Page 13 of Always Be My Baby

“This is horrible,” Lee whispered without tearing her eyes away from the massive mess. In reality, things could’ve been worse. Pipes could’ve burst closer to the bistro causing floodinginsidethe restaurant. I’d say we lucked out with only the parking lot.

I shrugged. Despite that, she was right. It did look pretty bad… and for someone who’d put her whole life into her business, who was I to downplay the severity? But as I didn’t want her sucked down into that pit of worry, I offered what comfort I could. “We’ll get it cleared.”

She looked so defeated.

“You want to go home?” I asked, hopeful, although I figured I already knew her response.

“Let’s go in the restaurant for a little bit,” she answered. I sighed, giving her an indulgent smile, then reached over to squeeze her hand. It would’ve been nice to be wrong this one time, but I knew my Lee. I probably knew her better than she knew herself most days.

We parked in the metered parking in front of The Bell Jar. The meters accepted change and cards. Since I didn’t know how long we’d be stuck here, I used my card to pay because I really didn’t want to deal with a parking ticket. And swiping a card was so much faster. Today faster ended up being a necessity considering the temperature had officially dropped to ‘cold as Jack Frost’s low-hangers’ outside. We speed walked up to the front door and Lee, fumbling with the key thanks to chilled fingers, unlocked it, letting us in.

“Lena, you here?” Lee called out. The heated dining room welcomed us like an old friend until I began to get feeling back in my nose, cheeks and ears. They burned, prickling while we thawed out and I couldn’t help the muttered curse. We could’ve been at home warming ourselves by the fire.You love Lee, Girard. You love her.The prickling hurt enough that I had to remind myself. Loving Lee meant accepting her idiosyncrasies.

A few moments later, Lena emerged from the kitchen, shaking her head while snickering at us. “Wondered how long it would take for you to show. I was in the back dealing with the ordering for that party coming up.”

“What’s the word from the county?”

“Because the pipe burst on county-owned land, they’re paying for the repair of the blacktop and will be using county salt trucks to clear the parking lot. It won’t cost you anything.”

“See?” I told Lee. “We didn’t have to come here.”

Still, she wouldn’t let us leave. Lee said she didn’t want to fall behind with work, but she went outside to check on the pipe progress every five minutes. She didn’t even pretend to be up to something else instead. We gave Lena the go ahead to leave, but she insisted that if Lee stayed, then she stayed because of being in the middle of training.

With nothing else to do, I went into the kitchen to whip us up food. I wasn’t doing inventory today. The trucks couldn’t get in to do the drop off. That meant I couldn’t do the intake. Part of my job included inventorying the food, Lee’s and now Lena’s involved inventorying the non-food items brought into the restaurant. It was one of the tasks Lena had started before we’d arrived.

We enjoyed broccoli and cheddar cheese soup in bread bowls. The conversation somewhat lolled thanks to Lee’s one-track mind. Really, there was only so much speculation on how long it might take the county to finish the cleanup a person could take. But again, until she truly trusted that there was more to life than work, she left me with only one choice, to let her vent and smile while doing it.

After lunch, because there was nothing else to even partially distract Lee, she and Lena finished all the day’s responsibilities early on. Then the three of us spent the afternoon playing cards, every so often pausing for Lee to go check on the progress outside.

At around 6:30, Lena and I went running to the door when we heard Lee screech, “What?”

“What’s wrong, babe?” I asked, sliding out the door without a coat or anything. The chill hit like a brick wall with a strong wind that felt like liquid nitrogen touching my skin.

“They’re leaving,” she said not really to me but more of an observation in general as she watched them pack up their tools. Suddenly she jerked her head back, coming out of her confused daze, and shouted over to the men heading for their vans. “You can’t leave,” she demanded. “Half my parking lot’s dug up and it’s all under a foot of ice.”

“We’ll have someone here tomorrow to clear the lot. Then we’ll begin repairs on the blacktop as soon as it's cleared,” the older man in the Day-Glo yellow vest and matching hardhat which covered a black knitted cap he kept pulled down over his ears, who seemed to be in charge, called back.

“If people can’t park, we can’t open.” Her tone vacillated between pissed off and desperation. Desperation was rarely an emotion she let others witness. As far as I knew, I was the only one which meant this unexpected day off bothered her more than I would’ve expected it to. Although, I had no idea why I didn’t expect it. Lee took her responsibilities seriously, to the point that she constantly carried them around on her shoulders, weighing her down—exactly why training Lena, Serena and Sawyer was so important. She needed to share that weight with the rest of us. She needed to understand that she no longer needed to lug the lives of her family and employees around every moment of the day.

I got it, I did. With her childhood, with the way her brother and sister needed her to step up and take responsibility at such a young age because she’d been cursed with damn awful parents. Not just anyone would’ve had the courage or fortitude to take on that kind of heavy burden to keep her family together. But now she needed to let that go. The time had come for Lena and I to convince her to let us carryherburdens.

The man simply shrugged while climbing into one of the vans. Lee looked about two seconds away from her head exploding.

I tugged on her sweater. “Let’s go in, sweetheart. We’ll end up hypothermic if we stay out here any longer without coats.”

Lee, for her part, kept her protests internal rather than giving me crap when she knew I was right.

“Shutting down for two days is going to take a bite out of my bottom line.”

Well, we’d faced better news before, but it was hardly the end of the world. “We’ll get through it. It’s only two days—hopefully.”

“Two days of no profits, one and a half days of pay for the employees.”

Lena gasped.

“You’re not paying the employees for not working,” I protested.

“The hell I’m not. They have bills to pay. I can’t stiff them.”

---