Hello, Goodbye

Chapter Two

Mama's was a little hole-in-the-wall diner in Oak Harbor that Kiel used to take her to only on special occasions. And when they'd go, he'd tell her she could order anything off the menu, as long as he got the first bite. She always chose the chocolate chip waffles with the giant scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. And she'd always give Kiel the cherry, because she hated cherries. That always counted as his first bite, and once he ate the cherry, she was allowed to dig in. Today he didn't even wait for her to hand it to him before he plucked it from the top of the mountain of ice cream and popped it into his mouth.

"Not even going to wait for me to offer?" she asked, taking a spoonful of ice cream and hot chocolate chip waffle into her own mouth. "A lot's changed in four years. What if I like cherries now?"

He shook his head. "Well then that would be too bad. But I get the first bite, remember?" His order was actually different than it usually was. Normally he'd order a stack of pancakes with four bacon strips, four sausage links, and four eggs over easy. It was the Mama's Big Boy Special. But today he ordered an egg white chicken florentine omelet. She wrinkled her nose at it, remembering all the times her mom ordered almost the exact same meal at a restaurant in Seattle. "Don't knock it before you try it," he said, catching her disdain for his plate. "It's not too bad."

"Not feeling like a big boy today?" she asked, savoring the sweetness of the chocolate in her mouth.

"Since my doctor said I need to cut down on my cholesterol, I've been trying to be a good boy rather than a big boy."

Her eyes widened. She did not like the sound of that. "You have high cholesterol?" she asked. "Since when?"

"Since about two years ago," he answered. "It's not too bad, but the doctor said I should probably lay off the bacon and sausage. Trying to eat more vegetables. Kinda great too, because I hired this new kid to help me this summer, and he's on this really strict diet. Eats a lot of greens. He's been helping me out. Teaching me some new things. Guess an old dog can learn new tricks."

She rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't call early forties that old."

He laughed. "You would if you'd done only hard labor jobs since you were a teenager. My back went out a couple months ago. Can you believe it? I remember my dad telling me to expect that to start happening when I hit 30, but I didn't think he was actually serious. But I swear, the day I turned 30, I felt like I gained 50 pounds of weight on my shoulders. And I'm tired all the time."

"Hence the new hire," she said, knowing full well that her uncle preferred to work alone. "Well, I'm glad you're eating better."

They ate in silence for a bit. And then Kiel pushed his empty plate aside and said, "So what's the story, Em? Why'd you come back? What happened with your mom?"

She wrinkled her nose again. "Plead the fifth," she replied, because she really did not want to talk about it. He raised his eyebrows at her, and she sighed and looked at her hands. "I don't know. We're just different people, I guess. She wasn't really what I was expecting." Understatement of the year, but hopefully this would be enough information to get him to stop asking questions about it.

Kiel nodded his head, as if he understood. She didn't know what her mom had been like when they were teenagers, but she'd always heard that her mom was fun and wild and carefree. That her dad had fallen in love with her because she was everything he'd loved about his own mother. But the woman she'd spent the last few years with was none of those things. "Well, you're welcome to stay with me as long as you like," he said. "The new hire is living in my guest room at the new house, but I can move him into the office if you'd like. He won't mind."

"That's okay," she said, taking her last bite of waffle and pushing her own plate aside. "I have a place to stay. But thank you."

This seemed to surprise him. "Are you... staying with Avery and Axel?" he asked slowly, referring to her two best friends in town.