From: Carrie Fitzgerald
I know how your friend Reenie feels. My older brother is in the final stages of ALS. I am fifty-five. I don’t have any symptoms yet, but I do have the gene, so it’s only a matter of time.
I’m praying for Reenie and for her whole family. You didn’t say your friend’s last name or where she lives, but that doesn’t matter. God knows exactly who she is.
Yours in Christ,
Carrie Fitzgerald
Please pray for me as well.
Chris, his hair still damp from the shower, sauntered into the kitchen and helped himself to a cup of coffee. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Reading the things people have sent to me,” she said. “Some of them are very nice.” She pushed the computer in his direction long enough for him to see the screen. Then he scanned through the list of the messages Ali had yet to answer.
“Couldn’t we just post their comments automatically?” she asked.
Chris shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “Somebody has to go through and edit them. If you leave a portal open like that, pretty soon the blog will be flooded with offers for Viagra and on-line gambling.”
His fingers worked the keyboard with lightning speed. “But if you’d like to have a spot to post comments, I can put one in. What do you want to call it?”
“A comment section?” Ali asked. “From other people?”
Chris nodded and Ali thought for some time before she replied.
“How about The Forum?” she asked.
“Sounds good,” Chris said. Several minutes later he handed the computer back, open to the blog page where there was now a section called The Forum. “I’ve added a caution that says, unless otherwise stated, comments may be posted. You shouldn’t post any comments that were sent before the caution went up. But here’s how you do it.”
After a few minutes’ worth of practice, Ali had the comment-posting issues under control.
“Great,” Chris said. “Now, what’s for breakfast?”
“I don’t know about you,” Ali told him, “but I’m having one of my mother’s world-famous Sugarloaf Cafe sweet rolls. I don’t care what the scale says tomorrow morning.”
“Let’s go then,” Chris said. “I’ll drive.”
Several other vehicles had beaten them to the punch by the time they pulled in at 6:30 A.M. to the sugarloaf parking lot.
Myrtle Hanson, Ali’s grandmother, had started the Sugarloaf in what had once been her husband’s gas station when she was a recent widow with twin four-year-old daughters to support. Though she lacked formal training and business experience, she’d had loads of grim determination and a killer sweet-roll recipe. In fact, it was a plate of those sweet rolls, delivered by her daughters to a local banker, that had launched the Sugarloaf in the mid nineteen-fifties. After tasting the sweet rolls, Carter Sweeney had ignored Myrtle’s inexperience and had given her the loan that allowed her to go into her business.
By the time Myrtle passed on, the Sugarloaf’s humble roots were no longer quite so apparent. Myrtle had left the thriving business along with the sweet-roll recipe to her grown daughters. Situated at the bottom of the distinctive rock formation that shared its name, the Sugarloaf had been a Sedona-area hangout and its sweet rolls a local staple for fifty years.
In high school, Ali had been more than slightly ashamed of the humble Sugarloaf with its gray Formica countertops and down-home atmosphere. Now that she was older, however, Ali had some grasp of the courage, grit, and fortitude it must have taken for her grandmother to start and keep the business running. She had also come to value the loyalty and determination of her parents and Aunt Evie in keeping the place going.
On this crisp March morning, the moment Ali stepped out of the Cayenne, the smell of freshly baked rolls beckoned across the parking lot and across the years. And stepping into the warm, steamy atmosphere was almost like stepping into a gray-Formica and red-vinyl time machine. For Ali, the Sugarloaf seemed forever unchanged and unchanging.
As soon as Chris appeared in the doorway, a smiling Edie Larson darted out from behind the counter and clasped her grandson in a fierce hug. “Look who’s here!” she announced to the restaurant at large. Then to Chris, she said, “I told your grandfather to make sure there was nothing at the house for breakfast. I was hoping that way we’d get to see you bright and early.”
Edie let loose of Chris and turned him over to Jan Howard, a waitress who had come on board after Aunt Evie died. Jan was a red-haired, bony, seventy-something widow, who called all her customers either “Honeybun” or “Darlin’.” Jan’s false teeth tended to click when she talked, and her apron pockets always bulged with one or more packets of unfiltered Camels. She was also hardworking and utterly dependable.
“Christopher, Christopher, Christopher!” she exclaimed. “If you aren’t a sight for sore eyes.”
Meanwhile, Edie turned to her daughter. As she did so, the look on her face changed from joy to sadness. “I’m so sorry about Reenie,” she said, hugging Ali close. “Come in, come in. Sit right here at the counter. That way I can talk to you between customers.”
Before Ali could slip away to the counter, she, too, had to endure a smoky-haired hug from Jan as well. Meanwhile, from the kitchen, Bob Larson saluted the new arrivals with a raised spatula as he placed a steaming plate up in the order window and pounded the bell to produce two sharp dings, letting either Edie or Jan know it was time to retrieve an order.
Unasked, Edie poured coffee for both Ali and Chris and pushed the cream pitcher in her grandson’s direction.
“Your father’s off his game this morning,” she continued. “Stayed up too late waiting for you to call. He’s already botched two orders. If I were actually paying the man, I suppose I’d have to dock him. How come it took you so long to get here-I thought you were leaving at two? And what’ll you have, besides sweet rolls, I mean?”
Chris ordered ham and eggs. Ali ordered a roll along with one egg and two strips of bacon, then she turned around and surveyed the room. In the old days, Edie and Aunt Evie and the other waitresses had worn black-and- white uniforms. Those had now given way to blue-and-white Sugarloaf Cafe sweatshirts (available for purchase at the cash register), tennis shoes, and jeans.
Ali’s sweet roll arrived huge and soft and oozing icing. She had just picked up the first sticky piece to put in her mouth when her cell phone rang. She glanced at it, saw it was Paul, and didn’t answer.
“Still playing hard to get, I see,” said a male voice close to her shoulder.
Ali turned to look. The man seated on the next stool, unlike every other man in the place, was dressed in a long-sleeved white shirt and a colorful and properly knotted red-and-blue tie. He was broad-shouldered and bull- necked, and his salt-and-pepper hair was definitely receding.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“I’m sure you’ve forgotten me long ago,” the man continued. “But nobody around here is allowed to forget you. Your mother won’t stand for it.”
Pointing, he indicated the wall behind the cash register. Plastered there, right along with the business license and the fire-department plaque for maximum occupancy, were a dozen or more professionally produced publicity shots. Some of them dated from Ali’s early work in Milwaukee. Others came from her time at Fox News. Most of them, taken for whatever reason, came from Ali’s long stint as anchor on the station in LA. All of them testified to Edie Larson’s unstinting motherly pride in her daughter’s accomplishments. Seeing them there together made Ali blush with embarrassment.
“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, then,” she said. “You know who I am, but I’m sorry to say, I don’t know you.”
“Dave Holman, Class of ’77, at your service,” he said. Grinning, he held out his hand. Ali brushed as much of the icing off her fingers as possible before placing her still slightly sticky hand in his. “Detective Dave Holman,” he added. “Good to see you in person again after all these years.”
Ali returned to her sweet roll. “Obviously my parents keep you up to date on what’s going on with me. What have you been doing in the meantime?”
