Of Literature and Lattes, page 16
“What don’t you know?”
Janet studied his eyes more closely and recalled the different shade each emotion brought, and the different shades of emotion she’d brought to their marriage over the years. To be discontented, chafed, irritated, annoyed, she suspected, had been as indelible within her disposition as the changing of colors was within his eyes.
She pulled her hand away and laid her palm against his face. “What if I screw it up again?”
He covered her hand with his own. “I’m present now. We both are.”
“You’re sure?”
A flicker entered his green. “Aren’t you?”
“Yes.” She chastised herself for having needed—again—that extra beat of reassurance. She had been sure, certain, thankful, overjoyed in the moment he’d asked, and yet still she had required more. No more, she thought to herself. Trust. Leap.
“I love you,” she stated simply.
Seth smiled and moved close to kiss his beautiful ex-wife-turned-fiancée when a man caught his eye. He pulled back. Janet’s eyes clouded in confusion before her head turned to follow his line of sight.
“George?” he called down the hallway. He squeezed Janet’s hands, both still clasped within his own, and stood.
“Seth.” The old man sighed as if he had found safe harbor. “Janet.”
Seth noted George’s tone carried a little uplift in question with Janet’s name. He couldn’t blame him. All the members of their men’s group had walked beside him during his divorce and its lonely aftermath. And George hadn’t been around much in the last couple months to hear the updates.
“What are you doing here? Is Margery okay?”
George looked back down the hallway. “Winsome Pharmacy is closed; the hospital’s is the only one open right now. I ran out of my heart pills.”
“Couldn’t your hospice nurses help you out?”
“I needed something to do. Margery is finally sleeping.”
Seth gripped the man’s shoulder. George and Margery had been married for sixty-three years, and he couldn’t imagine the pain George was enduring. “You need sleep too, my friend. Let us take you home.”
“My car is right outside the west door. But you’re right. I’m getting tired now.” George shook his head. “David Drummond told me about this.”
Janet laid a hand on his arm as well. “Told you what?”
Seth noticed George’s eyes looked rheumy, red and alone, beyond anything he’d seen in his friend before.
“The night is the darkest time. The kids are home, five of them, and yet in the night I’m empty and alone, deeply alone.”
Janet stepped forward and engulfed George in a hug, and Seth loved her for it.
After long minutes, George stepped back. “I’ll go now. I expect I’ll be able to get a little sleep. Thank you.”
Seth rested a hand once again on George’s shoulder. “How about I drop by tomorrow?”
“I’d like that.” George nodded and walked past them. He stopped and looked back twenty feet later, just as the hospital’s sliding doors opened for him. Seth stood with his arms around Janet, who had her forehead resting on his chest.
He smiled and headed out into the parking lot. He had always thought those two would get back together. For years everyone labeled Janet a shrew or worse, but he’d always had a soft spot for her. Just wait, he’d told Margery. Don’t give up, he’d told Seth. Seth hadn’t seen his wife clearly, and all the fear she carried. But he had—after all, he’d raised Devon, Bella, and Terrell. He knew a wounded soul thrashed as violently as a bitter or broken one. But once soothed and made safe, that soul healed well and was all the more beautiful for the hurt it once carried.
Upon reaching his car, George pulled out the small pad of paper and pen he always carried and made a note to call Devon the next morning. He smiled to himself. It was already morning, but without writing it down he’d still forget.
And that’s what he did. After only four hours of sleep, George was wide awake again and had completely forgotten his plan to call his fourth child.
The sun wasn’t up yet—which was just how he liked it. He used to love it when the kids would come down for breakfast and find a good meal laid out on the table. He had often made eggs and bacon and always burned the toast a touch. How they would exclaim, as if fairies had left the grub by magic. They knew he did it, of course, but they never realized how much work it required. It took a full hour to make that meal, and by the time they thundered down the stairs before school he’d also already had his quiet time, downed his morning coffee, and read the newspaper. They’d laugh together over breakfast, then head to school and he’d head to the office. It had felt like magic. Maybe it was. He chuckled. Magic for me, he thought, and for them, but poor Margery always got stuck with the dishes.
He put on a cardigan and walked out the front door, greeting the day-shift hospice nurse in the driveway.
“How was the night, Mr. George?”
“She slept well. Deeper, I think.”
“She will, and longer now.” The slow, compassionate way she said the words signaled to George that this was not a sign of good restorative rest, but the start of the next stage of the journey. “You need rest too, Mr. George. Your coffee will still be there in a few hours.”
“Won’t be the same, Denise. I’ll be back soon.”
George walked down Bunting Street, turned left onto Spruce, and within fifteen minutes—it used to take eight, he thought—he crossed the town green to Andante.
The owner pushed the door open just as he reached for the handle.
“George Williams?”
The older man looked up, startled. The young man thrust out his hand. “Jeremy Mitchell. I own the shop. Please come in.”
“Thank you.” George nodded.
Chapter 23
“This makes no sense.” Jeremy slammed his laptop shut as Ryan pushed through the kitchen’s swinging door.
“Whoa . . . What makes no sense?”
“Nothing . . . Everything.” Jeremy ran his hands through his hair.
Ryan picked up his book from the edge of the desk. Jeremy knew it was more tattered than how Ryan had left it. He had accidentally dropped it and creased the cover, almost to the point of tearing, while devouring it that night.
“Did you read it?” Ryan waved the small paperback at him.
“It’s the loneliest, harshest book I’ve ever read.”
“Really? I think Steinbeck gets at the human condition pretty well, and George and Lennie—that’s the point—they had each other.”
“Until Lennie ruins it killing that woman. Then he loses his life and George loses too. He kills his friend, kills their dream . . . He’ll never fully live after that, never get his farm. He’s another Candy, alone, with no one and nothing.”
Ryan chewed his lip. “You’re right.”
Jeremy glanced to his laptop and his thinking shifted. “There are lots of ways to betray a friend. I get that Lennie wasn’t fully capable of making good choices, at least Steinbeck presents him that way, but we . . . We are responsible for our choices. We know what we’re doing and when it’s flat wrong.”
Ryan watched him but asked nothing, said nothing more. Jeremy slid the laptop back toward himself, and Ryan pushed through the kitchen door to the front of the shop. Jeremy watched the swinging door slow until it stilled . . . He hadn’t thought about someone taking the money. He’d only thought he’d misplaced, miscounted it. But what if?
He forced himself to stop and breathe. He was being unfair and beyond unjust. He looked at the clock he’d mounted on the wall above his desk. Alyssa said she’d drop by at ten—she was the perfect person to ask about this.
And, speaking of perfect, that’s what last night had been. Not like before, with Krista. That was tempestuous, tense, and uncertain, almost like he was constantly on the verge of the stomach flu. But it had been such a heady experience—easily mistaken for love. While it felt harsh to describe those days with Krista like that now, he thought, time and experience did have a way of recasting one’s memories.
But last night . . . He’d reached for Alyssa’s hand as they walked to her borrowed car. She’d grown quiet as the evening wound down. Lexi and Liam were clearly exhausted, as he was sure they were every night after closing. Alyssa looked wiped too.
“Am I working you too hard?” he had quipped.
She laughed, but it was tinged with sadness. “I can’t tell you how much working for you and Lexi means to me right now . . . There’s just a lot going on and . . .”
“What?”
She stopped by a black sedan. “I don’t feel like myself. I thought I would, that once I got here, despite everything that’s still a total mess, I’d feel better. I’d be better. And I’m not.”
“How can I help?”
“Have a latte waiting for me at ten o’clock tomorrow? We need to talk more about your credit card processing.” She lifted up on her toes and pressed a kiss to his lips. Not a peck, he noted right then and there. A real kiss. He almost burst out of his skin as he slid a hand around her back.
“Got it,” he whispered against her lips. As she lowered onto her heels again, he gave a final peck at her lips. “And a muffin.”
She opened the car door. “You’d better skip the muffin. I always feel a little ill after those. No offense.”
“None taken.” He chuckled. “I do too.”
She dropped into the car. “I’ve got an idea to change that too. Tomorrow?”
“Looking forward to it. Sleep well.”
The conversations, the kisses, the hope and anticipation, all pointing to ten o’clock, had woken him before sunrise and brought him to the shop even earlier than usual. And when he looked out the door at 6:25 a.m. and saw George Williams slowly coming up the sidewalk, he felt emboldened and invited the man in. It felt like the previous night’s glow was spilling into the morning and Alyssa had been right all along. Everything would turn out okay.
George had looked surprised at Jeremy’s greeting, but thanked him and entered. At the counter he pulled his credit card out of his brown leather wallet and looked up, with a slightly befuddled expression, at the chalkboard sign.
Jeremy waved his card away. “Whatever you like. It’s on me.”
George dropped his eyes to his credit card and carefully placed it back within its sleeve. He looked back to the menu board. “What do you recommend?”
“How about this? You go sit and I’ll bring you something.”
George nodded.
Four minutes later, Jeremy dropped into the chair beside him at the fireplace. He put their white china cups on the small table between them and reached to turn on the fire. “It’s more for the look than anything in the summer.”
“A fire always makes a place homey.” George shifted forward in the deep leather chair to reach for his cup.
Jeremy gestured to it. “I heard you order a cappuccino the other day. Today I used a new bean and gave you just a hint of foam, thinking you might like it the way I do, pretty dry. Let me know what you think.”
George settled back and closed his eyes with his first sip. “Delicious. I’ve always liked coffee. It was rationed in the forties, and when it came back it felt like a great luxury. I was a kid then and didn’t drink, but I watched my dad.” He took another sip. “As soon as he’d let me, it became our ritual. A cup together at our kitchen table every day. Reminds me of him even now.”
“I feel that way about it too. I started working for a coffee shop in my neighborhood when I was fifteen. I think my foster mom thought it’d keep me out of trouble, and it did. I loved that place and I understood the beans.” Jeremy chuckled. “Odd as it sounds, there’s no other way to say it. Smell, touch, taste, when they’d pull dry, when they’d sour; there was an art and chemistry about it, a relationship I understood.” He leaned back. “Says something, doesn’t it? My best relationship was and probably still is with a coffee bean.”
“Ah . . . Foster care . . . I have three kids who started out there. Good kids, good adults now. I wish back then they’d had something as simple and as complex as that—a relationship with a bean.”
“They had each other.” At George’s questioning glance, he held up a hand. “I’m sorry. A friend, Alyssa Harrison, was in your son Devon’s high school class. She mentioned him and that he had two siblings.”
“He did back then. Now he’s got five. But you’re right—they started out together, just the three of them against the world. We had some rough early years with that crew.” George chuckled with the memories. “They’re all coming back now. I . . . I need to call Devon today. He was coming this weekend, but sooner might be better.”
“That’s wonderful.”
Something flickered in George’s eyes as he looked to the fireplace. Jeremy got the impression that the homecoming wasn’t “wonderful” after all. He searched for a new, and lighter, topic.
“Is it really awful without the pillows?”
George chuckled. “Told you about that too, did she?” He waved away Jeremy’s nod. “I was being a grouch that day. I’m finding it hard to let go of stuff these days.” He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “I’m sorry about what I said your first day open.” He looked around. “It’s a fine-looking place. Not what anybody would expect in poky old Winsome. Kinda puts us on the map, doesn’t it?”
“From what I hear, you did that when you were mayor.”
“Folks are being nice. We have a good community here, always have, and it’s different from all the other towns around Chicago. We’re less of a thoroughfare. I tried to build on that sense of home, of community, especially in town here, so that people didn’t necessarily need to leave to find work. There’s something good and fundamental about living and working in the same community. But things change . . . We can’t even fill that Chamber of Commerce position. It’s been vacant for almost six months now.”
He looked past Jeremy, who turned to follow his gaze.
Outside the window, two people approached the door. George pushed himself up. “They’ve found me . . . That’s Bella and Michael, kids five and two, as I call them. I’m surprised it took them this long to get here.”
“Do they want a coffee?”
“No . . . I’d best get going. Thank you.”
Jeremy stood. “I hope you’ll come back.”
With a nod and a wave, George headed out the door to meet his children outside. Michael swung his arm around his father and Bella looped her arm through George’s on his other side.
The sight froze Jeremy in place. There was nothing “wonderful” about it. It was heartbreaking and evoked a memory he never knew he held. A crack in the wall. Someone once did that to him. He was shorter, younger, but someone swung an arm around him and someone else, on his other side, had tried to tuck him close. And even though he couldn’t recall the exact time or the place, he knew when it had occurred—the day, or soon after, his parents died.
Last night’s glow and that chink in his own memories had sustained him all morning—until now. If he was right, and someone was stealing from him, much more was wrong with his shop than he ever anticipated.
Jeremy looked up from his computer. The numbers were swimming before his eyes, and none of them were good. 10:45. Alyssa wasn’t coming.
Jeremy pushed his way through the swinging door. Something had to be done. Bottom line: over five thousand dollars was missing, his books were a mess, and Ryan’s constant second-guessing and complaining, not to mention the ever-present tension between him and Brendon, was becoming unbearable. It was time for a talk.
Ryan caught his eye from a group of people standing near the front door, and Jeremy motioned toward the office door. But rather than nod and follow, Ryan shook his head as another man stepped between Ryan and Brendon, who seemed to be facing off at the center of the group.
“What the—” Jeremy headed toward the men, noting that every eye in the coffee shop was on them.
“Jeremy Miller?” The man standing next to Ryan motioned to him.
“What’s going on?” Jeremy circled the counter to cross toward the front of the store, directly in the middle of its huge plate-glass window. A few pedestrians had stalled on the sidewalk to look in.
Jeremy locked eyes on Ryan. Ryan’s eyes widened in return before he glanced away.
“We need you to come with us.” One of the three man standing with Ryan and Brendon lifted his chin toward Jeremy. The light glinted off the badge at his waist.
“I don’t understand.”
“Your employee has been selling Adderall to high school students.”
“What? The ADD medication?” Jeremy’s eyes trailed to Ryan.
“It’s an upper that carries the same high as crystal meth, and he’s been selling right outside your back door.”
“Add stealing too.” Ryan looked at Jeremy rather than the officer. “He’s stolen almost five thousand dollars from this shop.”
Jeremy startled, both at Ryan’s emphasis and at his statement. “How—?”
The officer cut him off before he could finish the question. “Is this true?”
“Yes, I mean, I haven’t been able to find the money between accounts. I . . .” Jeremy stalled and reddened under Ryan’s assessment.
“All right, then . . . We’ll discuss that too. Please come with me.”
“Me? No. I had nothing to do with this.”
“You’ve got drugs running out the back door of your establishment and money’s gone missing.” The officer’s tone rose in question, as if confused why Jeremy didn’t understand the problem. He also widened his stance. “This goes down one of two ways. You come with me now, or I arrest you and you still come with me now.” He dropped his hand to his waist and fingered the cuffs hanging there.
“I can answer your questions here.” Jeremy looked around. Several customers held raised phones pointed their direction. He felt a panic seize him. “You can’t do this here. This is my business.”
“That solves one problem.” The officer gripped Jeremy’s right arm and turned him around. The move was almost gentle, definitely practiced, and Jeremy was in the cuffs before another word could escape.
