a bitch. The only saving grace was that she imagined the dude would appreciate her sympathy even less than she wanted to feel bad for him—
The door to the tiny bathroom smacked her in the butt as Annie pushed inside. “Sorry, honey—didn’t know you were in here!” Her boss vanished into the stall, calling out as she tinkled, “You know the pies sold out today, right? Except for maybe a half-dozen slices, and I doubt they’ll last until five-thirty.”
“So I gathered. That’s great.”
“You’re telling me.”
The toilet roared behind her employer as she emerged to wash her own hands. As usual, half of Annie’s salt-and-pepper hair had escaped its topknot, floating around her sun-weathered face as she grinned. “Especially since three people bought whole pies. Two cherries, an apple and a lemon meringue. One person bought two,” she said to Val’s brief frown, then cackled. “You’re famous now, girl. In fact, Pam Davis—the Congregational pastor’s wife?—said, thanks to you, she’s given up baking. Although if her husband ever finds out, she’ll have to kill me.”
“My lips are sealed,” Val said, smiling and tossing her rumpled paper towel into the trash before tugging a folded-up printout from her back pocket. She smoothed it out, then showed it to the woman who’d given Val her first job when she was fifteen, cleaning up after school and making sandwiches on the weekends—a job that had given her enough money to buy something new to wear now and then, to go on school field trips. Annie wasn’t the only surrogate mother figure in Val’s life, but she had been the first. Nor was this the first conversation they’d had in the diner’s loo. Many tears had been shed in here over the years, a good many of them onto Annie’s skinny shoulder. “You think the customers would go for this? With my own tweaks, of course.”
Annie shook out her readers, hanging on their glittery chain, before wriggling the earpieces through her hair. “Dulce de Leche crème? Holy crap, you bet.” She plucked off the glasses and let them drop, where they bungeed off her flat chest. “I’m thinking we’re gonna give that Maryanne Hopkins a run for her money. Especially since those cupcakes of hers she swears she bakes herself? I happen to know for a fact she gets ’em from some commercial outfit in Santa Fe. God alone knows what kind of preservatives and what-all they’ve got in ’em. So when can you get a sample pie to me? Please say tomorrow.”
Val smiled. “I’ll try. Depends on how the evening goes. Josie’s been balking about doing her homework, so I may have to ride herd. Spring fever, I suppose. Only one more week of school, thank goodness.”
Annie’s light brown eyes went soft. “How’s she doing?”
“Hard to tell,” Val said on a sigh. “Most of the time she seems okay, but...she’s too quiet. Too serious. She used to be—” she smiled “—gigglier.”
“Give her time,” Annie said gently, then laid a hand on Val’s arm. “And how are you doing?”
“Getting by. Listening to hear what’s next, I suppose.”
The older woman pulled her into a hug, then released her, her hands still on her shoulders. “And that’s all anyone can expect. Especially so soon. Although, for what’s it’s worth? I think you’re doing a fabulous job. Those babies are lucky to have you.”
“And I’m lucky to have you,” Val said through her tight throat, adding, as Annie batted away the comment, “No, seriously. I’m...” She took a breath. “It’s good to be home.”
“Lord, I never thought I’d hear that come out of your mouth.”
“Neither did I, Annie. Believe me.”
After another hug, and a promise to bring her boss that new pie the next morning, Val left, blinking in the bright spring sunshine flooding the small town square—the brainchild of some enterprising, and optimistic, soul from who knew how many decades before. The native pines and aspens held their own, of course, but the poor maples struggled to thrive at this altitude, and in fact had been replaced more than once over the years.
Which could also be said, Val supposed as she got in her car, parked at an angle in front of the diner, of the town’s inhabitants. Outsiders loved to visit but generally found the small town stifling. There were exceptions, of course—like plants, some nonnatives adapted better than others. AJ and Annie, for instance, had landed here as newlyweds and never left. And certainly not everyone born here stayed. But most did. Or found themselves pulled back, for whatever reason. Because apparently those roots were harder to kill than the aspens that cloaked the mountainsides in a blaze of molten glory every fall.
After picking up Josie from school a few blocks away, Val continued to her in-laws’ to get the baby, gratitude swelling for the hundredth time for Consuela Lopez’s insistence on watching her granddaughters whenever Val needed. Even groggy, cranky ones, she thought as, with a wail of displeasure, a sweaty Risa catapulted herself from her grandmother’s arms into Val’s.
Underneath a colorful tunic, Connie’s bosom jiggled when she laughed. “Honestly, reynita...your mama will think I’ve been pinching you!”
Shushing her screaming “little queen”—not that it worked—Val smiled. Soft and round and all about the hugs, the redhead-by-choice wouldn’t have pinched an ant if it was crawling on her, let alone her adored—and only—grandchildren.
“She must’ve gotten too hot. It was chilly when she went down for her nap, so I put a sweater on her. But it warmed so quickly this afternoon! If I wanted hot, I’d live in Cruces!” Her mother-in-law shuddered, the typical reaction of most northern New Mexicans to the thought of living in Las Cruces, three hundred miles to the south near the Mexican border and a good twenty degrees warmer than Whispering Pines. After being stationed in the Bowels of Hell, Texas, Val could relate. “Josie,” Connie now said, “go see what’s out on the porch with Gramma Lita! But just look, don’t touch, okay?”
At Val’s raised eyebrows after her daughter scampered off, Connie sighed. “A mother cat and her kittens. Pete found them in the Dumpster behind the store. Can you imagine? Two babies, a tuxedo and a gray tabby. Almost weaned, I’m guessing. Adorable.” Then she got that look. “I don’t suppose...?”
“Forget it. The dog would think I’d brought him a snack.”
“Aww, Radar’s such a sweetie—”
“No.”
Connie shrugged, then tromped over to the fridge for one of the baby’s squeezie applesauce things. “There you go, sweetie... So I hear Levi Talbot’s working over at the house?”
“Jeez, Connie—” Val readjusted the schlurping Two-Ton Tessie against her hip, then glared at her mother-in-law. “A breath between thoughts would be nice.”
“Can’t waste time. Josie could return at any second.”
“Between Angelita and the kittens? I’ll be lucky if I see her again before she’s twenty. And yeah. Levi’s back. But how did you know?”
“He came over last night. To catch up. To talk about the house.”
“He was here?” Val’s mouth tightened. “And you didn’t think to give me a heads-up?”
Connie took a deep breath, and Val braced herself. Six months on they both might have had more of a handle on the waterworks, but the spigots weren’t rusted shut by any means. And now, when Val saw her mother-in-law’s eyes glisten, her own stung in response. Then the older woman sighed.
“Look... I know you had your issues with Levi,” Connie said gently, then blew a short laugh through her nose. “Heaven knows, so did we. From time to time, anyway. The Talbots are good people, and were good parents, but Levi...”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Val said, hoping to hell she wasn’t blushing. “Believe me.”
“So we didn’t understand, when Tomas took up with him, of all people. But you know what? Levi was the most