The Arrangement novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Diner

Fall River is thirty-five minutes from Providence if you drive like a person who has just heard the word pie.

I made it in twenty-six.

The Anchor Diner sits under the Braga Bridge with a neon anchor in the window and a parking lot that floods in the rain.

I had worked the counter there from fourteen to eighteen.

I knew the rattle in the screen door, the cracked third booth, and the smell of fryer oil and burnt coffee.

I knew the sound of my mother's laugh on the other side of the pass-through.

I did not know the sound of it when it stopped.

I walked in at 8:40 on a Thursday night.

Cressida sat in the third booth in her camel coat with a white bakery box open on the table.

My mother sat across from her with her order pad in her apron pocket and her hands flat on the Formica.

She wasn't laughing.

She looked up at me and I saw her take a breath.

"Joss," she said. "Cressida was just telling me about you and Caspar."

"I bet she was."

"Sit down, honey."

"I'd rather stand."

"Sit," my mother said, in the voice she had used on me at six, and I sat.

Cressida folded her hands.

"I only came because I felt terrible," she said. "After what happened at Gull Point. I wanted to clear the air with your family. Apologize in person."

"By telling my mother something about me."

"By telling her the truth." Cressida smiled at my mother, sweetly. "Your daughter is a lovely girl, Mrs. Pennock. But my cousin pays her. There's a contract."

My mother didn't look at me.

"Is that right?" she said.

The diner had gone quiet around us.

Three old men at the counter held their forks halfway to their mouths.

The cook had come out of the kitchen with a spatula and no apron.

"It's right," I said.

My mother closed her eyes.

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