I Vanished with the Don's True Heir novel · Chapter 6 of 32

Chapter 6: Breakfast Service

"Ginevra," I said.

Orsola took her glasses off the cord and put them on and read the card herself.

"Sala. The goddaughter?"

"You know her?"

"I knew her grandmother. A woman who could smile at you and count your rings at the same time." She handed the card back. "This one paid a man to drive eleven hours for you. Why?"

"To find me before I have this baby."

Neither of us said the rest.

That night I lay in Room 4 and listened to the heater tick and didn't sleep.

I'd run from a hospital bed. I'd come to the end of America.

And I was still hiding in a refrigerator.

At five in the morning I got up and went into the kitchen and turned on every light.

When Orsola came through the swinging door in her robe, I was on my knees with my head inside the oven.

"What are you doing?"

"The pilot's out on this one too. Where's the gas shutoff?"

"Behind the fryer. Why?"

I sat back on my heels.

"I'm opening the diner."

She stared at me.

"It's been closed six years."

"I know. There's a calendar on the wall from six years ago. It's still on March."

"Nobody comes up here in February."

"The man at the gas station does. The two old men who sit on the bench outside the post office do. Whoever drives that plow does."

"And when the next one in a parka comes up the hill?"

"Then he'll find me behind a grill with a hot pan in my hand." I got up, one hand on the counter, one under my belly. "Not in a box."

Orsola was quiet for a long time.

Then she went to the drawer under the register and took out a ring of keys and threw it to me.

I caught it.

"The flour's probably got weevils," she said. "Go to Machias."

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