Chapter 6: Pick It Up, Sweetheart

I went back into the kitchen and stood with my forehead against the cold door of the walk-in.

"That's the one from the news," Dolly said behind me, quietly. "The fiancée."

"Yes."

"Then I'll take her table."

"I've got it, Dolly."

I took a clean apron, a pen and my order pad, and went out.

Lydia sat in the middle of the booth with her coat open and her two friends on either side of her.

She had the menu in one hand and wasn't reading it.

I had held that woman's hair back at my mother's funeral.

I had sat up with her through two bad winters and one terrible spring.

She looked at me and saw a waitress.

"Finally," Lydia said. "Do you have oat milk?"

"We have whole and two percent."

"Of course you do." She turned to her friends. "I told you. Charming. Three lattes and nothing with a lot of grease."

"We have coffee," I said. "And toast."

"Then coffee."

I wrote it down in the plain careful block capitals I had learned in my first year of waiting tables.

My handwriting was steadier than my voice.

I brought three coffees on a tray and set them down one at a time.

Lydia lifted hers, tasted it, and held the cup out over the edge of the table.

"Cold," she said.

"It's hot. I poured it a minute ago."

"Then your pot is dirty."

"The pot is fine."

"Don't argue with me, sweetheart. Just bring another."

Behind the counter, Stanley had turned on his stool.

He was gripping the edge of it with both hands.

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