Page 19 of The Hampton Beach Café 3
"I know," Alex said. "The thing is, well, I wanted to fill you in about your dad."
She froze. In all the fun and reminiscing, she had kind of forgotten about the entire reason he had come over so early––he had information for her.
"What?"
"Well, he had a bit of a reputation…" Alex said, "…a not nice one."
"How not nice? Like Serial Killer Not Nice or Get Off My Lawn You Dang Kids Not Nice?"
Instantly she regretted asking. Her dad wasn't a serial killer...right!?
Alex laughed. "More like a Don't Let Him Come Over and Fix The Boiler When I'm Not Home Honey kind of not nice. Apparently, he flirted with a lot of the married women in town."
That was better than being a serial killer,Frances reassured herself.
"Oh."
"Yeah, I haven't heard anything more than rumors. Keep in mind this was kind of twenty five years ago. Most people have forgotten or moved on by now. There are a few more old timers around who you’ll want to go and talk to about it––that is, if you want me to keep looking?"
She swallowed hard. Yeah, sure, of course she did...right?
"Yeah, please, I want to know."
TEN
The bell tinkled as the last customer opened the door to leave Café Bruno for the evening. "Thank you, guys! I'll be in tomorrow for that flan thing!"
The older woman stepped through the door and latched it tightly behind her.
"Did you have to say flan?" Alex said. "Do you know how hard flan is to make?"
He sauntered over to where she was sitting in the wingback she favored and leaned his hip against the side.
"I do not, but I have faith in you, master chef," Frances said lightly.
Her laptop was open on the table in front of her, and graphs and spreadsheets filled the screen.
"You going to be here a while?" Alex asked. When she nodded, he continued, "Okay, well, I'm going to clean up out back, then Vince has asked me to go through the sales for his stuff with him. He's trying to work out his tax stuff."
"Are you sure? Let me clean up. You go do taxes."
Frances tried to stand, but Alex firmly held her shoulder. "You sit. Maybe relax a little in between progressive forecasting compound overloads."
She sighed deeply at him. He knew that what he had just said was nonsense, so she didn't need to say anything.
Turning back to her computer as he wandered out to the kitchen, she wondered if she remembered what it felt like to just sit back and relax rather than be constantly thinking about what she was supposed to be doing next.
With a quick click, she minimized the Café intake tracker and opened up her personal browser. Without even thinking about it, she found herself on social media and scrolling down post after post of her friends being ridiculously aesthetic for no reason.
The itch was back, she could just type in two words and she could see what he'd been up to...
She glanced over the top of her laptop screen––Vince and Lucinda were flirting over the milkshake bar, even though neither of them would admit it. Alex was singing along to some song in his headphones as he cleaned up the kitchen. She could...you know...just...
Search: Malcolm Crawford
The tightness in her chest wound around itself as she watched the bar loading on the new page.
"Oh my God..." she gasped.
