MAMA REE’S NOT-A-DINER. The sign above the door told me pretty much everything I needed to know about the establishment’s owner.
“But Cassie,” Sloane whispered as we stepped into the restaurant. “It is a diner.”
A woman in her early sixties looked up from behind the counter and gave us the once-over, as if she’d heard Sloane’s whispered words. “Help yourself to any table you’d like,” she called after she’d finished studying us.
I opted for a booth by the window in between a pair of senior citizens playing chess and a quartet of even older women gossiping over breakfast. Sloane wasn’t kidding when she’d said the average age of Gaither’s citizens was on an incline.
Lia and Sloane slid into the booth beside me. Dean and Michael took the other side, and Sterling and Judd helped themselves to stools at the counter.
“We don’t do menus.” The woman who’d told us to take a seat—Mama Ree, I was guessing—set five waters down on our table. “Right now, it’s breakfast. In about ten minutes, it’ll be lunch. For breakfast, we have breakfast food. For lunch, we have lunch food. If you can think of it, I can cook it, so long as you’re not expecting anything fancy.”
She said fancy like it was a dirty word.
“I could go for some biscuits and gravy.” Dean’s Southern accent got a smile out of the woman.
“Side of bacon,” she declared. It wasn’t a question.
Dean was nobody’s fool. “Yes, ma’am.”
“French toast for me,” Lia requested. Ree harrumphed—my gut said French cut too close to fancy—but wrote down Lia’s order nonetheless before turning her attention to me. “And for you, missy?”
Those words took me back. This wasn’t my first time at the Not-A-Diner. I could see myself in a corner booth, crayons spread out on the table.
“I’ll have a blueberry pancake,” I found myself saying. “With strawberry sauce and an Oreo milkshake.”
My order caused the unflappable woman to pause, as if that combination was familiar to her, the way the apothecary garden had been to me.
You’re not the type to gossip with outsiders, I thought. But you might share some interesting tidbits with one of Gaither’s own.
“You probably don’t remember me,” I said, “but I used to live in Gaither with my mother. Her name was—”
“Lorelai.” Ree beat me to it. Then she smiled. “And that would make you Lorelai’s Cassie, all grown up.” She gave me another once-over. “You favor your mother.”
I wasn’t sure whether that was supposed to be a compliment—or a warning.
Get her talking, I thought. About Mom. About the town. About Mason Kyle.
“I don’t remember much about living here. I know it was probably only for a couple of weeks, but—”
“A couple of weeks?” Ree raised both eyebrows so high that they nearly disappeared into her graying hairline. “Cassie, you and your mama lived here for almost a year.”
A year? I felt like she’d punched me in the stomach. I could forgive myself for forgetting a couple of weeks out of a largely transient childhood, but a year? An entire year of my life that—if I’d even remembered the town’s name—might have given the police a lead on my mother’s case years ago?
“You were a bitty thing,” Ree continued. “Six or so. Quiet. Well-behaved, not like my Melody. You remember Melody?”
The second I heard the name, I got a flash of a young girl with pigtails. “Your granddaughter. We were friends.”
I never had friends. I never had a home. These were the truths of my childhood.
“How’s your mama doing these days?” Ree asked.
I swallowed and looked down at the table in front of me. “She died when I was twelve.”
Another truth of my childhood that had turned out to be a lie.
“Oh, honey.” Ree reached out and squeezed my shoulder. Then, with the no-nonsense manner of a woman who’d raised multiple generations of children, she turned to Sloane and Michael and took their orders.
You know grief, I thought. You know when to comfort and when to let things be.
Once Ree made her way into the kitchen, Michael offered an observation.
“She was fond of your mother, but there’s anger there, too.”
If my mother and I had lived here for nearly a year, what had made us hit the road again? And what, exactly, had my mother left in her wake?
Our food arrived, and I spent the entire meal trying to decide how to get Ree talking. I needed details—about my mother’s life in Gaither, about Mason Kyle’s.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to ask Ree to talk. Once we’d finished breakfast, she pulled up a chair. “What brings you back to Gaither?” she asked.
Murder. Kidnapping. Centuries of systematic torture.
“We brought Cassie’s mom’s ashes,” Lia answered on my behalf. “Lorelai’s body was discovered a few months ago. Cassie said this was the place she would have wanted to be lain to rest.”
I’d already admitted to not remembering much about my time in Gaither, but Lia was Lia, and Ree believed every word out of her mouth.
“If there’s anything I can do for you,” Ree said plainly, “Cassie, honey, you just let me know.”
“There is one thing.” This was the opening I’d been waiting for. “If my mom and I were here for a year, that’s the longest we ever lived anywhere. I can’t remember much of it. I know my mother loved it here, but before I scatter her ashes…” I closed my eyes for a moment, allowing the real grief that lived inside me to make its way to the surface. “I’d like to try to remember why.”
I wasn’t anywhere near Lia’s caliber as a liar, but I did know how to use the truth to my advantage. The longest we ever lived anywhere. I can’t remember much of it. I’d like to remember why.
“I don’t know how much I can tell you.” Ree was nothing if not frank. “Lorelai was the type to keep to herself. She swept into town doing some kind of balderdash dog and pony show, claiming she was psychic—helping people ‘connect to their dead loved ones,’ reading fortunes.” Ree snorted. “The city council wouldn’t have let her stay for long, but Marcela Waite is a sucker for that kind of thing, and she’s known for three things around these parts: loose lips, a rich, dead husband, and a tendency to badger city council members until they give her what she wants.”