D is for Deacon (Men of ALPHAbet Mountain)

It could be worse.

I could be living with my mom.

2

REBECCA

As a little girl, living in a small town nestled in the mountains felt like I was in a fairy tale. I thought words like “quaint” and “sleepy” sounded sweet, and it had to be my birthright to live a charmed existence. It would be all smiling neighbors, fun with my family and friends, a fulfilling career that made me happy every day, and a blissful relationship with the most wonderful man. Sometimes I would stare into the woods on the mountains that rose above the town of Ashford and imagine they were enchanted and filled with the magic that would bring me all those glorious things.

Nevertheless as most whimsical of little girls are inclined to do, I grew up. I realized I didn’t live in a fairy tale, and living in a small town wasn’t all that magical. Life wasn’t going to hand me all the things I thought I’d have, and some of those harsh lessons taught me another.

The one thing living in a place as small as Ashford was truly good for was gossip.

A year since losing my parents left me with no family except my uncle and I was trying to find my way in the world that was suddenly very real.

It wasn’t that I completely hated my hometown or that I was miserable all the time. For all its faults, Ashford was still where I was born and raised, and it had its benefits. One of the biggest being all the happy memories. This was where I’d lived with my parents and where I still felt like they were. Now, instead of looking out into the woods and dreaming of enchantment, I tried to pretend my parents were out there somewhere. They were just living their life among the trees and were perfectly safe. It was still hard to be away from them, but at least they were happy.

But even with the warm spot I had for my childhood home and the memories I had here, it was hard not to let the way people looked at me with pity in their eyes. And I tried my best to not allow the emptiness of my home get to me sometimes.

Lately, it was feeling like I was in a holding pattern that was really bogging me down. My parents’ deaths spun my life off track a year before, and I hadn’t fully gotten back moving again. The same dreams were living in the back of my mind, but I was dreaming them while working at the same little diner that I’d waited tables at since I was a teenager.

“Rebecca, your special order is ready.”

I tried my best not to let out the huge sigh that filled my lungs at the sound of the cook calling out to me from the door to the kitchen. Setting the saltshaker, I was filling down onto the table, I went into the kitchen.

“Thank you,” I said to Tony behind the counter.

The big man nodded at me, already too invested in the order he was filling to get into much of a conversation. I scooped up the plates waiting for me under the heat lamp and headed out to the booth waiting for them. It took a concerted effort to put a smile on my face as I was approaching the table.

The couple sitting there, leaning toward one another as they talked in hushed tones like they wanted to make sure none of their words trickled over into anyone else’s ears, didn’t bother to let me know about their special needs and necessary modifications until after I’d already brought their food for the first time.

They had the menu. They read the description of the food. Yet, they didn’t let me know that the woman had an egg allergy and couldn’t have the mayonnaise on her burger. Or that the man didn’t want any of his food cooked on the flat-top grill. Or that they didn’t trust the temperatures of the oil in a deep fryer, so they wouldn’t eat the French fries. At a diner.

Dina’s diner was many things. Health-forward and progressive were not among them.

But I did my best to explain their needs to Tony so he could accommodate them. He didn’t speak to me after I gave him the list, so I had a feeling he was more than annoyed. He’d get over it. He always did.

That was my life at the diner. There were pleasant people, and some of the regulars were great, but having a nice time serving them was always interspersed with the challenging customers, the tedious side work, and the sense that this was as far as I was ever going to get in life.

I had to admit waitressing was a lot more fun when my close friend Lauren had still worked there. We’d gotten much closer in the last couple of months that she had been here, before she left to work at a logging company. Now that she was gone, things around the diner just weren’t the same.