Page 15 of Partridge in a Bear Tree

"Amazing. What's good here?" Penny waved a hand, indicating the diner, and Ashley took a moment to look around like it was a place new to her.

It wasnotan elegant space, or even a charmingly retro one. Larry's Diner had been in Renaissance as long as anybody could remember, and the decor hadn't really been updated since the seventies. Inexpensive brown beadboard panelling covered the lower half of the walls, with scarring where olive green vinyl booths had come loose and gotten scraped against them. More than one of those booth seats had been repaired with duct tape. The tables were metal-based, with faintly yellowed laminate tops that sported paper placemats that doubled as the menus. The lighting was dim, especially in winter when the nights closed in early, although for the moment it was as bright as it got, with sunlight bouncing off the snow outside and reflecting through the windows. The whole place looked like a hole in the wall. Itwasa hole in the wall.

Ashley looked back at Penny and smiled. "Everything. Literally everything is good here. Not just good. Homemade levels of good. I have a real weakness for the chicken-fried steak and eggs, personally, but you can't go wrong with anything on the menu."

"You know what, Bill said the same thing when he brought us here for dinner before our first gig at the pub, and the hot wings I got were fantastic, but I thought maybe I'd lucked out. Two locals telling me the same thing, though. Now I'm starting to trust it, and also starting to understand why a place that looks like the last half of last century forgot about it is still open and doing good business."

"It does look like that, doesn't it? I'm used to it, but yeah. Whatever you order will be good." A waiter came by as Ashley finished speaking, and although the guy, in his fifties, looked as worn out and used up as the diner itself did, he smiled.

"That's what we like to hear. We doing breakfast or lunch, ladies?"

Penny said, "Yes," and ordered the Big Blue, which involved buttermilk pancakes with blueberries, blueberry yogurt, hash browns, eggs, bacon, and a blueberry 'smoothie' that Ashley knew was basically a milkshake. When the meal arrived a few minutes later, Penny stared at the hash browns in dismay. "They're blue."

Ashley, who had been waiting for that, grinned. "You did order a breakfast called 'Big Blue.'"

"But the potatoes are blue!"

"They're some kind of Peruvian potato," Ashley said, still grinning. "Aren't they cool?"

"They'reblue!" Penny took an incredibly cautious bite and managed to look even more dismayed. "And they taste exactly like potatoes. They're delicious. Okay, somebody call the chef, this is amazing. What the heck!" She pointed her fork at Ashley. "Are you using mysterious foods to distract me from asking you to tell me about yourself? It's not working, if you are."

"I don't know that there's all that much to tell," Ashley protested. "I grew up in Renaissance, or up in the mountains just above it, have nine thousand cousins and a business degree, and I run a pub."

And you turn into a bear,her bear concluded.

Yes, but I can't say that over brunch!

Why not?The bear sounded affronted.She's your mate. She'll believe you.

She really won't,Ashley promised.It's too weird."So that's boring me," she said, to drown out the bear. "What about you?"

"I grew up in Denver, decided I wanted to be Animal when I was like five years old, pestered my parents into buying me a drum kit, and am now living the dream as the drummer for the Sixty Pix. Animal," she repeated when Ashley blinked at her in confusion. "From the Muppets."

Ashley laughed out loud, taken completely by surprise. "Oh. That's wonderful. Really?"

"Really. All that energy and noise. It was great. I also have a day job as a housecleaner," Penny added. "Because it turns out you can't really bank on being a rock star. No, really," she said to Ashley's new round of surprise. "I'm an independent contractor, so I can make my own hours, which means not scheduling myself when we've got a gig. And I'm really good at it. I took a course in crime scene cleanup."

Ashley stopped with a forkful of food halfway to her mouth. "Are you kidding?"

"I am not kidding. I decided I didn't want to do actual crime scene cleanup because trauma, but it was really interesting and there's basically nothing I can't clean now."

"You are amuchmore interesting person than I am," Ashley said aloud, and, to her bear,I know fate is never wrong but there's no way she'll want to stay with someone like me. I'm completely ordinary.

"Eh." Penny shrugged. "Different. I can clean a crime scene and bang a drum. I could not, however, run a pub or get a business degree."

"That seems unlikely!"

Penny smiled. "I'm not great at sitting down and studying unless I can either make a lot of noise while I'm doing it, or it's something new and fascinating with basically every turn of the page."

Ashley tilted her head, cautiously curious. "ADHD? You don't have to answer, obviously, I'm just being nosy."

Penny lifted two fingers close together. "Lil' bit, yeah. I'm pretty focused as long as I remember my meds, but I tell you what, expecting people who struggle with routine to take two pills a day to keep their heads on straight is a big ask. But I think it's part of why I'm great in an emergency. It's a whole new situation with constant challenges that is resolved in a relatively short period of time! I'm great at that! But I get bored and lose interest if it turns into an ongoing series of basically repetitive challenges."

"Like running a pub."

The redhead touched a fingertip to her nose. "Exactly. So, see? Different, that's all, not more or less interesting. Besides, I think you are interesting. Wrangling all those cousins, running that pub, throwing beers on women to get their attention…"

Ashley laughed and hid her face in her hands. "Not my usual approach."

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