The Ride of Her Life (11 page)

“True, but I can promise you this—I’ll be the best friend I can be to him for the time we have together.”

Lilly’s eyes misted. She blinked. Had she really almost kept Levi from this kind man? “I know you’ll take good care of him.”

He met her gaze and held it. Too intense for her liking. “As if he were my own.”

Lilly turned and started back to Levi, her heart inexplicably full and sad at the same time. Nick fell in step beside her.

They walked in silence for a few moments before she spoke. “Now, Mr. Perrin, about you calling me by my Christian name.”

Nick chuckled. “I like the way it feels on my tongue. Lilly. Sweet, like peppermint with a little bite to it.”

“But it’s hardly proper.”

“Funny, you don’t strike me as a woman terribly stuck on what’s proper. Do you really not want me to call you Lilly?”

Cheeky man. He was certainly hard to say no to. Oh well, maybe he could call her Lilly on occasion. What would it hurt to hear her name from a man once in a while?

She offered him a little smile. “Let’s just say too many sweets aren’t good for a person.”

11

Lilly told Levi he’d have to stay inside the diner with her for the rest of the afternoon as punishment for wandering off. She handed him a bucket and a brush and told him to begin scrubbing the floor.

“But what about Flower?”

“Mr. Nick said he’d bring her over at supper time.” She pointed to a corner of the dining room. “You may start there.”

Once Levi began, she escaped into the kitchen.

“I’m so glad he’s okay.” Eugenia looked up from the worktable, flour dotting her cheeks. “When I didn’t find him in the Midway, I went ahead and made the pies for supper tonight.”

“Thank you, Eugenia. That’s so thoughtful.” Lilly glanced at the Hoosier cabinet where two pies, the crusts a perfect gold, sat cooling. Maybe the cooking lessons had paid off. Of course, she’d taste them herself before she let another human being near them. She smiled. “They look delicious.”

“And I did them like you’ve been teaching me.” Eugenia beamed. “I was trying to start the noodles, but I don’t think I have that down yet.”

Lilly chuckled at the noodles hanging like worms on Eugenia’s apron. One had even made its way into her frizzy hair. “It looks like you’re being eaten by Levi’s worms.”

“These noodles have a mind of their own.”

Lilly draped a fresh apron around her neck. “Let me take a look. I’ve been known to tame a noodle or two.”

Half an hour later, Lilly had helped Eugenia roll the noodles out and cut them into long, thin strips. Together they’d hung the noodles on a rope to dry. The chicken was already simmering, so Lilly asked Eugenia to join her in the dining room so they could polish the silverware.

Drenched in mop water, Levi scampered to his feet when she walked into the room. “All done, Mama. Isn’t it pretty?”

If mop water and a scrub brush could make art, Levi was a Rembrandt in the making. Lines crisscrossed the room in a fascinating pattern. Now, torn between having him do the job correctly or praising his artistic creation, Lilly studied her son’s face. Was he simply trying to get out of his work? No, there didn’t seem to be an ounce of sneakiness in his sweet blue eyes.

She smiled. “It’s beautiful, Levi. Why don’t you take the mop bucket outside and dump the water?”

Eugenia stepped forward. “But, Miss Lilly . . .”

Lilly could imagine what Eugenia was thinking. Since Levi certainly hadn’t done the job perfectly, one of them would have to mop later. With a flick of her wrist, Lilly motioned for Levi to go on, and then she settled in a chair and picked up a tarnished spoon. “Children’s eyes, Eugenia.”

The girl sat down beside her. “Excuse me?”

“You can always tell whether a child is lying to you if you look in their eyes.” She dipped her cloth into the tin of J. A. Wright’s silver polish and rubbed the spoon. “Levi wasn’t trying to get out of work. He truly believed he’d created something beautiful. It would be wrong of me to crush his spirit.”

“Wish my mother had felt that way.” Eugenia set the pile of knives in front of her.

Lilly cocked her head. The girl had said little about her upbringing. But since she was Mr. Thorton’s niece, did Lilly really want to know?

“Please don’t get me wrong. My mother is a wonderful lady.” Eugenia stuck her piece of gray flannel in the silver cream and removed a much-too-large dollop. “She likes things done right, and I have a lot of talent for wrong.”

If it wasn’t so sad, Lilly might have laughed. “Didn’t she teach you how to do things?”

“She tried a few times when I was little, but afterward she said it was easier to do them herself.”

The back door slammed shut, and Lilly and Eugenia both startled.

“It’s me, girls,” Mr. Thorton called from the kitchen.

Lilly selected another spoon. “So you didn’t have servants?”

“Heavens no.” Eugenia held up the polished knife and studied her reflection on the blade. “Is that why you thought I was inept in the kitchen?”

“Not inept. Inexperienced.” Lilly held up her spoon. “Do you think Levi would know how to shine this if I didn’t teach him how to do it? That’s another reason I didn’t get upset with his cleaning job. I’ve never really taught him how to do it right. I sort of expected him to simply figure it out on his own. It isn’t fair to expect folks to know something they’ve not been taught.”

Eugenia smiled. “You’re a sweet lady, Miss Lilly. Thank you for teaching me.”

“Ugh! Phew! Lilly!” Mr. Thorton’s voice filled the diner, followed by hacking and coughing.

Lilly and Eugenia raced into the kitchen. Mr. Thorton frantically filled a water glass from the pump at the sink. He downed one, two, three glasses before whirling toward Lilly. He held one hand to his throat, and with his other, he jabbed a finger toward a piece of pie. “Who made this?”

Eugenia dropped her gaze to the floor. Her shoulders slumped forward.

Lilly met his gaze. “Is there something wrong with it?”

“Something wrong! It’s plain wicked.” He filled a glass again and emptied it.

She glanced at Eugenia. The poor girl was as pale as flour on a cutting board. What could she have possibly done to the pie? Surely Mr. Thorton was overreacting.

“It can’t be that bad.” Lilly pushed the hair from her forehead with the back of her hand.

He picked up the slice and shoved it at her. “It’s worse. Taste it.”

Lilly forked off a small bite and put it in her mouth. Her eyes instantly filled with tears. Oh my, this was bad. Very, very bad. She’d never tasted anything so salty.

She caught a horrified look on Eugenia’s face. In that second, she knew she had to swallow it. If she didn’t, Eugenia’s spirit, like Levi’s, would be crushed.

Without the aid of a cup of coffee with which to wash it down, Lilly forced herself to gulp the bite. Her voice choked when she spoke. “It may have a little too much salt.”

“May? Since when do you make a pie like that?” Mr. Thorton’s face grew as red as strawberry jam.

Lilly flashed her eyes toward Eugenia. Thankfully he followed her gaze. Could she get him to see that his niece was on the verge of tears?

“That was our practice pie, Mr. Thorton. Practice makes perfect, and you know, you shouldn’t be sneaking around in a woman’s kitchen.” She set the remainder of the pie slice on the Hoosier cabinet. “Women have been known to bake all kinds of things into pies to teach men to keep their hands out of the sweets. Right, Eugenia?”

The girl nodded slowly. “Yes, one lady baked blackbirds in her pie. When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing.”

Mr. Thorton stared at his niece. “You do realize that’s a nursery rhyme, right?”

Eugenia laughed nervously. “Of course I do, Uncle Clyde.”

“Anyway, the point is, you’d do best to ask which pies we intend to serve folks and which we intend to try out first ourselves.” Lilly dropped the dried noodles into the pot. Inside her, laughter bubbled. “’Cause you never know what we might be fixin’.”

Or who might be the one fixing it.

There was no solving this problem. Nick stared at the roller coaster plans in front of him, his chest heavy with the news he’d received. Although his crew had made good time, he couldn’t build the roller coaster without the necessary supplies. The end-of-May deadline of Lake Manawa’s opening season loomed in his thoughts. His name was on the line with this project. Excuses meant nothing when it came down to getting a job done.

“Did the railroad say why there was a delay?” he asked lanky Milt Hawkins, one of the four men he’d sent to pick up pieces of the Douglas fir they’d ordered for the coaster’s support structure. What lumber they had on hand was quickly going into the few trestles they’d begun.

Milt shrugged. “Only that it wasn’t on the shipping invoice.”

“I’ll have to go into town tomorrow and send a telegram.” He rolled the plans and reinserted them into the metal tube. They had a long way to go, and the amount of lumber needed was staggering. If they had a supplier they couldn’t count on, they were in trouble. But one glitch wasn’t worth losing sleep over. “We have enough to keep us busy for a few days, so hopefully it’ll come in soon.”

“Heard some talk in town about rain coming. Reckon that’s normal in the spring.”

Nick nodded. “Unfortunately, that’s true. We’ll have to do what we can with the time God gives us. Thanks, Milt.”

As soon as the worker left, Nick pulled out his pocket watch and flipped it open. The tiny compass watch fob, a gift from his former fiancée, brushed his wrist. He should take the silly thing off. He had no desire to remember Ruby Rawlins.

He studied the hands on the watch. The freight office would be closed by now, so there was nothing he could do to clear things up. At least he wouldn’t miss dinner and seeing Levi as he’d promised. And the last thing he wanted to do right now was break a promise he’d made to the boy—or to his mother.

A few moments to herself was a true luxury. Lilly sat down in one of the lunch counter’s chairs and finished her supper. For some reason, Mr. Thorton had readdressed the subject of her meals, or, rather, added Levi’s meals to her salary. He’d made his position clear: he expected Lilly and her son to eat at the diner for every meal. Although she told Mr. Thorton that was too much and tried to turn down his offer, he refused. Lilly couldn’t deny the relief she now felt knowing she didn’t need to come up with more money for food. Every penny she saved meant they were one step closer to purchasing a home of their own.

As Nick had promised, he’d taken Levi with him following supper. Lilly stood on the stoop and watched her son skip away with his hand tucked in Nick’s. And now, with Eugenia washing—and rinsing—the dinner dishes, she could feel the tension easing from her muscles for the first time in days.

A dish clattered on the floor of the kitchen. Lilly jolted. “Everything okay, Eugenia?”

“I broke the handle off a cup.”

“No souls lost,” Lilly called back. It did no good to worry over broken china. Besides, those things were bound to happen in a diner, and more so with Eugenia around.

The front door opened, and Lilly turned to see Marguerite and a tall young man enter. She grinned. She’d recognize those protruding ears and handsome face anywhere, but my, how Marguerite’s younger brother had filled out.

She hurried to the door. “Well, look who the cat dragged in.”

“I told Mark you’d never forgive me if we didn’t drop by.” Marguerite looped her hand through her brother’s arm.

“That’s true.” Lilly motioned them to the table. “Mark, sit yourself down and let me get you each a cup of coffee. I want to hear all about what you’re gonna do now that you’ve graduated.”

“Miss Lilly, I’ll get the coffee.” Eugenia waved from the doorway. “I’m more than happy to serve, Mr. . . .”

Lilly grinned. Eugenia might appear a little muddleheaded at times, but she had no trouble with her eyes, and she clearly liked what she saw in Marguerite’s brother. “Miss Eugenia Baker, this is Mr. Mark Westing. He just graduated from law school. Mr. Mark Westing, Miss Eugenia Baker.”

Eugenia blushed and dipped her head. “I’ll be right back with your coffee.”