Back to the Good Fortune Diner (2 page)

“I’ll make soup.”
Poh-poh’
s declaration broke the stalemate, and Tiffany’s parents withdrew to their respective corners. No one would argue with the respected elder. After all, her grandma’s soups could cure anything.

An hour later, they were all packed into her dad’s old minivan. Tiffany sat alone in the middle row of seats while her mother and grandmother breathed down her neck and her father glanced at her over his shoulder from the front passenger seat. Daniel’s gaze met hers in the rearview mirror, and the interrogation resumed as the van got up to speed.

“What happened out there?” her mother demanded. “How did your car end up in the ditch? Why were you driving out of the city on a Monday night?”

“Maybe we should wait till we get home to discuss things,” Daniel said as he methodically checked all his mirrors. Tiff knew he hated it when his passengers distracted him.

“She could have been killed,” her mom exclaimed. “I want to know why she put herself in such danger.”

“It was an accident, Mom. I’m fine.” Tiffany couldn’t suppress her irritation. Her body ached, her arm was in a sling and she’d just had the worst day of her life, so she figured she had a right to be cranky.

“The cops said something about your rearview mirror being blocked by garbage bags in the backseat.” Daniel picked his words carefully.

Dammit. Why’d he have to bring that up? “That had nothing to do with it. The road was slippery, and I lost control.”

“You haven’t come to visit since Christmas,” Mom said. “Why drive up now?”

Tiffany wished she could have pleaded exhaustion, waited until morning to tell them the awful truth. But the last of her strength left her and she gave in. “I...I lost my apartment.”

Stunned silence crowded into the vehicle, but only for a second. “Why did you lose your apartment?” her father asked slowly.

“I...didn’t pay my landlady in time.”

Tony’s jaw clenched so hard she could hear his teeth grinding. His fingers curled around the armrest.

“So, you got evicted?” Daniel’s tone wavered. He knew she was standing on thin ice with their parents. “Why didn’t you stay at a friend’s place?”

“You could have stayed with Jennifer,”
Poh-poh
added helpfully.

Tiffany’s eyes burned. Reality had slammed home today. She didn’t want to humiliate herself further by describing all the doors that had been shut in her face, how her cousin Jennifer must have moved without telling her. But then, they’d never kept in touch. “I didn’t want to impose on anyone.”

“Well, how are you supposed to get to work?” Mom asked. “Are you going to drive three hours every day to get to the city? I hope your insurance will cover a rental.”

“That’s not going to be a problem—” she took a deep breath and took the final plunge “—because I was laid off.”

“You were fired?”
her parents cried simultaneously.

“Laid off,”
she emphasized. “The company was restructuring, and there isn’t that much room to cut out fat. I was a junior assistant to the publisher, so—”

“If you were worth keeping, they wouldn’t have laid you off.” Her father’s proclamation was as final as the fall of an ax. She’d done the unforgivable and come home in disgrace, homeless and unemployed. He snorted and grumbled,
“Moh gwai young.”

Useless.

She straightened her shoulders, despite the ache that shot through her bones. “I did my job well. Really well,” she said, echoing her employer’s words from the exit interview. “It was a budgeting decision. It wasn’t personal.”

That, at least, had been what her boss had told her. But since none of her colleagues would let her crash at their place, she wondered if he was just trying to be kind.

“Well, what’s done is done.” Her mother said it with a touch of asperity. “Your room’s still empty. We’ll change the bedsheets and move the sewing machine....”

Tiffany tuned out as her mother listed what needed to be done to accommodate her daughter’s return to the household. She stared at the black road ahead, watching the night rush toward her.

She was going home to Everville, the last place she wanted to be.

* * *

“
T
HAT’S ONE HELL OF A WRECK.”

Chris Jamieson inspected the crumpled hatchback sitting in Frank Konietzko’s auto body shop. He’d stopped in to pick up some parts for the tractor when he spotted the mangled vehicle in the garage. It looked like a giant had clapped the car between its hands. The side-view mirrors dangled off both sides like sad bunny ears. Both front air bags had deployed and all the windows had shattered. He hoped the driver was okay.

The dark-haired mechanic stood staring at the little black car. “It looks worse than it is. The engine is fine, but considering the cost for repair, it’s probably better off sold for parts. I told Daniel I’d have a look at it, though.”

“Daniel Cheung?” The man had taught half of the people in town how to drive. Chris couldn’t believe he’d been in this wreck.

“My ears are burning. You guys talking about me?” Daniel strode in, grinning broadly. He didn’t look like he’d been in an accident. “Been a while, Chris. How’re you doing?”

“All right. We were just talking about—” He nodded toward the car.

“Man. It looks a lot worse in daylight.” He rubbed his jaw as he studied the wreck. At Chris’s quizzical look, he explained, “Tiffany was driving up when she spun out on the 87 and rolled into a ditch.”

Tiffany Cheung. Now, there was a blast from the past. He pictured the girl with the straight, long hair, the big wire-rimmed glasses and the frown that rivaled the sour-faced librarian’s at their old high school. “Is she okay?”

“A little banged up, but she’s fine otherwise. Got lucky, I guess.”

“You don’t sound entirely convinced of that.”

Daniel blew out a breath. “Well...you know my parents. They’ve always been kind of hard on her.”

“They blame her for the accident?”

“No. She got laid off. That’s why she was driving up...” He clamped his lips together. Chris got the sense Daniel had said more than he meant to and didn’t prod further.

Frank gave Daniel the rundown of repairs on the hatchback, and Chris winced when he overheard the estimated total to fix the car. Daniel called his sister on his cell phone. Chris pictured her stony face as her brother relayed Frank’s assessment. Getting a smile out of Tiffany had been a real challenge back in high school—he could only imagine how she’d receive this grim news.

“Are you sure?” Daniel asked incredulously. A pause, and he wiped a hand down his face. “Well...okay. If you say so.” He hung up and turned to Frank. “Tiff wants you to fix it however you can.”

The mechanic shoved his hands into his pockets. “All right. But it’s going to take some time. I’ll get you a preinvoice. Show that to her, and we can work out a payment schedule.”

“Why don’t you help Chris out first?” Daniel offered. “I know he’s got work to do, and this’ll take some time. Wouldn’t want your dad to get mad.” He gave Chris a sympathetic look.

“Right. I appreciate that.”

Once Chris had loaded up his truck with the tractor parts, he headed home. He tried to enjoy the gorgeous June weather and the long, lush country road stretching before him, but as he sped by a monolithic wind turbine, the slowly spinning blades reminded him of the long list of chores ahead. It seemed something was always breaking down, falling apart or being torn to shreds by the local wildlife. And those repairs were on top of all the usual farm duties. Sometimes he felt like that turbine blade, being pushed by the winds, spinning in place, never actually getting anywhere.

He pulled onto the long gravel driveway in front of the main house, which his grandfather had built. Chris’s father had added cedar shingles and siding to the two-story brick home, but the place was sorely in need of some TLC. A decorative shutter hung at a precarious angle from a second-story window, and one of the eaves troughs had come loose, swinging off the corner of the house. The roof would need to be replaced soon, too, and the house could use a coat of fresh paint. Unfortunately, fixing up the homestead was low on the priority list.

The storm door banged open. “Where have you been?” William Jamieson demanded, crutches thumping across the veranda.

“I was at Frank’s getting parts.” Chris didn’t look at him as he unloaded the white 4x4’s bed.

“For two hours? I could have been there and back in one. Just because the days are getting longer, doesn’t mean you can waste time lollygagging around town.”

Chris groaned inwardly. Preempting another diatribe, he asked, “Where’s Simon?”

“Barn. I assume
he’s
doing his chores.”

He ignored the dig. “Did you work those numbers out for me?”

“You mean the ones that say we’re going to have to sell our kidneys to make it through the winter?”

Chris closed his eyes briefly. “I mean the numbers for delivering to Greenboro Market.”

“I already told you, selling to them’s a waste of time and resources. They’re too far out. They won’t order enough to make the trip there and back worthwhile.”

“Do you have the numbers to support that?”

“I don’t need numbers to tell you it’s not going to work. Greenboro’s full of regular working folk who want good, cheap food, not these fancy organic vegetables you want to sell them. You have a hard enough time in the market competing against imports.”

Chris tugged off his work gloves and slapped them down on the truck bed. He did not want to drag himself into another argument about market competition. “Look, Dad, I asked you to do this one thing for me. I appreciate your advice—”
yeah, right
“—but I’m the one in charge.”

“You think because you run the day-to-day, you own this place? Back in my day and my father’s day, we knew who our customers were and we gave them what they wanted. We didn’t try to sell them chichi designer vegetables for rich snobs.”

A headache pressed at Chris’s temples, and he pinched the flesh between his eyes. “Organic farming isn’t chichi, Dad. It’s practical business sense.”

“It’s environmental bullshit, is what it is. It’s a way for the government to pull subsidies away from honest farmers. You don’t know anything about the farm life, boy. It isn’t about numbers and marketing, it’s about heart and sweat and hard work, and I haven’t seen you give an ounce of that....”

Chris started to walk away.

“Where do you think you’re going? Don’t you turn your back on me. Just because I’m missing a leg doesn’t mean I can’t kick your ass, you disrespectful—”

“I’m leaving before I hear something
you’ll
regret. Now, get me those numbers. I want them by the end of the day.” He stalked off before his dad could get the last word in.

CHAPTER TWO

C
HRIS HEADED TO THE BARN
, a stiff, dust-laden breeze stinging his cheeks instead of cooling him off. His dad really knew how to push his buttons. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say his father enjoyed riling him up, probably because it gave him something to do.

He rounded the paddock where the horses stood soaking up the sun. One of Simon’s jobs was to clean out the stalls, but when Chris walked into the barn, he could see it hadn’t been done yet.

“Simon?” His voice echoed through the stuffy enclosure. Electronic
bleeps
and
bloops
from above caught his attention. He climbed the ladder into the loft and found his son slouched in the straw, his earbuds blaring some raspy, bass-heavy music while he played on his handheld video game.

Chris thumped the floorboard, and Simon jumped. He glared through his dark, shaggy bangs as he removed his earbuds.

“What are you doing? The stalls haven’t been cleaned out yet.”

“I’ll do it in a minute. I just got back from school. I need a break.”

“You shouldn’t have your music turned up so loud,” Chris told him. “You never know who might be calling for you, or if there’s danger.”

Simon’s lip curled as he returned to his game. “Whatever.”

A low moaning meow emanated from the corner of the loft, drawing their attention. Chris went to investigate. In the far corner, the straw had been loosened and dug into a nest. Chris crouched down and found the big black barn cat Simon had named Shadow lying in the straw, panting hard. “Simon, come here.”

“What?” He scrambled from his seat and peered over his dad’s shoulder.

“If you hadn’t had that music so loud, you would have heard her. Look, Shadow’s having kittens.”

And right then, a slimy ball of fur slid out of the cat and landed in the soft straw.

“Whoa.” Simon backed off. “Should we call a vet or something?”

“She’ll be fine. This is perfectly natural. She’s probably getting ready to give birth to a few more.” As the cat licked the newborn clean, Chris peeked up at his son’s slightly green face. Simon had never been much for watching the miracles of life, even though he’d grown up on the farm. “Why don’t you get a few towels and see if we can’t make Shadow more comfortable?” Though Chris had other things on his plate, Shadow was Simon’s cat, and his son looked slightly panicked. He couldn’t abandon either of them now.

They fashioned a bed in the straw for the cat. Within the hour, Shadow gave birth to five kittens, a mixture of tabbies and solid black with white markings. Simon wasn’t given to oohing and aahing, but once the grosser parts of birth were over, his eyes shone.

“Can we keep them?”

Chris grimaced. “We can’t afford to have them all spayed and neutered—” he was already regretting not getting Shadow fixed “—and I don’t want them running amok. We’ll probably have to give them away.”

Simon’s shoulders slumped, and Chris felt a twinge of guilt. He might as well have told him he’d canceled Christmas. His son didn’t understand that animals were a huge responsibility. Despite working with chickens, pigs and horses, he had very little interest in their lives and well-being. His 4-H project hadn’t been anything special, either—in fact, Chris was almost certain the whole thing had been pulled off the internet.