Mom sighed as she followed Alice and Carver out of the WaHo. “I wonder if it would be frowned upon to dance with his portrait at the wake? You know the picture—him in the dovetail tuxedo? So dashing.”
“No,” Carver and Alice replied, and the door chime dinged as they left.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. I was still angry with Alice—she was hurting, we all were—but I missed them. I missed mornings like this, and bad soggy waffles, and I missed Dad.
I didn’t think missing him would feel so lonely, though.
I leaned on the counter, beside a guy muttering to himself—small towns, they always had at least one weird guy—and handed the cashier a twenty. She smiled and said, “You must be Florence!”
The man beside me went rigid.
“Your dad comes here every Saturday,” the cashier went on. “Always orders the same thing—the All-Star with extra hash browns. Scattered, smothered, and covered. Where is the old man today?”
“He passed away the other night,” I said, and the man glanced over. We locked eyes. Dark hair, brown eyes, an angular face. He didn’t have anything in front of him—no food or coffee—and no one seemed to pay him any attention. And that was a feat when you sat up at the counter at a Waffle House. You had to be either highly disliked or—
Or not really there.
And worse yet, I recognized his dark hair and navy trousers and the articulate way he had rolled up his sleeves tightly to his elbows. He looked like he could’ve been a painting of a forlorn businessman . . .
. . . of the slightly dead variety.
I paled.
“M-Miss Day?” Benji Andor asked.
The cashier’s smile faltered. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry to hear about your father—”
Suddenly, the jukebox gave a loud screech, and the lights flickered with a start. It picked a random album and inserted it into the player. The neon lit up, and a song crackled from the forty-year-old speakers.
I winced. And whispered, “Stop it.”
His wide eyes darted to the jukebox, then back to me. “I—that’s not me.”
“It is.”
“That thing keeps acting up,” the cashier apologized as she counted out my change. “Got a mind of its own sometimes, I think.”
The piano beat. The tambourine. And suddenly I’m back in the red parlor after a wake, dancing on Dad’s feet as he sings “buttercup, don’t break my heart” in an awful key, golden afternoon light streaming through the window. It fills me with bitterness, because it’s gone. The moment’s gone—all those moments are gone.
My throat constricts.
“Four dollars and thirty-seven cents is your change. Have a great day, miss,” the cashier said as she handed me a few bills and coins. I quickly pocketed them into my coat and left the diner. Ben followed, squeezing through the open door as it swung shut.
“Last night—at that door—it was you, wasn’t it? You answered the door,” he said, following me.
I trained my eyes at the sidewalk in front of me. “This isn’t happening.”
“What’s not happening?”
Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him.
An older gentleman walking his dog decided to cross to the other side of the street, and I didn’t know if it was because of me or because the dog had to take a poo in an azalea bush on the other side, but it didn’t stop me from guessing. I fished my phone out of my pocket and mimed answering a call.
In two steps, he had caught back up with me. “Please don’t ignore me—everyone is. Everyone. I sat in that diner for—for hours—trying to get someone to see me. No one could! No one! What’s happening to me? Last I remembered I was at your front door, and then I was in the diner and—things don’t make sense—and you’re not listening—”