Someone must’ve dumped water on her already, judging from the puddle on the table, and I quickly fish the first towel out of the bowl and drape it over her arm. I follow it with the second one when I feel Jason at my back, handing me a roll of gauze he must’ve grabbed from the first aid kit.
“Hospital, sweetheart,” Kim tells the girl. “That’s a large burn. You need to have a doc look at it. I’ll take you to Clare and we’ll call your parents on the way.”
“I’ll stay,” I offer, knowing it’ll likely be at least a couple of hours.
When Jess is loaded in Kim’s car, I head back inside where Donna is making sure the patrons are looked after. Luckily it’s not that busy. Yet.
I clean up the area by the coffee station, where she apparently dropped a pot of hot water, and am just inspecting the floor for stray shards of glass when Becca walks in.
“What happened here?”
“Jess dropped the hot water,” I tell her as I get to my feet. “She’s pretty badly scalded. Kim took her to the ER in Clare.”
“Well, shit. So we’ll be short-handed?”
I take in the sour look on her face and am instantly annoyed.
“No, we’re not. Donna can help until six and I’m staying until closing. We’ll be fine.”
I’m not looking forward to working with her. Not because she doesn’t work hard—she does—but her attitude with me sucks. I’ve avoided her because I know myself; sooner or later I’m calling her out on it, and I’d rather not do that with a restaurant full of diners.
She huffs and rolls her eyes as she brushes by me to hang up her coat and grab her apron.
I take a deep breath in a prayer for patience.
Gray
“I’ll go.”
It started snowing around five, not long after Robin called to tell me one of the girls got hurt and she’d be working until closing.
We were just notified by the Sheriff’s Office of an accident on the county road north of town. One car is off in the ditch and the other is blocking one of the lanes and is not drivable. Luckily, it’s a Sunday night and not many folks are out on the road, especially in this weather.
I shrug on my coat and pull a beanie over my ears before grabbing the tow truck’s keys off the pegboard.
“Be careful,” Jimmy yells after me when I walk outside.
“Yes, Mom,” I call back, mocking him.
I slow down when I drive by the diner, trying to catch a glimpse of Robin but catching one of Becca serving a couple sitting by window instead. She came by Olson’s asking for me when I was out on a run last week. It would seem she’s interested in rekindling something that’s been dead for decades and wasn’t much to start with, even back then.
I’d lived in Clare at the time, working at Brookwood Auto Repair, and Becca was a waitress at the local watering hole. I knew at the time she was looking to get hitched, something I had no interest in, but I was riding it out while it lasted.
I was a cocky bastard back then, high on myself and high on life. I sometimes wonder if things had been different if I would have turned into my father: a drunk, a womanizer, and an abuser.
Aside from the fact Becca bailed the moment trouble hit, there’s a bigger reason I don’t like her anywhere near my life; she reminds me of a time, and a version of myself, I’d rather forget. The fact she works side by side at the diner with Robin feels wrong.
I see the brake lights of a handful of cars stuck behind the accident and maneuver around them to get to the scene. The front of the pickup truck blocking both lanes is badly damaged, indicating a head-on collision. The car in the ditch is almost unrecognizable, a crumpled mass of steel. I can’t see how anyone would’ve survived that kind of impact. The Beaverton fire department is already there. Behind me I hear the sound of sirens as the first ambulance pulls up.
A deputy points me to the side of the road and instructs me to wait until first responders have cleared the accident victims. In the back of his cruiser, I see an older gentleman I presume is the driver of the truck. He looks to be in shock.
The next twenty minutes, I wait and watch as a second ambulance arrives, while the fire department extricates someone from the wreck in the ditch. My heart sinks as I watch EMTs cover the body on the stretcher with a sheet. Somewhere someone is waiting for this person to come home and instead will find law enforcement at their door.
While the snow keeps falling, my heart grows heavy as my own grief blooms fresh and raw. Memories of the last conversation I had with my sister, the last hug my mother gave me, float to the surface like treasures I desperately cling onto.
When both ambulances leave, one with the distressed old man and the second with the other victim, I’m told to haul the pickup to the police yard in Gladwin. The other vehicle will go on a flatbed they called in. I’m relieved to finally be doing something instead of sitting in the truck surrounded by ghosts.
By the time I finally get back to Beaverton, I notice the lights at the diner are off. The roads are treacherous and I’m suddenly struck with a vision of Robin’s SUV crumpled in a ditch somewhere. I’ve barely pulled in behind the dark shop when I have my phone out, already dialing.
“Hey.”
I let out a deep breath at the sound of her voice.
“You’re home,” I confirm.
“Just got in, it’s bad out there.”
“I know, I just got back from a tow. Bad accident north
