“Oh, no!” Brook gasped.
“I’m afraid so. My daughter let me keep her while she was gettin’ settled in her new job after a messy divorce. I’ll be checkin’ her out of school tomorrow while the moving men get started packing. We’ll leave on Tuesday morning. Soon as the moving van pulls away, we will, too. I’m not lettin’ this kid out of my sight until I can hand her over to her mama.”
“I’m so sorry, Flora,” Tawny said.
“I hate to leave y’all this quick. I wanted to stick around until summertime and give you more time to settle in.”
Zed moved from his chair to hug her. “It’s okay. We’ll make it. Cassidy needs a change, and you’re ten years past when you could have retired. I’m just grateful for every single day that you’ve worked with us. Annie would understand.”
“I’ll sure miss all y’all, but I got to do what’s best for Cassidy.” Flora stood up and wiped tears from her eyes. “Zed, I’ll be callin’ to check on y’all from time to time. You take care of yourself.” She left them still reeling from the news.
“Well, now, what are we goin’ to do about this turn of events?” Zed asked.
Tawny caught Dana’s bewildered gaze and then shifted her eyes to Harper, who looked like she could chew up railroad ties and spit out Tinkertoys. Her oldest sister was already trying to fix the problem, just like older children did. The middle one was wishing that she could shake some sense into Cassidy.
“Okay, here’s my two cents,” Tawny said. “Dana, you take on the reservations and checking in and out at the store. I’ll fall into Flora’s place cleanin’ rooms. Brook has done it often enough now that if I don’t get it done right, she can show me what I’m doin’ wrong. When the store closes, we’ll put a sign on the door for the folks checkin’ in late to come to cabin seven, and I’ll take care of them. Harper can help me out in the laundry when she has downtime in the café if I’m behind. Three people used to run this place and now we’ve got five, so we can do this.”
“Tawny, your plan sounds solid to me,” Harper said. “But Brook, how do you feel about this? I don’t mean the new plans. I mean your friend Cassidy leaving.”
Brook sat down on her mother’s lap. “To tell the truth, I been kind of steerin’ clear of Cassidy, because she was gettin’ more and more tangled up with Ryson.”
“So this isn’t goin’ to hurt you too much,” Zed asked.
“Nope, but Aunt Tawny, we better get some breakfast, because you’re goin’ to be real busy all mornin’. Do I get a raise? After all, I’m the supervisor now.” Brook grinned.
Zed threw back his head and guffawed until he had a coughing fit. “Y’all just proved that you are Annie’s kin for sure. Dana, you didn’t weigh in on takin’ on that much more work.”
“It’s fine with me. Sounds like Tawny came up with a good plan there,” Dana said.
“Yes, sir! Annie would be proud of you all. Now I’m goin’ to start makin’ breakfast.”
“If we can have some chocolate chip pancakes, I’ll help,” Tawny said, and the lyrics from Miranda’s song played through her head again, saying she’d heard that folks couldn’t go home again.
They’re wrong, Tawny thought as she followed Zed to the kitchen. I’ve come home and this is where I’m staying.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Heat seemed to bother Zed more than the cold lately. He was not looking forward to summer. Yet gratitude filled him Monday afternoon that the transition of jobs had gone so well and that Harper had made a run to the laundry house to help Tawny out. The rooms had been cleaned and were ready for any new guests, and Dana had taken care of checkouts without a hitch. Of course, she’d had to do it the old-fashioned way with paper and pen, but still, it looked like Tawny had come up with a good idea.
“I’m right proud of her, Annie,” Zed said as he dropped a cigarette butt into the receptacle and lit up another one. “Don’t fuss at me. I need two today after Flora quittin’.”
“Who are you talkin’ to, Zed?” Payton sat down on the bench beside him.
“Annie. I talk to her a lot since she’s passed on. And if I’m lucky, she talks to me.” He shifted in his seat before he went on. “Blue-plate special is wiped completely out, but I can make you a burger if you’re hungry.”
“I’m not in a big hurry,” Payton said. “Hear you lost your longtime helper. I know how that feels, but things do tend to work themselves out in those cases.”
“Yep, and better than I thought they might.” Zed took a couple more long draws from the cigarette and then put it into the little hole at the top of the butt bin. Before he could stand up, Brook rounded the side of the building, her book bag slung over one shoulder and looking like she had the weight of the world sitting on her shoulders.
She plopped down on the grass in front of Zed and laid her head on his knee. “I got in big trouble at school and I have to spend this whole week in the in-school suspension place. The upside is that I got my homework done. The downside is that I have to tell Mama.”
“Want to practice on us first?” Payton asked.
“The fight wasn’t even my fault, but since I threw the first punch, the rules say that I started it.”
“Did you finish it?” Zed asked.
Her nod was slow and her sigh audible. “Ryson came up to me in the hallway soon as I got to my locker and tried to hand me a joint. When I refused it, he tried to put it in my pocket, so I took a step back and it fell on the floor. Then he whispered that I could take Cassidy’s place if I’d just pick it up. He said he didn’t date good girls. So if I wanted what Cassidy got, then I had to dirty up my act. That’s when I decked him.”
Payton leaned forward and checked her face for bruises. “That sorry little punk. Did he hit you back?”
Zed’s hands shook, and he knotted them into fists. Damn little punk, talking to his baby girl like that—he ought to be beat on like he was a piñata.
“He’s a lot bigger than me, but I don’t think he ever took martial arts classes like I did,” she said. “He doubled up his fists and took a swing, but I blocked it and gave him a pretty good workin’ over by the time the teachers pulled us apart.”
“And then?” Payton asked.
“Then we went to the office right along with Mr. Green, who’d seen everything. He didn’t hear what Ryson said, but he saw the business with the joint and all. Ryson was supposed to spend the rest of the year in suspension, but his mama came and checked him out of school. I heard that he’ll be homeschooled.”
“How would you like to be stuck at home every day like Ryson is going to be and never see kids your age?” Payton asked.
“Not very good, but I don’t feel a bit sorry for him,” she said. “A bunch of the kids on the bus told me that if they could they’d go to suspension a day for me, so I guess I made some new friends. But Mama is goin’ to be disappointed because I didn’t control my temper. It’s just that I was so mad at him. Poor Cassidy thinks that he loves her and he was only using her and if I told her that, she wouldn’t believe me.” She stopped to catch her breath. “I’m not going to tell Mama until tonight. You think she’ll ground me for the rest of my life?”