Queenie's Cafe Read Online Free Page B

gone. Laura scratched her head as she purred. Queenie had always loved her cats. She’d had several over the years, naming them after the seven dwarfs. Sleepy and Doc were the last, only Laura hadn’t seen Doc since she’d been back. Maybe he knew Queenie was gone and went to find another home.
    “Find anything worth keeping?” Dad asked when she went back to their apartment.
    “Not much. What are you taking with you?”
    “That place is furnished, so we won’t need much.”
    “Where’s Florence?”
    “She went back to her place in Cocoa to pick up the last of her things. She’ll be back tonight.” He sorted through his things while he talked, deciding what to take along and what to leave behind.
    Laura sat on the bed and watched him. She didn’t want him moving so far away, but she wouldn’t ask him to stay. He wouldn’t anyway. Once Dad made up his mind about something, there was no changing it.
    “When Queenie and I were first married, she wanted kids. The doctor told her it could kill her. Her mother had just died and her father was sick. They both had diabetes and heart problems. No one in her mother’s family lived beyond the age of fifty, and everyone in her father’s family was heavy. Very heavy.
    “Queenie had a bad heart, too, but I didn’t know that until after we were married. After the doctor told her not to have kids, she said she wanted to adopt, but I didn’t think it was a good idea. We hadn’t been married long, but I knew it wouldn’t last. We shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place.”
    “Did you love her?”
    “I thought I did, but we hadn’t known each other long. We met in Fort Lauderdale. She was such a cute little thing, always smiling.”
    “Queenie?” That didn’t sound like the Queenie she knew. Laura remembered her sour disposition, and little didn’t fit Queenie at all.
    “Then her mother died and she had to come home and run the café. She asked me to come along, so I took some time off work and came with her. Her father offered us the businesses and before I knew what happened, we were married and Queenie was talking about having a family.”
    “You didn’t want a family?”
    He threw a stack of T-shirts in a box. “Hell no. Not with her.” The way he said it, Laura wondered if he’d ever wanted her.
    “An adoption agency wouldn’t have approved you anyway, not if she had a bad heart.”
    “She denied there was anything wrong with her, and she really wanted kids. I couldn’t leave because her father was sick, and then he died. Queenie was overwhelmed, so I agreed to stay a year to run the motel, but only if she moved out of the apartment.”
    Laura understood what he was saying, but why didn’t he leave when the year was up? “I still don’t understand why you stayed with her so long. Did something else happen?”
    He hesitated several seconds before saying, “She’s dead now. It no longer matters.”
    What was he hiding?
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    Friday morning, Laura went with her father to Queenie’s attorney’s office in Melbourne to sign the papers that would put the property and both businesses into her hands. Dad was right about one thing. She knew how to run a business. She’d been helping him at the motel nearly all her life.
    Saturday morning, Laura’s parents left for Ocala. Laura tried not to cry, but she couldn’t help herself. She loved her father more than anyone else in this world. “If it doesn’t work out there, you can always come back.”
    “It’s yours now, Laura. If you need anything, call me.”
    Florence held her arms out for a hug. “My little girl,” she murmured. “I love you, honey.”
    Laura couldn’t say the words Florence wanted to hear. “Thanks for your help with the café. I wish we had more time to get to know each other.”
    “So do I, honey, but I’ll be back to visit ever’ now and then. If you need anything, be sure to call us now, you hear?”
    “I will. And if I ever get some time off, I’ll come