The Last Word

President,” dropped into the seat opposite Olivia. Using a spoon, she examined her feathered hair in the reflection and flattened a stiff, heavily gelled lock back into submission. She then studied Olivia with a solemn expression. “You’re just one of those people, ’Livia.”

“What does that mean?” Olivia growled.

Dixie shrugged, never the slightest bit flustered by Olivia’s gruffness. “Things happen to you. Things that make most folks crumble into tiny pieces. Maybe that’s why death hangs ’round you. He knows you’re a match for any man, even one with a scythe.”

Olivia pressed her palms against her coffee cup, intent on the warmth seeping into her skin. “That shadow has been hanging over my shoulder for a long time. If my mother hadn’t died the way she did—trying to make me happy—my life would have been different.” She took a sip of her coffee and glanced out the window. The sidewalks were bathed in strong light, and the streets were crowded with sunburned tourists and merry locals. “It was like the storm that ended her life left a mark on me, like a tattoo that no one can see.”

Dixie was silent for a moment. A customer in the Phantom of the Opera booth signaled for his check, but the diner proprietor made no move to serve him. “Girlfriend, you’ve just dug on down to the heart of your own biggest problem.”

Olivia cocked her head quizzically. “How so?”

“You find a man that really sees you, shadows and all, and you’ll have the power to burn away the past. Take a match to it, light it up like a forest fire in July, and blow away the ashes.” Dixie scooted out of the booth, bent over, and retied the sparkling lace of her left roller skate. “You let that man in, and he’ll beat the past away with his bare hands. That’s what Grumpy did for me. It’s why I know our lives were meant to intertwine—we’re like a kudzu vine and a big ol’ pine tree.”

“That’s a very romantic image, Dixie,” Olivia quipped in an effort to erase her momentary display of vulnerability. “So your advice is that I should go out in search of a tree? Unbending to the wind, unburned by the sun, dependable, and strong. Sounds like a rare find.”

“Oh,” Dixie said as she began to skate backward toward her waiting customer. “I reckon you’ve already found him. You’re just too scared to invite him in. Get over yourself, ’Livia. It’s about damn time you did.”

Olivia didn’t have the chance to be amazed by her friend’s perceptiveness, for while she was still digesting Dixie’s words, Millay entered the diner. She spotted Haviland snoozing on the floor of the window booth and took the seat Dixie had vacated seconds earlier.

Millay’s short, black hair was relatively monochromatic this morning. There were three parrot green streaks in her bangs, but she wore less makeup than usual and had clearly not bothered to put on her rows of hoop earrings or cover both wrists with dozens of rubber bracelets. “Get this,” she began without preamble. “I was just at Bed, Bath and Beyond buying some storage containers and who should I see there but Miss Bubble Head.”

Recalling that Miss Bubble Head was the moniker Millay had assigned to Estelle, Olivia grinned. “And?”

“She was buying a set of bathroom towels with lace trim and embroidered seashells. Total Southern- princess-type crap.” Millay helped herself to Olivia’s water glass. “One of those furry toilet seat covers too. I thought only old people used those things.”

Olivia pivoted in order to catch Dixie’s eye and then faced Millay again. “Admittedly, that style doesn’t appeal to my taste, but it’s Estelle we’re talking about. What do you expect? Her cell phone is covered in pink and purple rhinestones.”

“That’s the thing!” Millay’s dark eyes narrowed dangerously. “She was buying that stuff for Harris’s house. I heard her talking to someone on her blinged-out Lady Gaga phone, and she said, and I quote, ‘I might as well buy what I like because it’ll be my house soon enough.’ ”

Olivia’s expression of condemnation was interrupted by Dixie’s arrival with a pot of coffee for Millay. As she filled Millay’s mug, the diner proprietor gave her an indulgent smile. “What are you doin’ awake this side of noon, girl?”

Millay took a grateful sip of black coffee and then pointed at the stainless steel carafe. “I don’t know what illegal drugs you put in your joe, Dixie, but you brew the best fuel in town. Bagels ’n’ Beans is good too, but you actually make it worth my while to be outside when the tourists are prowling the streets.”

Dixie laughed, pleased by the compliment. “You make them sound like zombies comin’ to overtake Oyster Bay.”

“Hey, as long as they stuff my tip jar, they’re free to feed on some of my least favorite townspeople. I have a nice, ripe bimbo I’d be glad to toss their way,” Millay murmured and then ordered a bacon cheeseburger with onion straws and slaw.

Once Dixie had zipped off to place Millay’s order, but not before slipping Haviland a sausage link hidden in her apron pocket, Olivia waved aside the subject of Estelle. “She’s only temporary. He’ll tire of her soon enough. In any case, Harris has more significant problems at the moment. How did your research go?”

“Laurel had some luck with the newspaper’s archives,” Millay answered, rummaging around in a black messenger bag covered with Japanime characters. “She didn’t have a ton of time because she had to finish an article, pick up groceries, and be home in time to clean the whole house. Man, how I’d like to shove her husband’s dental drill up his chauvinistic—”

“Not very hygienic, I’m afraid,” Olivia interrupted and gestured at Millay’s bag. “Show me the goods.”

Millay withdrew a notebook covered with pirate skulls and flipped open to a page covered with her angular scrawl. “We can forget about the families who lived there after the house was moved. They’re squeaky-clean, law- abiding, church-going drones. No criminal records, no tax evasion, no outstanding debts, nothing. Trust me, they’re a dead end.”

“Interesting word choice,” Olivia said with a sigh. “And the White family?”

Millay unfolded a sheet of paper showing a black-and-white photograph of a teenage girl standing on the porch of Harris’s house. In the background, the heavy machinery required to lift the home onto a trailer hovered over the roof, throwing shadows across the ruined lawn and crushed flowerbeds no doubt once lovingly maintained by the girl’s mother.

Olivia removed the magnifying glass she kept in her purse and placed the circle over the girl’s face.

“Forget that. I enlarged this copy on Laurel’s Xerox machine. It’s a little blurry, but I want to see if you’d react the way I did when I really looked at her.” Millay’s expression was unreadable, so Olivia merely accepted the paper she offered.

Immediately, Olivia was struck by the girl’s eyes. They were the eyes of an old woman, filled with resignation and sorrow, yet still clinging to a delicate thread of hope. The knowledge emanating from those depths was a contradiction to her plain dress, ankle socks, and the corkscrew curls pulled off her forehead and secured with a large silk bow. She looked as though she should be clutching a lollipop or a bouquet of wildflowers with both hands. Instead, she had her arms wrapped around the porch post, as though the moving of the house was something she greatly dreaded.

“It’s like this is too big a change for her,” Olivia whispered, noticing the girl’s name in the caption. “Evelyn White, age sixteen. What else happened to you? Why are you so filled with fear?”

Millay put a finger on the photograph. “The country was at war, but I think kids her age are pretty adaptable. Her father didn’t enlist and she was an only child, so no brothers were sent off to fight. Friends, maybe. Or possibly a boyfriend. She was pretty.”

“If she had a boyfriend, then something must have happened to him,” Olivia remarked softly. “I know that look. That’s grief. She’s lost something precious to her and now her house is being torn from the ground right in front of her. Nothing is stable. She feels totally lost.”

The two women stared at the young girl, this beautiful, fresh-faced stranger in a checkered dress, and found they no longer felt like talking. Millay drank her coffee as she watched strangers parade past the diner window, but Olivia couldn’t take her eyes from Evelyn’s face.

She didn’t even hear Dixie skate over with Millay’s cheeseburger.

“Could I get that in a takeout box?” Millay asked sheepishly. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

Dixie gave her a maternal pat on the cheek. “’Course you can, sugar. Your schedule’s not the same as most folks, now is it?” She handed Olivia the check and then caught sight of the photograph. “Good Lord, who is that child?”

“A girl who used to live in Harris’s house,” Olivia replied.