CURTIS WIPED perspiration from her brow with the top of her shoulder while carrying a tray of dinners to table four. She slid the plates to each patron with a brief nod before noticing the lone straggler sauntering through the front door.
“Take a seat anywhere, honey,” she called, as he had seemed to miss the Seat Yourself sign. Without acknowledging her, he sidled up to the end of the counter and stood a menu in front of him, partially shielding his face from view. Annie refilled soda glasses for table three before cruising along the counter, order pad in hand.
“What can I get you?” she asked the cracked menu cover as the stranger ducked behind it.
“Joyce,” he said in a barely audible grumble.
Annie frowned, cocking her head closer. “Excuse me?”
“Send Joyce out, would ya?”
“Joyce isn’t working the dining room tonight. You’re stuck with me. What can I get you to drink?”
The stranger readjusted the menu and peered over the top of it, the whites of his eyes darkened by the shadow of his baseball cap.
“I need to see Joyce now.”
Annie hesitated, narrowing her eyes to study him. He was tall with a broad frame and a muscular build, but if she was pressed to give a detailed description to the police, she wouldn’t be able to manage more than “gray T-shirt and faded Levi blue jeans.”
“What do you want with her?”
The stranger dipped his head and grumbled, “It’s important.”
Annie tapped a pen on the top of her order pad for a moment before sauntering back to the office for her boss.
“A fellow at the end of the counter wants you,” she called. Joyce, a round woman well into retirement age, hoisted herself out of her desk chair and scurried past Annie to the dining room, trying to catch her breath along the way.
“Miles,” Annie whispered, slipping back to the kitchen’s order window. The young cook craned his bandana-covered head to see her. “Grab me a frying pan. There’s some weirdo out there asking for Joyce.”
“What’s he want with her?”
“I don’t know, but he’s acting dodgy.”
Miles raised a discerning eyebrow. “What do you wanna do?”
“Miles,” Annie said, holding out her hand. “Come on.”
“Annie Curtis, you’re gonna hit a guy with a frying pan?”
“No...” she said as her subconscious protested. “Maybe.”
Miles paused. “Seriously?”
“There’s something about him that’s very familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it. Did a convict escape from the prison?”
“How would that be familiar?”
“Miles, sometimes you see a story on the news, but it doesn’t register in your consciousness until later.”
“You’re going to need more than a frying pan if there’s a convict sitting out there.”
“I don’t know if it’s a convict, Miles. That was just one theory. Something about him reminds me of...” Annie gasped and touched her fingertips to her lips.
“Oh.”
“Annie?” Miles’s eyebrows pinched together. “Are you okay?”
“Keep the pan on standby,” she muttered before scooting to the kitchen door and peeking out the porthole window. A cool sweat pricked every dainty hair down her neck as if someone had opened the door and let in a draft. It had been almost a dozen years since she’d waited anxiously on her mother’s back porch for that man to come for her, and now that he had finally returned home, he’d brushed her off. Sitting coolly behind the counter and hiding under the shadow of his cap, he was merely yards away and yet still so distant.
Annie watched Joyce spring into his arms and clutch him in a bear hug. His profile was an aged, heavier version than the boyish one she’d hopelessly spent hours admiring so many years ago. She had run her fingers along the scruff of his chin and nipped at his mischievously curled lips for an entire summer, back when she’d been young and careless. It had been the last summer of her youth, the last summer of innocence, the last summer before...
Annie drew a sharp breath and thrust open the kitchen door with a surge of adrenaline she didn’t yet know how to expel. Storming up behind the counter to size up the heartless cad who basked in his mother’s enthusiastic affection, she clenched her jaw and squared off in front of him. Joyce had quickly worked herself into a tizzy, clasping William’s face between her palms and shrieking with joy as patrons jumped in equal parts amusement and alarm.
“Baby boy, where have you been? I can hardly breathe. Look. Look! My hands are shaking.” Joyce turned to nearby patrons and announced for all to hear that her son was home from the Navy, and her prayers had finally been answered. Folks nodded and smiled politely, turning attention back to their Salisbury steaks and Reuben sandwiches.
“Did you decide?” Annie asked in a strained voice, attempting to interrupt Joyce’s hysterics.
“A coffee, please. Decaf, if you have it,” William said without casting his eyes in her direction. Annie scowled as he squeezed Joyce’s tear-stained face into his chest. He had a lot of nerve showing up with that easy grin plastered across his face. For a moment she imagined smacking it clear off him with the frying pan, tiny white teeth scattering to the ground like it happened in cartoons.
“William,” Joyce said, slightly releasing the death grip she had on him. She retrieved a tissue tucked between her bosom, dabbed her eyes and scowled up at him. “Dontcha recognize who this is?” William paused and studied Annie for a moment as she reciprocated with a cold glare. She had no desire to supply any word of help to the self-centered jerk. Joyce finally filled the awkward silence. “It’s Annie.”
Annie waited as recognition fell over William’s sun-kissed face. There had been a time when Joyce would have described her to William as “your Annie,” but those days had long passed. Though as she stood before him, memories thundering toward her like a freight train, she doubted they would be long buried.
“Annie Curtis?” he said, his smile fading to a wince. “H-how are you? I didn’t know you worked here.”
“Obviously,” she said, pouring his coffee with a jerk to splash it over the rim of his cup. “How long’s it been now?”
William faltered, raising the brim of his hat to reveal those pool-blue eyes in which she had once swum laps. They were the one thing that hadn’t aged a day and were still just as hypnotizing. If the rest of his weathered face blurred so all she could see were those eyes, she might as well be peering at the eighteen-year-old boy she’d once called “her William.”
Joyce hugged William again and pulled his face down for another smooch, snapping his gaze away and releasing Annie from the spell. Pressing her round nose against William’s, Joyce
