The Richest Woman in Town Claimed Me as Her Lost Daughter on Stage, Then I Read the Date on Her Lab Report novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: Pancakes for the Tanker
I held the phone out to Tom, and he read the text standing very still.
"I'll stop," I said. "I mean it. I'll tell her it's over and you can have your truck."
"No."
"Tom, it's a fire truck."
"It's a tanker," he said. "It holds three thousand gallons. Last winter we fought a barn fire with a truck that's older than I am."
He gave the phone back.
"Hallie, I'm not trading you for a truck. I wouldn't be a good person if I did, and I wouldn't be a good firefighter."
"Station 2 holds a pancake supper every October for the truck fund," he said. "It's usually the Sunday after the Gala. We've done it for sixty-one years."
"Move it."
"To when?"
"Tomorrow," I said. "Monday. Five o'clock."
On Monday morning, I stood at the library copier with my hand over the glass and ran off two hundred flyers.
PANCAKE SUPPER FOR STATION 2'S NEW TANKER, said the top line.
Under it, in smaller type, I put the time and the price.
And under that, because I cannot help myself, I put: Ask Hallie about the date.
The director came by the machine at ten, picked up a flyer, read it and walked away.
At eleven I saw her pinning one to the community board by the front door.
She had two more in her hand for the grocery.
By five that afternoon there was a line out the firehouse door and down the gravel.
I had expected forty people.
There were a hundred before I stopped keeping track.
The cafeteria ladies from Putnam Elementary came in a pack, in matching cardigans.
They brought a casserole carrier for no reason I could see.
The retired railroad man from the other half of our house came with his own griddle under one arm.
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