The Steep and Thorny Way(58)
Mama’s face shifted from me to my window, as if she could see the restaurant from two miles away, beyond all the trees and the farms. “You can’t go to the Dry Dock on your own.”
“Then come with me.”
Her throat rippled with a swallow.
“Please, come with me.” I held out my hand to her, my fingers shaking. “I’m never going to be able to sleep another night until I learn what happened to Daddy before he and Joe crossed paths on that road. And I don’t think Daddy will rest until then, either. Please. Come.”
She hesitated. I watched as gooseflesh dotted her arms, and her chest rose and fell with breaths that looked labored. But then she straightened her back and reached behind her.
She grabbed hold of my hand and held it as fiercely as if she were saving me from drowning.
POURING WHISKEY INTO A SEWER, PROHIBITION-ERA UNITED STATES.
CHAPTER 21
MOST UNNATURAL MURDER
MAMA AND I WALKED THE NEARLY two-mile stretch into town and stopped to catch our breath beneath the shade of a pine tree. Mama wiped her forehead with a handkerchief, and I peered through the needles at the restaurants up ahead.
Ginger’s was an old brown shack—a former watering hole for local farmers, loggers, and railway men. The Dry Dock, on the other hand, sat in a fine white clapboard building with fancy gables and dormer windows and two brick chimneys that rose from the roof’s black shingles. Wicker rocking chairs welcomed visitors for a moment of respite on the low front porch, and a wreath of dried flowers hung on the door, above a handwritten sign I’d always mistaken for a list of the hours of operation. The two establishments sat uphill from a creek, separated by that monstrous old oak tree with branches thicker than any I’d ever swung from as a child. Fleur, Laurence, and I could have wrapped our arms and legs around the limbs and pretended to be tigers if we’d ever played downtown instead of in the woods.
“I want to go inside,” I said.
“You can’t.” Mama mopped her flushed cheeks with the white cloth. “And don’t you dare try.”
“Would they throw me out?”
“Yes, I’m sure they would.”
I took a step closer, and my nose filled up with the sweet scent of pine sap. The tips of my fingers felt sticky, even though I hadn’t touched the tree. “Doesn’t it make you fighting mad,” I said, “that everyone else’s daughters can step inside the place, but not yours?”
My mother lowered the handkerchief from her face. “Of course it does, Hanalee. Why do you even have to ask?”
“Then take me inside.” I snapped a clump of dry needles off the branch dangling in front of my face. “I don’t want to sit down at one of their tables or take one bite of their food. I just want to speak to the owners.”
“You can’t just walk up to people and accuse them of hurting your father a year and a half ago.”
I eyed the Dry Dock.
It would take no more than twenty long strides to get myself to the front door.
I glanced at Mama.
I eyed the Dry Dock again.
“Hanalee . . .”
“I’m sorry, Mama.” I dashed off to the front door upon legs grown strong and swift from running through the woods with Joe.
The black-lettered sign greeted me on the door:
WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO SERVE WHOM WE PLEASE.
I flinched, for the phrase, up close, stung like a slap across my face. I grabbed the iron handle and pulled the door open.
Mama ran up behind me and caught the door, but not before I slipped inside. She followed me, and a little gold bell tinkled above our heads.
The dining area before us consisted of one large room with square tables draped in ivory cloths amid pale green walls adorned with paintings of canoes and kayaks drifting down the local creeks and rivers. Only one set of customers—a mother, a grandmother, and three golden-haired children, all regulars at our church—dined in the place on that quiet Thursday morning. The air carried the aromas of eggs and maple syrup and freshly brewed coffee, and I almost worried I’d walked into a private family home.
An embroidered poem, stitched in periwinkle-blue thread, hung on the wall beside my right elbow.
Kind hearts are the gardens,
Kind thoughts are the roots,
Kind words are the blossoms,
Kind deeds are the fruits.
A slender woman with gray-streaked hair—hair pulled tightly enough off her face to stretch out her eyes—rounded a corner from the far end of the dining room. She wiped her hands on her white apron and smiled at first, but then she caught sight of me, and her hands fell still; the smile wilted.
“No.” She pointed straight at me. “She cannot be inside this establishment. Didn’t you see our sign on the door?”
“But I know these customers,” I said, looking toward the family at the table who held their forks frozen in midair between their plates and their mouths. “They go to our church. They’re not afraid of me . . . or disgusted by me. Are you?”
“No!” The restaurant woman pointed to the door. “You need to leave these premises immediately.”
“What’s wrong, Esther?” A bug-eyed man in his forties or fifties sauntered around the corner behind her, a spatula in hand, a white chef’s hat sitting cockeyed on his head.