The DNA Matched My Cousin, Not Me, So They Kept Me Anyway novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: The Counter
I said yes before he finished the sentence.
I said it twice more on the way back to the truck, and once on the Avon road.
He drove the whole way with a grin that he kept trying to put away.
"I'll ask properly when there's a ring," he said.
"Ask whenever you like. I'll say yes with a ring or without one."
"I'd like you to have a ring."
"Then I'll have a ring," I said. "And I'll still say yes."
On Monday morning, the diner opened at six, the same as every day of my life.
The notice to quit was still taped to the front door.
My boss took it down with great ceremony, in front of the regulars, and carried it to the register on a tray.
"Thirty years on time," she said. "Thirty days notice. I'm framing it."
She hung it on the wall beside the pie case, under glass, with a brass plate that said: HARROWGATE REALTY.
The woman in the hospital smock read it and said, "Good. Now they can look at it."
There was no new sign.
The diner had never had a name, and my boss said it wasn't going to start now.
But by seven, the booths were full, and the line ran out the door.
Half of Hartford had come to see the waitress from the television.
They ordered eggs and looked at me sideways, and I poured their coffee and said, "More?" and they stopped looking.
At half past seven, the bell on the door rang, and the room went quiet in a new way.
Donald Harrowgate came in on Constance's arm.
He wore the dark cardigan under a good overcoat, and a driver stood behind him with a folded walking stick.
Constance had tied a silk scarf over her hair, and she was looking around the diner with the face of a woman at a cathedral.
"Table for three," Donald said to me.
"Sabina's coming?" I asked.
"She's parking the car," said Constance. "She says she's never parked a car in Hartford without being yelled at, and she wants to enjoy it."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The DNA Matched My Cousin, Not Me, So They Kept Me Anyway are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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