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September, 1983
"Hey Shirley, how about a refill on the coffee?"
The request had come from a tall man in jeans and a checkered shirt sitting near the center of the diner's counter. It had been directed at the short, stocky waitress standing only a few feet away, who was sipping the hot brew from her own cup.
"You know where the pot is, Roy," Shirley Blake said, not taking her eyes off the young couple sitting in a booth on the opposite side of the café as she tried unsuccessfully to listen to their conversation.
Roy was about to say something unflattering about the lousy service, but was stopped by the older man sitting on the stool next to him. George Lewis had lived in Lakeview Heights all his life and had been coming to Gilhooley's for nearly twenty years. If he'd learned anything in that time, it was not to disturb Shirley when she was on her break.
"Just get up and get the coffee, Roy," George said with a good-natured smile, his hand resting on the younger man's shoulder.
Roy took a second look down the counter at the five foot four, hundred-and eighty-pound woman and decided that getting the refill himself might not be a bad idea. It wasn't that the six-foot two trucker feared the woman in the sky-blue service uniform, but he'd heard stories of customers who'd gotten on her bad side and he wasn't eager to find out how many of them might be true. As he got up to refill his cup, Shirley continued what she would never call spying, but rather concerned observation.
The subject of the curly haired brunette's interest, Dean Harriman, was nineteen years old and dressed in dark jeans and a white t-shirt. The dark-haired teen had been sitting at the table for nearly an hour, his head buried in a college textbook, until ten minutes ago when he'd been joined by his girlfriend of four months, Melanie Howard. That was the point when Shirley had become interested, especially since, true to form, Melanie hadn't even bothered to sit down before she'd begun to berate Dean about something.
Wearing white shorts and a short sleeved blue crop top, Melanie, on her arrival, had drawn the attention of nearly everyone in the diner, Shirley included. And while the interest of the half dozen men had been in the girl's attire, or lack of it, Shirley's notice had been for other reasons. Even if she couldn't hear their discussion too clearly, she was willing to bet today's tips that, based just on Melanie's body language, the young couple's relationship was about to hit another bump in the road.
Sure enough, only a few minutes later, the statuesque blonde threw her hands up in frustration and stormed out, leaving Dean with an unhappy look on his face. Seeing her opportunity, Shirley put down her cup and, grabbing one of the coffee pots off the warmer, walked around the counter and over to the booth where the teenager sat.
"So, what was she angry about this time?" Shirley inquired as she refilled his cup.
"What?" Dean said, suddenly aware of her presence.
"What did you do wrong this time?" Shirley clarified.
Dean Harriman was, in Shirley's opinion, one of the good kids. Kid being a term she applied to just about anyone younger than her own forty-two years. He'd bussed tables at Gilhooley's during high school, which was how Shirley had first gotten to know him. Now he worked at his uncle's hardware store while he attended a small college in Bridgewater Falls. The change in jobs had been necessitated by the crazy schedule he had with some of his classes, his uncle being a lot more flexible about what hours he kept than the owner of the diner.
Whatever it was he was supposed to have done; Dean didn't seem to be in the mood to talk about it. Shirley, on the other hand, was just as determined to do so as, without waiting for an invitation, she sat herself down on the opposite bench.
"You know you're going to tell me eventually," Shirley pointed out, "so why not save the both of us some time and just tell me now?"
Having had many discussions with the older woman in the past, Dean had to admit, she was right.
"She wasn't happy with what I got her for her birthday," he said.
"What did you get her?" Shirley asked.
"Her favorite band is playing down in Philadelphia next week," Dean replied. "I got us tickets to go and see them."
"That sounds like a very nice gift," Shirley said. "Why was she mad about it?"
"It wasn't what she wanted," Dean said after a pause.
"And what was that?" the waitress queried.
"A pair of earrings that she was admiring in the window at Sparkles," he answered. "She pointed them out to me last week."
Sparkles, a high-end jewelry store on Main Street, was one of Shirley's favorite places to window shop. In fact, she had done so just the other day on her way into work. Thinking back, she tried to visualize the display in her head.
"Wait a second, we're not talking about the diamond earrings in the center display, are we?" Shirley said.
"Yeah, those are the ones," Dean confirmed. "She was really taken by them."
"I've no doubt that she was," Shirley noted, having admired the set herself, "but those earrings are almost three hundred dollars. Melanie really can't expect you to spend that kind of money on a gift, especially since the two of you have only been dating a few months."
"I know it's a lot," Dean replied, not seeming to have caught her point, "but Melanie checked and Mr. Collins, he's the store owner, said that if I could put down fifty percent now, I could pay the rest of it off in installments."
"And where were you supposed to get the fifty percent?" Shirley asked, thinking even that had to be more than Dean had.
