“I’ve got two,” she says, pointing to her index finger.
“One…I just got a job.” She touches her second finger.
“You did what?” My anger turns into laughter. There’s no way she just said what I think she said.
“I just talked to Elizabeth and Big Large. I start tomorrow, as hostess but then I’ll get to move up to a waitress.”
“Why would you do this?” My throat is dry with the way I’m yelling at her in a whisper. The last thing I need is for everyone to stare at us again. “Who the hell is Big Large?”
“Big Large is the owner. He’s that big guy over there.” She hooks her thumb in the opposite direction and I glance up at a morbidly overweight man with a Santa Clause beard. “And I did it because I’m going to be a mother soon. I need money, as much of it as I can get.”
“But. We. Don’t. Live. Here,” I hiss.
She shakes her head slightly with her lips pursed as if to say oh, Robin you’ve got it all wrong. “You haven’t let me tell you the second reason.”
“I don’t care what your second reason is, we aren’t staying here.”
“I think you will care.”
“No, Miranda. I won’t.”
I fish some cash out of my wallet and leave it on the bar. Then I hop off my stool and prepare to leave her here. Forever, for all I care. She’s completely juvenile and ruining my trip. This trip is about me, not her. It’s where I find out who I’m supposed to be in life, where I’m supposed to be, and maybe—just maybe—who I’m supposed to be my new self with. I shouldn’t have let her come with me anyway. As I’m walking away, Miranda yells my name.
I stop, turn on my heel and glare at her. “What?”
She holds up two fingers again, this time pointing at the second finger. “Number two. There’s a photo of Great Grandpa in the countertop.”
Chapter 11
“It’s fate.” Miranda’s cheek presses to the bar at the diner as she gazes at the black and white photo sealed beneath half an inch of resin. There’s no denying that the man in the photograph is Grandpa. He’s in his twenties, wearing overalls with one strap hanging loosely off his shoulder, his brown hair slicked back. The eagle tattoo on his arm is bold and fresh, not wrinkly and faded like I remember it.
Next to him is a woman I can only assume is Grandma. I never met her because she died during childbirth with my mom. Her hair is light and wavy, with little bits of it stuck to her face in the wind, just like mine. She’s wearing overalls too, and her left leg is propped up on a paint bucket. That pant leg is rolled up to her knee, but the other one isn’t. They’re both smiling and standing in front of an old Chevrolet truck. Although I guess the truck wasn’t old when the photo was taken.
“This is so weird,” I say, running my finger over Grandpa’s arm.
“Like I said, it’s fate.” Miranda’s voice fogs on the counter and temporarily covers over the photo. “Great Grandpa did this. He knew we would find him.”
I lift an eyebrow. “How so?”
“Think about it. You have your mental breakdown and decide to leave without telling anyone. And I have my mental breakdown and decide to seek refuge with you. I don’t even know why I did it, I mean, I have friends I could have stayed with but something was just pulling me to your house.”
I lift the other eyebrow at her. She continues. “I mean, it’s like Great Grandpa was telling me to go see you. You’re right; we don’t know each other at all. I had just seen you at the funeral, so I guess you were on my mind and I just knew that I needed to find you that night. I knew it would be okay if I found you.”
“That was weird…” I twirl a strand of my hair around my finger as I recall the way she looked when she showed up at my door. “You knocked on my door just minutes before I was going to leave.”
Miranda nods. “And we ended up here.” She spreads her arms out. “Out of all the other, more interesting, more notable places in the world, we ended up in Salt Gap freaking Texas. I’m telling you, it’s a sign. That’s why I asked for a job.”
“Is this job another one of your gut feelings?” I make air quotes around the last word.
“No, it was my way of making you stay here. I know you won’t leave me.”
“We can’t stay in the inn forever,” I say. Then it dawns on me what her smart ass just said. “And I will leave you. Don’t ever think I won’t.”
She shrugs. “We’ll find a place. You can afford it.” I laugh. Normally that would be insulting, but she’s right. I could probably buy the whole town with what Grandpa left me.
A busboy takes our empty plates and refills my orange juice. We sit at the bar on either side of Grandpa’s photo for a long time, each watching the frozen smiles of our ancestors, lost in our own thoughts. Part of my subconscious is freaking out, I’m not going to lie, and that part of me is putting together all this new information, processing and contemplating and just plain freaking the hell out. But, and this is a huge but, there’s another small part of my mind that feels content. That part of me thinks it’ll be just fine to settle down here and live, oh I don’t know, forever.
And that part, though small, has the other part of my subconscious locked in a death grip, and it’s winning. “Okay,” I say, grabbing Miranda’s hand. “Let’s do it. Let’s stay in Salt Gap.”