I had just figured out whose car it was when I walked through the door of the diner and caught sight of its owner walking through the kitchen. Helen was talking to someone rather animatedly and smiling. I ducked around the booths and headed to the table we usually sat in.
Having lunch at Dina’s Diner was a tradition for our company. Once a week at least, we would come down there and eat, usually with a rotating responsibility for the check between Deacon, Carter, and myself. With Deacon out, it meant that it was just Carter and me, although this week Aiden had come along to join us.
I liked Aiden quite a bit. He was more of a silent type, like Carter, but a good dude and a former Marine. He and his wife, Desiree, were often hosts of bonfire nights and Aiden often was around now for football games and wrestling pay-per-views that Deacon and Carter and I often had parties for.
Carter waved when he saw me come in, a short little half-salute, and I sent one back. It was funny. I spent so much of my adult life saluting that I thought I would never do it again when I got out of the service. Instead, me and the boys who served would snap off these goofy things almost as an act of defiance. We could salute wrongly now because we were out. There was no neck-veined, pencil-pushing, Pentagon peon to yell at us for it.
“Bout time,” Carter said. “What took you so long? I’ve already ordered for you.”
“Just double-checking on some of the stuff Deacon would normally be doing,” I said. “What did you order? Not the cheeseburger again.”
“It’s not the cheeseburger,” Carter said. “I got us all some of these new items.”
“New items?” I asked. Carter pointed to a small chalkboard on the counter with a few items written in big, cartoony block letters with colored chalk. “What the hell? What is buffalo cauliflower?”
“Something fancy,” Aiden said. “Desiree got me to eat it one time on a trip to Knoxville. It’s actually not bad, once you get past the thought that it should be chicken.”
“No thank you,” I said. “I am interested in the ribeye though. That’s new.”
“Ribeye ranch-hand steak,” Carter said. “That’s what I ordered you. I got it for myself too. Aiden wanted to go for the poutine.”
“Poutine? Like, Canadian French fries?” I asked.
“With bacon and mushrooms,” Aiden said. “I’ll give you some of mine if you cut me off a piece of that steak.”
“Sure,” I said. “I haven’t had poutine since a theme park trip in Virginia with Deacon.”
“I have a feeling this will be better,” Aiden said. “I heard the new owner is the one cooking it. She made it in Chicago all the time apparently.”
“Really?” I asked, my eyes floating back over to the empty doorway leading to the office and kitchen. A long window looked into the kitchen proper, but Helen was mostly seen dipping between there and the office, and as I looked up, she was passing by.
For a split second, our eyes met, and what looked like, but certainly couldn’t be, a smile curled up one side of her face.
A younger guy followed her into the kitchen, and the animated conversation began again. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could see them through the glass in the kitchen window. That had been new when Carrie, Dina’s other daughter, had taken over. I wasn’t sure the point of it, since the kitchen often had handed dishes through that window to the waitress behind the bar, but Helen hadn’t seen fit to take it down yet. Maybe she wouldn’t.
She seemed to be explaining something to the young guy as he kept looking down at where I knew the stove was and nodding, then looking back at her. They talked for a few moments and then he nodded again, and she walked away.
She came out into the restaurant and looked around, her eyes eventually falling on me. This time, there was no denying her smile. It was wide and bright, and it was aimed exactly at me.
“Hello?” Carter said and I realized he had been talking and I wasn’t paying any attention.
“What?” I asked.
“I said, things sure are different without Deacon around,” he said. “Of course, if he was, we would be coming out here for breakfast three times a week and getting fat on pancakes.”
“Yeah, what is that?” Aiden asked. “I’ve come twice in the early morning in the middle of the week, and he was here ordering giant containers of pancakes.”
“It’s tradition.” Carter laughed. “At least it was when Rebecca was here.”
“Ahh,” he said. “That makes a lot of sense.”
I felt a warm rush of blood across my cheeks. Deacon might have come here for Rebecca, but I was finding myself enjoying coming to Dina’s on a regular basis to catch a glimpse of the woman who, up until today, I thought hated my guts. Or at least thought I wasn’t worth her time.