The Homeplace: A Mystery Read Online Free

Probably. Other things can take priority when you’re seventeen. Like the basketball player Dolly was always with. Mercy knew all about that. She’d had her own ballplayer when she was seventeen.
    “How do you want those eggs?” Mercy asked the trucker at the counter.
    “Sunny side up with ham.”
    She knew he was looking at her backside.
    She grabbed a pot off the Bunn machine and crossed to the table by the front windows. “More coffee here?” Not one face had been shaved that morning. Fish-belly-white foreheads peeked out from under dirty John Deere caps, and every man at the table looked old.
    “Whatcha think, Mercy?”
    She’d gone to high school with that one. Bobby Jackson had been a sophomore when she was a senior.
    “The weather, I mean.” He held out his cup. “Today’s one of those days when you scrape frost off the windshield in the mornin’, and by noon you’ll be peeled down to a T-shirt. This time of year it means a front’s chasin’ the warm down from Wyoming, and we’re due for a change. I’ll wager we have snow by Monday.”
    Heads around the table nodded.
    Mercy smiled. But her insides turned as bitter as the coffee she poured.
    “Mercy, here comes Pop Weber.” Bobby tapped on the window.
    A battered farm truck came around the curve on the highway that led into Brandon. The driver straddled the dotted line that separated the two eastbound lanes.
    Mercy checked the clock over the cash register. Ten minutes after eight. Pop Weber was on time.
    Bobby tapped again. “Your mother watched out for him. It’s up to you now.”
    Mercy stepped to the front window. She wiped her hands on her apron and bit her lower lip. Maybe today Pop would remember.
    The truck made a hard right turn. Metal fence posts bounced in the back of the truck. It jerked to a stop in front of a boarded-up building that had once been the Brandon Inn. The only other restaurant in town had closed five years before.
    A bent old man climbed out.
    Mercy opened the front door to the chill outside.
    Pop hobbled up the cement steps to the padlocked door of the empty building. He tried the door.
    Mercy heard him curse. “Pop,” she called, “come on over and have breakfast with us.”
    Pop tugged on the locked door once more. He put one hand to his forehead and leaned into the glass. A laugh cackled out of the old man, and, like a foggy day melts in midmorning sun, he straightened a bit. He caught hold of the railing and limped down the steps.
    Mercy was at the edge of the highway. “Coffee’s on over here, Pop.”
    “When did this place close down?” He asked her that almost every morning.
    “Five years ago, Pop.”
    He tottered to the edge of the highway.
    “Look both ways, now.”
    A semi blasted its horn. Mercy trembled. But Pop stayed where he stood. The big truck sped by. Mercy took another look and crossed. She slipped an arm around the old farmer’s shoulders and kissed his cheek. Pop had shaved that morning.
    “Some days I just forget things, Mercy. Some days, I forget.”
    *   *   *
    Half of the pancakes in front of Pop Weber were gone, and he was on his third cup of coffee. Two more truckers had ordered ham and eggs, and the men in the John Deere caps were taking turns in the restroom before they left for their chores.
    Bobby Jackson put a dollar bill and two quarters next to the cash register. “Whatcha think, Mercy?”
    Mercy had heard that question every morning since she’d come back to Brandon and ignored it since that first day.
    Bobby’s teeth were yellow, but he smiled his best. When he was sure she was looking he slipped another dollar in the tip jar on the counter.
    He didn’t know the tips were divided up between the waitresses. Mercy didn’t get a share.
    Three gray-haired women slipped in the door. They waved to Mercy and took seats at their Saturday morning table. It was the same table they sat at on Tuesdays. And Thursdays.
    Mercy tried, but smiles were harder to come by now.
    Bobby