Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

At that, Addie laughed out loud. “If he’s Amos Duncan’s brother, he hasn’t mentioned anything. As for my ex-husband, well, that’s interesting, since I was never married. And I can assure you that I’m not a million dollars richer, either. He’s just a guy who’s down on his luck, Darla.”

“Then he’s not your date for tonight, either?”

Addie sighed. “I don’t have a date tonight, period.”

“That’s news to me.” Addie jumped as Wes Courtemanche breezed through the door. He was no longer wearing his police uniform but a spiffy coat and tie. “I clearly recall you saying I could take you out to dinner on Wednesday. Darla, is it Wednesday?”

“Think so, Wes.”

“There you go.” He winked. “Why don’t you change, Addie?”

She stood rooted to the spot. “You’ve got to be kidding. You couldn’t possibly believe that I might want to go out with a man who arrested my father.”

“That’s business, Addie. This is . . .” He leaned closer and lowered his voice to a curl of sound. “Pleasure.”

Addie moved to another table and began to scrub it. “I’m busy.”

“You’ve got Darla here to do that. And from what I hear, some new kid, too.”

“That’s exactly why I have to stay. To supervise.”

Wes covered her hand where it lay on the table, stilling her motion. “Darla, you’d take care of the new guy, wouldn’t you?”

Darla lowered her lashes. “Well . . . I could probably teach him a thing or two.”

“No doubt,” Addie said under her breath.

“Well, then. Come on. You wouldn’t want me to think you’ve got some objection to going out with me, would you?”

Addie met his eye. “Wes,” she said, “I have an objection to going out with you.”

He laughed. “God help me, Addie, but that piss-and-vinegar thing you’ve got going is some turn-on.”

Addie closed her eyes. It wasn’t fair to have to deal with Wes Courtemanche on a day like this one. Even Job was eventually cut a break. She also knew that if she refused to go, Wes would just sit in the diner and get on her nerves all night. The easiest way to get rid of him was to simply go out, then plead sick in the middle of the appetizer course.

“You win,” Addie conceded. “Let me just go tell Delilah where I’m off to.”

Before she could reach the kitchen, however, Jack emerged, holding her parka. Seeing the others, he blanched and ducked his head. “Delilah said I should bring this in,” he mumbled. “She said a night off won’t kill you.”

“Oh . . . thanks. Well, I’m glad you came out. I want you to meet Darla.”

Darla held out her hand, which Jack did not take. “Charmed,” she said.

“And this is Wes,” Addie said shortly, shrugging into her coat. “All right. Let’s get this over with. Darla, you’ll tell Delilah to have Chloe in bed by eight?”

No one seemed to be listening. Darla was turning up the TV volume from behind the counter, and Wes squinted at Jack, who trying to sink between the cracks of the linoleum. “Have we met?” Wes asked.

Jack ducked his head, refusing to meet the man’s eye. “No,” he said, clearing a table. “I don’t think so.”

It wasn’t that Wes Courtemanche was such an awful guy-he just wasn’t the right one for Addie, and nothing she said or did seemed to convince him otherwise. After about twenty minutes, a date with Wes took on the feeling of slamming oneself repeatedly into a brick wall. They walked side by side through town, holding Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate. Addie glanced across the green, where the lighted windows of the diner resembled holiday candelabra. “Wes,” she said for the sixth time, “I really have to go-now.”

“Three questions. Just three tiny questions so I can get to know you better.”

She sighed. “All right. And then I’m going.”

“Give me a minute. I’ve got to make sure they’re good ones.” They had just turned the corner of the green when Wes spoke again. “Why do you stay on at the diner?”

The question surprised Addie; she’d been expecting something far more facetious. She stopped walking, steam from her cup wreathing her face like a mystery. “I guess,” she said slowly, “because I have nowhere else to go.”

“How would you know, since you’ve been doing it all your life?”

Addie cast him a sidelong glance. “Is this number two?”

“No. It’s number one, part b.”

“It’s hard to explain, unless you’ve been in the business. You get attached to creating a place where people can come in and feel like they fit. Look at Stuart and Wallace . . . or the student who reads Nietzsche in the back booth every morning. Or even you, and the other police officers who stop in for coffee. If I left, where would they all go?” She shrugged. “In some ways, that diner’s the only home my daughter’s ever known.”

“But Addie-”

She cleared her throat before he could finish speaking. “Number two?”

“If you could be anything in the world, what would you be?”

“A mother,” she said after a moment. “I’d be a mother.”

Wes slid his free arm around her waist and grinned, his teeth as white as the claw of moon above them. “You must be reading my mind, honey, since that brings me right to my third question.” He pressed his lips over her ear, his words vibrating against her skin. “How do you like your eggs in the morning?”

He’s too close. Addie’s breath knotted at the back of her throat and every inch of her skin broke out in a cold sweat. “Unfertilized!” she answered, managing to jam her elbow into his side. Then she ran for the buttery windows of the diner like a sailor from a capsized ship who spies a lighthouse, lashes his hope to it, and swims toward salvation.

Jack and Delilah stood side by side chopping onions, taking advantage of a slow after-dinner crowd to get a head start on tomorrow’s soup. The scent of onions pricked the back of his nose and drew false tears, but anything was preferable to finding himself backed into corners by Darla. Delilah raised the tip of her knife and pointed to a spot a foot away from Jack. “She died right there,” Delilah said. “Came in, gave Roy hell, and collapsed on the floor.”

“But it wasn’t her fault Roy had put the wrong side order on the plate.”

Delilah looked at him sidelong. “Doesn’t matter. Roy was busy as all get-out and didn’t want to take any fuss from Margaret, so he just said, ‘You want your peas? Here’re your goddamn peas.’ And he threw the pot of them at her.”

Delilah scraped her onions into a bucket. “He didn’t hit her or anything. It was just a temper he was in. But I guess it was too much for Margaret.” She handed Jack another onion to chop. “Doctor said her heart was like a bomb ticking in her chest and that it would have given out even if she hadn’t been fighting with Roy. I say a heart stopped that day, sure, but I’m thinking it was his. Everyone knows he blames himself for what happened.”

Jack thought of what it would be like to go through life knowing that the last conversation you had with your wife involved throwing a cast-iron pot at her. “All it takes is a second and your whole life can get turned upside down,” he agreed.

“Mighty profound from a dishwasher.” Delilah tilted her head. “Where’d you come from, anyway?”

Jack’s hand slipped and the knife sliced across the tip of his finger. Blood welled at the seam, and he lifted his hand before he could contaminate the food.

Delilah fussed over him, handing him a clean rag to stop the bleeding and insisting he hold the wound under running water. “It’s nothing,” Jack said. He brought his fingertip to his mouth, sucking. “Must’ve been hard on Addie.”