Rick Barnes paused a moment after walking into Tony's Cafe, taking in the still familiar surroundings. Despite the six long years since he'd last walked through the door behind him, very little appeared to have changed. The decorations on the wall were still much the same as he remembered, as were the glass display cases behind the counter and the large chalkboard that announced the day's specials. His eyes glanced to the rear of the restaurant and he saw that even his old booth was still there, tempting him to head to it as if it was just another day. But then he decided that he wasn't going to be here that long and opted for a seat at the counter instead.
No sooner had he climbed onto the stool at the end of the row than the trim young man was instantly met by a pretty, seventeen year old blond on the other side of the counter. She automatically set an empty cup and saucer in front of him and with a gesture of the carafe in her hand, nonverbally asked if he wanted coffee.
"Yes, thank you," Rick said, pausing just long enough to read the name tag on her blouse that identified her as Emily.
As she poured, Rick took a second, more critical look around at what had once almost been a second home. This time he noticed the same sort of unrepaired wear and tear that he'd seen in other parts of town earlier in the day. A sign of the times, he thought.
"You're not from around here, are you?' Emily asked after she'd finished filling his cup.
"No, I guess not," Rick replied, thinking but not adding, anymore, "but just out of curiosity, what made you think that I wasn't?"
"Well, you're dressed a lot neater than most of the guys that come in here," she said, making note of his light blue golf shirt and tan slacks, "and besides, I'd remember a cute guy like you if you'd been in here before."
As he returned her compliment with a smile, Rick took a moment to do the math and decided that the last time he'd been in Tony's, Emily was probably just about getting her first training bra.
"Can I get you anything else?" Emily asked, matching his smile with one even more inviting.
"No, this will be fine," Rick replied as, after a tentative sip of the hot brew, he noted that at least the quality of the coffee hadn't changed.
"Well, I'll be right over there if you change your mind," Emily said, a barely noticeable touch of disappointment in her voice.
Sitting quietly with his coffee, Rick allowed himself the luxury of getting lost in his memories for a minute or two. Thoughts that were interrupted when he sensed, rather than saw, someone step around from behind him and place an oversized slice of pumpkin pie, generously covered with whipped cream, on the counter next to his coffee.
"Excuse me, I didn't order this," Rick said before he even turned his head to see who had put it there.
"Now don't you go telling me that you still don't love pumpkin pie," said a woman wearing the same uniform as Emily, "especially one that I made with my own little hands."
The woman that came into view when he turned all the way around was more than twice Emily's age, with short, reddish-brown hair that came to rest just above the cut of her neck. She might have been wearing the same white blouse and black skirt as the younger girl, but Emily's blouse hadn't been straining against the bust beneath it, nor did she wear the top three buttons open to give a good view of what it was supposed to conceal. If Rick had been standing instead of sitting, he knew that he would be two inches taller than the woman as well as a good ten to fifteen pounds lighter. Not to say she was overweight, because even a casual glance told you that whatever extra pounds she had where all in the right places. Although she also wore a name tag, Rick had no need to glance at it to know her name.
"Oh my God," he exclaimed in surprise, "Mrs. Davis. I had no idea that you still worked here."
"Mrs. Davis was one ex-husband ago, sweetie," the woman said with the broadest of smiles, "and as I recall, you've been calling me Cory Lee since you were old enough to walk. So don't let me hear any of that Mrs. whatever nonsense."
Rick had barely risen from the stool when Cory Lee, wrapping her arms around him, hugged him like a long lost son. In a way that was almost true. Not a son of course, but certainly an honorary nephew at least.
"Damnation," Cory Lee said as she finally let him go. "If I had to make a list this morning of the last people I ever expected to see in this dump again, I do expect that you'd have been on the very top of it." She paused to look him over again, comparing the young man with the boy she had known. "But whatever the reason you're back here, I'm damned glad to see you again. Why didn't you call ahead and say you were coming?"
"It's good to see you again too, Cory Lee," Rich said leaning back against his seat as he realized that calling her that did indeed seem more natural. "But like I said, I didn't know that you still lived in Jackson Springs, and my being here at all was a spur of the moment decision."
"Well, I'm here and you're here and for the moment that's enough," she said, "and don't you go thinking that I'm going to let you run off until we've had a chance to sit and chat. I want to know all about what you've been doing since the last time I saw you."
"That wouldn't take long," Rick grinned.
"Be that as it may, you're going to tell me all about it," Cory Lee insisted. "So why don't you take your coffee and pie back to your old booth and I'll be back there myself in a minute."
As Rick picked up the plate and rested it on top of the cup and saucer, Cory Lee caught Emily's attention and told her that she'd be in the back for a bit. From the look on the younger woman's face, Rick got the impression that she was disappointed that she wasn't going to get the chance to strike up a longer conversation with him herself.
Sitting down in the very last booth, Rick couldn't help but remember the many nights he'd sat there, homework spread across the table, waiting for his mother's shift to end. Janet Barnes had started working at Tony's a year before she'd barely graduated from the local high school, and had continued to do so until she married Doug Barnes, a long distance trucker ten years her senior, just before her nineteenth birthday. No one really bought that story that she'd come back from their brief honeymoon pregnant, but as long as Doug had done the right thing by her, no one counted the days too closely. Rick's older sister, Doris, had been born seven months into the marriage, with himself following two years later. When he was three, a drunk driver had left Janet a much too young widow, and with few skills to call on, she had gone back to work at Tony's.
During those later years, Cory Lee Davis had been his mother's best friend, despite the age difference between them. Rick wasn't ever exactly sure how much that difference was, but he guessed that Cory Lee had to be near fifty at least by now. In actuality, she had passed that milestone four years past.
"Before you say anything," Cory Lee said as she sat down on the other side of the booth, her own cup of coffee in hand, "I want to say how devastated I was when I got the news that your mom had passed away. If I'd had a sister, I don't think she would've meant more to me than Janet did."
"I know how much she meant to you," Rick replied, "and you to her. Doris and I really appreciated that nice letter that you sent after the funeral."
"I wish I could've been there," Cory Lee said, regret in her tone, "but I was away on my honeymoon and didn't even find out about it until we got back."
Five years before, when she had first taken ill, Janet Barnes had moved to Blue Ridge Falls to live with her daughter. Despite the better medical care available there, the disease had progressed rapidly and within a year she was gone.
"We know you would have if you could," Rick said reassuringly. "and Mom knew it too."
"She was really proud of you," Cory Lee said, trying to push back the sad memory. "We all were. I can't tell you how many times she said her son was going to be a big shot engineer someday - and now you are."
"Well I don't know about the big shot part," Rick said as he picked up a fork and started on the pie, "but I'm doing okay."
"So what brings you back to this burg?" Cory Lee asked as he savored that first piece of pie.
"I was on my way to New Wayne, over in Grayson County," he explained between bites, "I'll be working on a project there for the next few months. When I got to exit 9 on the interstate, it occurred to me that I was only two hours or so north of Jackson Springs. Since there was really no rush to get to New Wayne, they aren't expecting me until next week, I decided why not take a little detour and drive through town. See what's changed since I left, if nothing else."
"I'm sure you've already discovered that not much has changed, at least nothing for the better," Cory Lee said as she sipped her coffee. "But regardless of that, I'm really glad you decided to make that detour. How long are you planning to be in town?"
"To be honest, I really was just planning to make a quick visit and drive on to Starkville tonight," Rick answered as he finished off the last of the pie, "but I had a little bit of a mishap when I came off the bridge over Morgan's Creek and broke a strut on my jeep. I barely got it to a garage and they said they wouldn't have a replacement until Monday at the earliest."
"You took it to Malone's?" Cory Lee asked.
"Where else?" Rick asked, thinking that there hadn't been another garage in town since before he'd been born.
"Just wanted to be sure," Cory Lee said as she reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out her cell phone. "Just excuse me for a few minutes," she added as she scrolled down her contact list until she found the number she was looking for.
"Hi Jimmy," she said once someone picked up on the other end, "is Billy there?"
There was a short pause as Billy, whoever that was, came on the line. Once he did, Cory Lee's demeanor changed radically.
"No, it's not about the check being late," she said, after having listened for a few seconds, "but since you brought it up, this is the third time this year that you've been late with it." There was another pause as she listened for a few seconds. "But that's not what I'm calling you about. You have a jeep with a busted strut that was brought in this afternoon?"
