Page 14 of The Hampton Beach Café 4
As the letter landed next to the phone sanitizer, she stared in wonder—words appeared in patchy lines across the page.
Blinking hard, she leaned in close.
“No way…” she whispered as she made out a few of the words.
Daughter…your mother…don’t hate me…lies…I’m sorry
What the heck is happening? Am I losing my mind?
Frances tried to calm her breathing down as she tried to make out more of the words. Some were entirely faded away with age when the memory formed in the back of her mind.
She saw her dad sitting at the kitchen table when she was home from school with chicken pox—it was the same day he showed her the trick with the lemon juice to make invisible ink. He had also shown her an expensive pen from work that could only be seen under a black light.
A UV light, like the one in her phone sanitizer.
Most of the ink had faded away over the twenty years since they’d been written, but they were there—her dad’s letters.
Suddenly she wasn’t tired anymore.
EIGHT
“You’ve been weird all week,” Alex said, catching her by the wrist as she tried to walk past him into the kitchen.
“What?” she said. “No, I haven’t!”
“Don’t do that,” he said gently. “I can always tell when you’re putting your hostess voice on. The door thing freaked you out, didn’t it?”
Well…he wasn’t wrong. She hadn’t even told him about the note, and he was this concerned about it. She glanced around—the café was empty now. They had officially closed twenty minutes ago.
“Come on, I’ll make me a coffee, but I feel like you should have something decaf.”
“Fine.”
Alex moved to the machine and made small talk as he pulled his own espresso shot and mixed up a Chai latte from a tub of powder sitting next to the coffee set up.
What had he called it—her hostess voice? She tried to think back to her exact words and how she had said it…
Oh yeah, that was definitely her hostess voice. She used it often when she ran extensive Christmas dinners and charity events for her and Malcolm over the years, chairing board meetings, and leading conference discussions.
He gestured to the spot in the window where Frances always felt coziest—he was trying to make her comfortable in every way he could, she realized.
Frances sat nervously across from Alex at the small table. She fidgeted with her hands as she debated whether or not to actually share her thoughts with him—and how much she should include. As she looked over at him, she mulled over the fact that Alex was very good at looking concerned and handsome.
Wait? Handsome? Where had that come from? He was good looking, sure, but…Oh no, he was doing the furrowed brow look he used instead of pleading with her to do something—the same look that had gotten them in so much trouble as teens.
Still—she wasn't sure how he would react to what she had to say.
“So, come on then, what's on your mind?” Alex asked, taking a sip of his coffee.
Frances took a deep breath before speaking.
“I think Kennedy might be my biological sister,” she said, looking down at her hands.
Well, she hadn’t meant to be quite that…blunt about it.
Alex's eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
