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  “…interested in franchising your restaurant, opening several others like it. We’d start small, stick to Vermont locations for starters. Then if they’re a go, we’d…Mike? We still connected?”

  Mike refocused. “Sorry,” he said. “Give me your number and I’ll call you back. I’m pretty busy right now.”

  “Sure,” Stein said. “Those customers come first, don’t they?” He rattled off a number, repeated his name and “Abernathy Foods” a couple of times. Mike jotted down the information on an order pad, even though he probably wouldn’t call him back. The idea of franchising didn’t appeal to him.

  “When can I expect your call?” Stein asked.

  Cornered, Mike couldn’t bring himself to say, never. “Um, two-thirty?”

  “Great,” Stein said, sounding perfectly happy about being told to wait a couple of hours. “I’ll be here.”

  Still holding the phone, Mike watched Allie hug Becky and Colleen, wave to the friends she’d been chatting with and then leave.

  Ay-uh, as the old-time Vermonters said, he was busy all right. Busy thinking about Allie.

  “HE GAVE YOU a job.” Elaine Hendricks gave her daughter a look that could break even the hardest heart.

  At the moment, Allie’s heart felt like a big marshmallow in her chest. But she couldn’t weaken. “Yes, Mom, Mike hired me. Just now. It’s simply amazing that you already know.” She took a chance and smiled.

  Elaine merely sniffed and kept on with that look. “It was very kind of him, too,” Allie continued, “because I don’t think he really needed anyone.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “How do you know that?” This time Allie tried for a teasing tone.

  Another sniff. Worse, Allie observed, her mother was baking, which she’d always said was cheaper than a psychiatrist. Steadily, she forged ahead. “I’m grateful, too, because I’ll be able to handle my personal expenses and pay you a smidgen of rent.”

  A pan of her legendary sugar cookies in her hand, Elaine said, “I don’t want rent! I don’t want you to be a waitress. Aren’t you a little overeducated for that?”

  The reference to her education filled Allie with guilt. When her father died, he’d left her mother enough to live modestly. Allie knew her college years had required sacrifices over and above the scholarships she’d been given. Still, she couldn’t get caught up in a guilt trip. She’d feel even guiltier if she went back to med school and ended up being an incompetent doctor. She said calmly, “I need things to do and a little money coming in while I decide what career I really want to pursue.”

  “A medical career! It’s what you’ve always wanted.”

  “It was what I’d always wanted,” Allie said quietly. “Turns out I was wrong.”

  “What you’ll do is settle back into the valley, never want to leave, be a waitress for the rest of your life,” her mother said sadly. “I’ve seen it happen to plenty of people.”

  “Even if I turn into one of them, may I still have a cookie?” Allie asked, and in return, got a look that sent her scampering up to her room with a stack of cookies and a mug of tea sloshing perilously as she ran.

  When she was a kid, her bedroom had been her oasis, although then she’d never felt alone and thirsty in the desert the way she did now. As a child, she’d adored her parents, and after her father died, she’d become even closer to her mother. Until now, when a stone wall had risen between them.

  Not even her room felt the same. Being home was strange, like trying to wear clothes she’d outgrown. The tension between her mother and her made it so much worse.

  She’d come home without calling to avoid the inevitable argument as long as possible, but now she felt she hadn’t done the right thing. Her mother had been shocked, shocked by Allie’s sudden appearance, shocked by her decision to take a semester off to reflect on her medical career, and a shocked mother, apparently, was a mother playing motherhood for all it was worth.

  “How could you do this?” she’d sobbed piteously. “How could you throw away a promising career?”

  “I didn’t throw it away. I just need some time to think.”

  Logic and explanation hadn’t calmed her mother in the least. Resigned, Allie searched her closet, hoping to find the black slacks and white shirts she’d worn to waitress at Mike’s restaurant for so many years.

  There they were, clean, starched and perfectly ironed. That was the kind of mother she had—or was until Allie had disappointed her by wanting to rethink being a doctor.

  After she found the clothes, she took a good hard look at her room. It was exactly as it was when she’d left it for college—pink and flowery. The cloying peony-printed wallpaper was half-hidden with pictures of friends, dried corsages, party invitations dating back to first grade, camp awards, school awards, her Phi Beta Kappa key, diplomas—her entire past, such as it was. As for the present, nothing in the room indicated the person she was now.

  Not that she had a clue as to who that woman was. All her life, Allie had known what she wanted to do. She’d chosen a path and stuck to it industriously until a few months ago, when, engaged in a special summer project, she’d finally confronted the truth—it was the wrong path. It would lead to a job she’d never be able to do well enough to satisfy her need to do everything perfectly.

  It had turned her world upside-down. She’d spent the summer thinking about it, examining her feelings, talking to a counselor, before she made her decision. While she’d told her mother that she just needed a while to think things over, she’d already decided not to go back to med school.

  She pushed aside the panic that overtook her each time she realized what she’d done. She’d figure it out, find a new path and start walking it with the same industrious spirit she’d always had.

  It wasn’t the end of the road for her. Just a detour.

  She was buttoning her white shirt when she heard the tap on her door. “Come in, Mom,” she called out, thinking, What now? How much more guilt can she heap on me?

  Elaine sat down on the edge of the bed. She was such a pretty woman, Allie thought, as blond as Allie was brunette, a bit plump from all those years of cooking and baking. She had a smooth, even temperament—until yesterday, when Allie had popped in with her bad news. Elaine Hendricks would never surprise or shock anyone. She…

  “I’ve been thinking,” her mother said slowly, “and I want to tell you a story.”

  Allie’s fingers stopped with a shirt button half-pushed in. About a girl who didn’t do what her mother said and turned into an iguana?

  “Before I married your father,” ’Elaine said, “I got cold feet.”

  Okay, this was a surprise. “You did not,” Allie protested. “You told me the first time you laid eyes on Dad you knew he was the one.”

  “Yes, until that engagement ring was on my finger. Then I started wondering if I was doing the right thing.” She pursed her lips as if she were reliving that moment of doubt. “My mother was fitting my wedding dress on me—I’ll never forget it—and when she started fastening it up the back, I said, ‘Stop.’ I stepped out of the dress, packed a bag, cashed in the bonds my grandmother had left me and went to Las Vegas.”

  Allie’s head swam. “Las Vegas?”

  “I tanned by the pool, read romances, watched sitcoms about perfect families and just worked at feeling young. But I also talked to newlywed women, and to the ones who were there to get divorces, listening to their stories of deciding they’d found the right man, and the stories from the divorcées about how they’d been wrong.”

  Allie nodded. No need to feel tense. She knew how the story ended.

  “What was Dad doing while you were…thinking?”

  “He called me every night, asking me if I was ready to come home, and each time, I told him I wasn’t sure yet. Then one day I was at the pool reading, felt someone watching me, looked up and there he was. ‘I need to do some thinking, too,’ he said. He plopped himself down on the lounge chair beside mine, and the rest
is history.”

  The import of the story hit Allie at last. She sat on the bed beside her mother, put an arm around her shoulders and said, “You ran away. Just like me.”

  Elaine nodded ruefully. “That’s what occurred to me this morning. I ran away, so why was I so shocked when you did the same thing?”

  “Well, you were—”

  “I was being hypocritical. I’m sorry.”

  “But after you ran, you ended up making the right decision, don’t you think?” Allie said, remembering her tall, handsome, kind father whose dark eyes showed only love for her and her mother.

  “Oh, yes,” Elaine said. “And you will, too, sweetheart.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” Allie said, hugging her tight.

  “When I was remembering how lazy I was in Vegas,” Elaine said, and smiled at last, “I thought about you and how you’d started by getting a job. So I wondered if you might like to take on some volunteer work, too.”

  “Sure,” Allie said, so relieved she’d have been willing to shovel manure for an elderly dairy farmer. “What is it?”

  “Lilah Foster, Daniel’s new wife and a lovely woman, is planning a benefit dinner to raise funds for the Serenity Valley Foster Care Center.”

  “The place Daniel’s building?”

  “Yes. A community of separate houses, each with a ‘mother’ and ‘father’ to provide the closest thing to a real home for foster children.”

  “That’s a worthy cause,” Allie murmured.

  “I’m chairing the finance committee, getting donations from local businesses. She needs somebody to arrange the actual dinner—food, rentals, decorations, all that—for the benefit. Mike’s catering, so you’re the logical person to volunteer.”

  At the mention of Mike’s name, Allie’s mind wandered. He’d looked good today, very handsome, very confident. She’d been happy to see him again, and she was looking forward to working with him at the diner. Being around him would be good for her. He was such a focused person himself that he might be able to help her figure out what she wanted to do with her life.

  She smiled back at her mother. “Better than getting a tan—better for your skin and your conscience. It sounds like fun, Mom. Happy to do it.”

  “Good. Lilah will be pleased.” Elaine went to the door, then said, “You know, they always say to ask the busiest person you know to take on a volunteer job, and our new ophthalmologist is working with me on the fundraising committee. I’ll make sure you get to chat with her.”

  Nope, Allie thought as she fastened her last two buttons, her mother hadn’t given up yet on the hope that Allie’s “right decision” would be to become a doctor after all.

  Chapter Two

  Several minutes after Stein’s call, life at the diner was back to normal. Becky and Colleen gave staccato orders over the pass-through to the kitchen, Barney filled them with astounding speed, and Mike cooked. The phone rang several times, but Mike shut the sound out of his head and gave the food his full attention—except for those moments his mind wandered toward Allie.

  He wished he’d asked her to start tomorrow night, or on the weekend, to give him time to get over the impact of seeing her looking so different. On the other hand, maybe when he saw her in her old uniform of black pants and white shirt, she’d look like the Allie he knew. The Allie he thought of as a kid.

  He’d really be grateful if she’d put her hair up in a ponytail.

  At one-thirty, Becky ran into the kitchen. “Mike, there’s a lawyer on the phone for you. Says it’s urgent.”

  Had Stein mentioned he was a lawyer for Abernathy Foods? He hadn’t said what he was. Had to be the same person. “I told him I’d call him back at two-thirty,” Mike said, distracted by his pans of sautéing vegetables. “Tell him again. Two-thirty’s the best I can do.”

  “But he—”

  “It’s okay, Becky.” He smiled at her. “Tell him I told you to tell him.”

  Looking worried, Becky went back to the desk.

  As soon as Maury went to the storeroom to inventory staples, Barney yelled over the sizzle of hamburgers, “What’s going on?”

  Mike turned off the burners under the vegetables. He sure couldn’t yell back, not news like this. “Some guy from New York called and wants to franchise the diner.”

  “Franchise the diner?” Barney said, making it sound like burn down the diner?

  “Yeah. What do you think?”

  Barney scratched his chef’s hat, the closest he could get to his head when he was cooking. “Well, I don’t know.”

  “Thanks,” Mike said. “That helps.”

  “I mean, I don’t know enough about it yet, and my guess is you don’t, either. So when you do, ask me again, and do some explaining first.”

  “That’s actually good advice,” Mike admitted. “This guy wants me to come to New York to hear about the offer.”

  “I guess you’d better go.”

  “Think you and Maury can hold down the fort?”

  Barney raised his eyebrows. “I never did need you,” he said, “and that kid’s just waiting for a chance to get you out of his kitchen.”

  Mike laughed. “Yeah, I know. And if the food’s even halfway okay—”

  “The customers’ll be calling him out for a round of applause. So don’t get jealous.”

  AT LAST, the lunch crowd cleared out except for a few stragglers in need of nothing more than a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. Becky and Colleen came in to say they were leaving for a while, and Becky said, “Promise me you’ll call the lawyer. I left his number on the message pad. He sounded as if he really needed to talk to you.”

  “I have the number.” He wandered back into the kitchen, not feeling his usual excitement about finishing things up for dinner. He’d said he’d call Stein at two-thirty, and for some reason he was dreading it.

  He felt unprepared for a conversation about franchising. What did he know about it? A couple of McDonald’s, a couple of Starbucks, then they multiplied like rabbits. The hamburgers and the coffee tasted the same in each one. That was the extent of his knowledge.

  But it wouldn’t be the extent of Ian’s knowledge. Ian was the businessman of their self-made family. He’d know if anybody did. Mike glanced at the clock above the huge commercial range. Two-twenty. He had time. Ian didn’t talk much. Quickly he punched in the number.

  He was in luck. Ian was at home. “Abernathy Foods wants to franchise the diner,” he said without even saying hello.

  “Wow,” Ian said. His flat tone was as excited as Ian ever sounded. “You’ve hit the big time.”

  “I guess,” Mike said, “but I don’t know anything about franchising. Can you fill me in?”

  “A company likes the looks of an operation, they buy the name and concept and then start selling franchises. You’ll get rich and they’ll get richer.”

  “Rich would be good,” Mike admitted.

  “You’d have to pay a price, though. You’ll be the founder of the chain, but the company will select the franchisees. The company will lay down the rules, and you’ll have to follow them just like the other franchisees. If Abernathy Foods is publicly owned, a board of directors, the management and a whole bunch of shareholders will have the right to tell you to put sugar in your tomato sauce.”

  “The board of directors talks about recipes?”

  Ian blew out a breath. “No. It was just an example.”

  “Oh.” Mike stopped frantically taking notes and thought about somebody else making decisions about his restaurant. “It might be nice for a while,” he said. “I could make us all rich, sit back on my tush, get some rest, travel…”

  “Or they might hire you to organize the franchise, lay down those rules—with the approval, of course, of the marketing department, the CFO, the CEO—”

  “And the board,” Mike said, feeling dizzy. “Doesn’t sound like my thing, does it?”

  “No. But we’re way ahead of ourselves. Call them back and ask questions. While you’re talk
ing, I’ll do some research, find out if Abernathy Foods is worth talking to.”

  “You’re sure you have time to do this?” Ian handled the family’s business affairs and managed a flock of merino sheep. He stayed busy.

  “I have time. For some people.”

  Mike heard an almost-smile in his voice. Ian had time for him. When the three of them had cast their lots with each other, he’d found out what family was.

  He put down the phone, and immediately it rang. If Maury hadn’t been around—he seemed to have given up on getting any help from Mike and was forging ahead with the cooking himself—Mike would have uttered a vile curse. “Mike’s Diner,” he said less cheerfully than usual.

  “Where the heck is Maury?”

  It was the Churchill Consolidated High School football coach, sounding belligerent. “He’s right here, coach,” Mike said. “Want to talk to him?”

  “No, I don’t wanna talk to him. I want you to tell me why he’s there instead of over here, in Churchill, at football practice.”

  Maury hadn’t mentioned football practice, but Mike didn’t intend to tattle. “Is it time?” he asked innocently. “I guess we were so busy we lost track. Don’t worry. I’ll be sure he gets there tomorrow.”

  “Not tomorrow, today,” the coach thundered. “He’s my star linebacker. Or he will be, if he comes to practice! Tell him to get over here right now.”

  The man had his priorities straight, for sure. “I think I can manage without him now that the worst is over,” Mike conceded. “He’ll be there.”

  Maury had started browning chicken and was staring really hard at it. Mike pulled a stool up to the huge range.

  “Maury, Maury,” he began, shaking his head. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “I’ve been busted,” Maury said. “I’m sorry, but you told me about the Moroccan chicken, and I just had to see how to…”

  Mike held up a silencing hand. “I know. It’s in your blood. You’ll be a five-star chef someday, but, Maury, first you have get through high school.”