems. But she also couldn't help but think they were studying her, eavesdropping and judging, as so many older men in New Cambridge seemed to do. She told herself to ignore them, but when someone dropped a dish back in the kitchen, a sharp and brittle sound that cut through the still air of the diner, she jumped a little in her seat.
Kay Todd didn't seem to notice. She was busy stirring cream into her coffee, the spoon making a faint pinging against the side of the mug. For someone with an urgent problem, she seemed to be taking her time getting to it, so Diana spoke up.
"Mrs. Todd..."
"Kay. Call me Kay."
"Kay." Diana couldn't avoid the heavy odor of fried food and greasy meat, and against her will, her stomach rumbled. "I have somewhere to be soon, so if you have something to tell me, you should hurry up."
"Everyone's always in a hurry, aren't they?"
"You brought me here," Diana said, but she saw something in Kay's eyes, a hard edge that hadn't been there before, and Diana wondered about the layers that were concealed within this woman.
"People don't really know about patience, do they Diana? Not like you and certainly not like me."
"I don't follow you—"
"Just listen to what I have to say," she said.
Diana had known women like Kay Todd her whole life. She had grown up around them. Her mother was one of those women. They loved to the best of their abilities, and they lived their lives in apartment complexes or trailer parks, scraping by on Social Security or disability, holding the pieces together as best they could long after the men in their lives had gone away or had the good sense to die. Diana knew Kay Todd had a story to tell, and more than likely it was going to be a sad story. She braced herself.
"My Margie was a student here at Fields University. She worked to pay her way through school and got a little financial aid as well. I helped her when I could, but I didn't have much. And I had another daughter at home. My husband died when Margie was eight."
She paused. Diana recognized her cue.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"That's okay. He was a good man. The only bad thing he ever did to me was die. A heart attack in the bathtub. He was thirty-eight. But we did our best, and like I said, Margie made it to college. She wasn't the best student in the world, but she got Bs and Cs. She was going to graduate. No one else in our family had ever graduated college. No one else had even so much as gone. Then during her last year, Margie dropped out. She decided she didn't like her major, didn't think she was learning anything. She was studying communications but decided that she might want to be a nurse or a social worker. Something that might make a difference, you know?"
Diana nodded. "I'm familiar with the impulse."
"So she quit school. She rented a room down here on Poplar Street and went to work for a cleaning service, cleaning people's houses. Rich people's houses."
She nearly spit when she spoke the last line.
"And you didn't like that she dropped out?" Diana said.
"I wasn't thrilled. I tried not to say anything about it, but I couldn't keep my mouth shut. That's always been my problem. I told her that I thought she was making a mistake, that she should just gut it out and finish that last semester. It was too important to throw all that money and time away so late in the game. She didn't take that very well. She said some awful things to me. She told me that since I'd never been to college and didn't even know anyone who had been to college that I didn't have any right to say anything. She was right, of course. I didn't really have any right. I guess I've come to realize that it's not that unusual to take time off."
"It's not," Diana said.
"We had that blow up when she was home for Christmas. I told her I loved her when she left, but things were icy between us. We didn't talk much. And I was wrapped up in my own life. Daphne, my other daughter, was in high school then. I was working full-time."
"And that's the last time you saw her? At Christmas break?"