The Grove Read Online Free PDF Page A

with her napkin. The sound was light and young.
    A few minutes later, the waitress came with my coffee and set it on the table. “You know what you want?”
    The tag on her uniform said her name was Megan. I handed her the menu and said, “Denver omelet, please, Megan.”
    She nodded, scribbled on her notepad, then took the menu from me and smiled. “Be right up.”
    She turned to go and I stopped her. “Where’s the other girl who works here?”
    “The other girl?” Megan bit her lower lip and glanced over her shoulder toward the woman wiping the counter. The woman didn’t look up.
    “Long, dark hair,” I said. “Haven’t seen her around much.”
    Megan tapped her pen on her notepad then said, “That’s Jessica. She’s not here today.”
    “Not here, but she should be,” the woman at the counter said. “She might just find herself without a job soon.”
    “That’s too bad,” I said. “She seemed nice.”
    Megan looked from me to the woman behind the counter then disappeared into the kitchen. I heard her say something and a man’s voice answer. His head appeared in the cook’s window; then it was gone.
    “That’s the trouble with hiring kids,” the woman said. “They have their own priorities, and most of them don’t understand the meaning of hard work. They’re too distracted these days.”
    “That so?” I sipped my coffee, tried to appear disinterested. “Was Jessica easily distracted?”
    The woman laughed. “Boys, boys, boys with her, and that’s that.” She tapped her finger against her chest. “I grew up with four sisters—I know how girls can be, but that one is something else.”
    “A lot of boyfriends?”
    “Not a lot.” She capped one of the ketchup bottles and reached for another as she spoke. “One in particular, but at that age, one’s enough.” She shook her head. “Her poor mother called here yesterday wondering if she’d shown up for her shift. I had to tell her no, but I left it at that. What else am I going to say? ‘Sorry, Mrs. Cammon, but your daughter ran off with her boyfriend?’”
    “Ran off? You think so?”
    She shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit.”
    The man at the counter in the Harley Davidson T-shirt looked over his shoulder at me, then back at the woman. “You don’t want a daughter these days, that’s for sure.”
    “I wouldn’t say that,” the woman said. “Boys can be just as bad.”
    The man shook his head. “That ain’t true. With a boy you only got one dick to worry about.” He turned back and smiled at me, his mouth full of chewed egg. “With a girl, you worry about ’em all.” He laughed, loud and rolling.
    I did, too, just to be polite.
    “Ben, don’t come in here and be crude.” She leaned over and brushed his arm with her hand. “You know better than that.”
    “Just telling the truth as I see it.”
    The woman smiled and shook her head. “Well, keep it to yourself.”
    After that, the topic switched to the weather and how thankful they were for the rain considering how dry it’d been. When Ben started talking about having to haul the load of pigs to the packing plant in Clarksville, I dropped out of the conversation and thought about Jessica.
    This had been one of her places. She’d spent time here, walking these floors, cleaning these same tables. I’m not one to believe in ghosts, but I felt like a part of her was still there in that room.
    If I tried, I thought I could see her come through the doors leading from the kitchen, each hand holding a plate of food. I glanced up and waited.
    A moment later the doors opened and she was there.
    Her black hair tied in a ponytail, her skin warm and pink. She crossed the room toward me.
    I closed my eyes. My chest felt tight, and I couldn’t catch my breath. I kept my eyes closed until I heard the plate touch the table in front of me, then looked up.
    Megan took a bottle of ketchup and a bottle of Tabasco from her apron pocket and set them