“Two and a high chair,” Louise answered, looking around. “We’re meeting somebody, but I don’t see her yet.”
“Okay. Come this way, please.” The young woman took her and James Henry to a table. “Is this all right?”
“Sure,” Louise lied. She’d sat at this table when she told him she was pregnant with James Henry right after Teo skipped on her. She couldn’t remember a less pleasant lunchtime, even if the BLT had been pretty good. But ingrained politeness kept her from asking to sit somewhere else. Death before being difficult might have appeared as the motto on her family crest.
She held her son on her lap till a Hispanic kid brought the high chair. She wondered if he was legal, and how closely Carrows checked. Just closely enough to keep from getting into hot water with Immigration, odds were. A waitress brought a menu for her and a children’s menu for James Henry. She also doled out a couple of crayons so he could color on it.
“Thank you,” he said gravely.
The waitress blinked, then grinned. “You’re welcome! You’re a good boy.”
“He is,” Louise agreed. It was true, no matter how much he’d complicated her life. Her own smile faded when she looked at the prices. She hadn’t been here for a while—not since she lost her job at the ramen works. It’s just Carrows, for crying out loud, not Wolfgang Puck, she thought. But when groceries were hideously expensive and energy even further through the roof, what could you expect?
Even if it brought back those bad memories, the BLT was one of the cheaper things she could get. Pork hadn’t gone up as much as beef and lamb. Plenty, but not as much. On the kids’ menu, chicken nuggets were also less outrageous than the cheeseburger. Outrageous, yeah, but less so.
Now—where had Vanessa got to? Louise hadn’t seen her since she got back to Southern California. Vanessa had a habit of running late. Louise had had that habit, too, but Colin cured her of it. A cop had to stay on time, and he made her do the same thing. She hadn’t slipped too badly since leaving him.
“Are you ready to order, ma’am?” the waitress asked.
“Not for me, not yet, but could you get him the nuggets and fries, and apple juice to go with ’em?”
“I’ll do that.” The waitress hurried away.
Louise wondered why. The place wasn’t crowded. Were there any crowded restaurants left in the whole country? If what Carrows had to charge was any indication, there wouldn’t be. Louise also wondered if she would even recognize Vanessa. She hadn’t seen her daughter since before the eruption. She hadn’t seen Rob in even longer, but neither had Colin, so that didn’t count the same way.
The waitress delivered the nuggets and fries and juice. James Henry started slaughtering them. He wasn’t neat—what little kid is?—but he wasn’t fussy, either. All of Louise’s other kids had been. Maybe this straightforward voracity came from Teo. It would be nice if something good did.
Here was Vanessa, across the grassy strip in front of the restaurant. She’d cut her hair short. It didn’t fall past her shoulders, the way she’d always worn it before. Maybe that was what made her look harder, tougher, than Louise remembered.
When Vanessa walked into the Carrows, Louise waved. Her daughter waved back and came over to the table. Louise decided the haircut wasn’t what made her look tougher after all. It was something in the line of her jaw and, even more, something in her eyes.
No matter what it was, Louise got up and hugged her. “Good to see you!” she said.
“Good to be seen,” Vanessa answered. That was such a Colin thing to come out with, it cooled half of Louise’s pleasure at the meeting. But then Vanessa added, “Hi, Mom,” and you couldn’t go very far wrong with that. She eyed James Henry. “So, this is the new kid, huh?”
“This is James Henry,” Louise agreed. As Vanessa sat down, Louise went on, “James Henry, do you know who this is?”
“A lady,” her son said, a fry twitching at the corner of his mouth the way a cigarette would have in Gabe Sanchez’s.
“She’s not just any lady. She’s Vanessa, your big, big sister, the way Marshall is your big, big brother.”
“Oh.” James Henry digested that—and more of the french fry. “Is she gonna babysit me, too?”
“Well, I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see,” Louise answered.
“This is all too bizarre,” Vanessa said. “I come back to SoCal and I’ve got a little brother and a tiny sister. I mean, bizarre.”
“That’s right. Kelly had her baby,” Louise said. “How is she?”