Page 82 of Like A Moth To A Flame

I forced the cobbler into my mouth and chewed. It was good. It had always been good—the right amount of sweetness and the perfect temperature. I missed this, but my brain wouldn’t let me enjoy it. Swallowing hard, I looked over at her and sighed.

“I found something,” I started, pulling the journal toward me and sliding it her way. She took it up with a cocked eyebrow and narrowed eyes. “It’s one of my dad’s old journals. It mentioned something about someone and I’m just wondering…”

“You’re wondering if it’s true,” she asked, and I nodded.

She sighed, gently placing it down on the counter in front of her.

“Pumpkin,” she said, folding her arms in front of her. “Are you sure this is something you oughta be pokin’ around about?”

I took a deep breath, the weight of Mae’s words settling heavily on my shoulders. Was I sure? No, I wasn’t. But something inside me, some deep-rooted need for answers and closure, pushed me forward despite the doubts that gnawed at the edges of my mind.

“Mae, I… I can’t shake this feeling that someone in this town is hiding something. Something big. Maybe really big…” My voice trailed off, the unspoken questions hanging in the air between us.

Mae let out a soft laugh, and I jumped at the sound.

“Is that all? Sweetheart,” her aged eyes sparkled with mischief. “Everybody’s got secrets.”

I had been afraid she was gonna say that. Carefully, I leaned my fork against the side of my plate and opened the journal. Flipping to the page I’d marked, I turned it towards her and slid it across the counter. Sighing, Mae plucked a pair of wire-framed reading glasses dangling from a chain around her neck from her chest and slid them on. They perched on the end of her nose as she read, silently mouthing the words as she read them. I watched her eyes rove dark patterns across the page, going over some of it over and over again.

“P.J.,” she mouthed, snapping the book closed and looking up at me. Slowly, she stood up from the counter and made her way toward the swinging double doors. With a look back at me, she jerked her head, motioning for me to follow. Grabbing the journal and my cobbler, I rushed after her.

The back of the diner was a hustle and bustle of moving bodies and good smells, but with my emotions, my stomach flip-flopped.

She led me through the chaotic kitchen, with cooks shouting orders and dishes clattering all around us. Mae moved with purpose, hurrying me towards a nondescript black door leading to a break area out back. It was quiet and out of the way. No one would come back here unless they came through that door, and if they did, we’d hear them.

She took a seat at a small, weathered picnic table, and motioned for me to do the same. I did, sitting across from her with my book and my cobbler. As I waited, I piled another mouthful onto the fork.

“Listen here, darlin’,” Mae said with a sigh. There was something so maternal about her. “Ain’t nobody in this town that ain’t done somethin’ bad. Some of us aren’t who we said we are, and others got a dark past. You pick out anyone walking down this street and I will tell you they got lyin’, cheatin’, or maybe even blood on they hands. Sheriff Banner, your daddy. Hell, even me.”

I listened intently, the world around me seeming to fade away as Mae’s words echoed in my mind. Everyone in this small town had secrets, hidden truths that lurked beneath the surface. That much, I could believe. But my dad?

Her?

“Mae,” I began tentatively, sitting down my fork and pushing the plate of cobbler aside. “What do you know about P.J.? Why was my dad so worried? What did he do?”

Mae’s expression softened as she met my gaze, a mixture of pity and caution in her eyes. She leaned back on her bench, folding her weathered hands on the table before speaking.

“P.J. was… a troubled soul,” she started. “He had demons and lots of ‘em. He made mistakes, same as a lot of people do.”

“What kind of mistakes?” I asked desperately.

She was quiet for a long while, her eyes soft and narrowed behind her glasses as she studied the empty field behind me.

“Now, Vanessa Lynn,” she said, stuttering a sigh. “Why are you needin’ to know? You in some kind of trouble, baby?”

I returned to my cobbler, retrieving the fork and shoving the bite into my mouth to give myself time to think. How much do I tell her? Mae had never been a gossip. She’d always been more like a mother, or a badass grandma.

Could I trust her?

Why not?

If I could trust my stalker not to saw my head off, I could trust her with a small piece of my puzzle.

“Not trouble, exactly,” I said, and part of me wondered if that was the truth. He’d promised not to hurt me, and he hadn’t. That had to count for something, right? “Someone has just been hangin’ around outside my hou— I mean my dad’s house. I thought they were after some money he had stashed for a while, but it’s pretty clear they’re there for me.”

Mae stayed quiet for a long stretch, except for a hearty sigh that crossed her lips.

“Alright now, this ain’t public knowledge, so don’t go spoutin’ it,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself as if she’d caught a sudden cold chill. “When he first came to this town, he was real young. See, Parker ain’t from around here. He’s from up by Kansas City, the same place you moved to.”

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