Page 23 of The Hampton Beach Café 4
“That's intense. How did you feel about that?” Alex asked quietly.
“I mean…I felt really sad for my mom. I can't even imagine how spending decades consumed by a kind of pointless search felt,” she replied, the pain she felt for her mom evident in her voice.
“Oh, wow,” Alex said sadly. “Yeah, that is a big chunk of time for her to live that way.”
“Yeah,” Frances said. “That’s not the weirdest part, though. My friend from LA sent me this weird phone sanitizer thing. It uses UV light, right? Well, I put it down next to the stack of letters, and I noticed that they were glowing…the letters were never blank, Alex.”
She looked over at him, feeling the tears welling up.
“Oh…well, I mean, that’s good, isn’t it?”
He really was trying so hard…
“I can only read some of the words. The UV ink hasn’t exactly fared particularly well in twenty years…” she said bitterly, “…and honestly…the bits I can read are kind of upsetting.”
They had arrived at the lab where the DNA test results were waiting inside to be picked up. Alex pulled the car over smoothly and locked the brake in place. Turning to look at her, she could see that his expression was confused, and she regretted bringing it up.
“Tell me?” Alex said.
The softness in his voice was the final straw. He wasn’t instructing her to tell him—he was asking.
“It’s mostly him saying I shouldn't believe what people say about him, he’s persecuted, and people hate him for no reason…it’s really weird. I had never heard him talk like that before. You know, I was so mad at my mom for not showing me those letters…but now I’m glad she didn’t. I wouldn't have understood back then. I mean, I barely understand them now.”
He knows when to be quiet, Frances realized as he extended his arm and drew her towards him. She let herself be pulled into a reassuring hug, enjoying the sensation of his hand running up and down her arm.
“And now…” she continued, “…there’s this result in there, and I don’t even know if I want to know anymore. If he is her father, why would I do that to Kennedy? I don’t think she likes her dad very much, but she hates mine…”
“It’d be a great payback for everything she ever did in high school,” Alex said, jokingly.
She laughed, but it felt out of place, and she cut herself short. Alex squeezed her shoulders as he continued.
“You don't have to do this right this very second,” he said softly. “We could go for a coffee, some cake, and maybe visit an art gallery before our lunch with Hayley. And then, if you want, we can come back and pick up the results.”
Frances felt a wave of gratitude towards her friend crash over her. She hadn’t really realized how much she had been dreading this moment. She hated to admit it even to herself, but the idea of postponing it was a welcome relief.
“That honestly sounds like an amazing idea,” she said, her voice filled with relief. “I actually don't think I could handle seeing the results right now.”
Alex squeezed her shoulder again and started the engine. They drove around in silence while Frances searched review sites for an interesting nearby coffee shop. When they finally found one, Alex did all the talking. He chatted about Vincent’s latest art project, and Frances found herself relaxing as the tension in her body eased as she listened to Alex recount their friend’s epic battle with a blow torch.
FOURTEEN
Frances stood at the open door of Café Bruno, flipping through a stack of papers in her hands. She knew that she looked frazzled, and her eyes stung as she squinted and tried to make sense of the jargon in the documents. The cool morning breeze rushed past her into the café––she loved airing the place out every morning to really reinvigorate the space.
It was barely past six, and she knew she needed to get everything set up and ready to go for the early risers of Hampton Beach, but the stack of red tape she had printed out had haunted her for days.
Better, she supposed, than being haunted by the test results she hadn’t been brave enough to look at yet.
“Kennedy,” she said, startled to see the councilwoman approaching.
“I'm so glad you could make it. I've been trying to sort through all of this paperwork, but it's just overwhelming.”
Kennedy rolled her eyes as she pushed past her and made her way to the counter.
“Well, you're going to have to get used to it if you want to renovate the garden area of the café,” she said, standing in front of the register. “You going to get me a coffee or what?”
Oh, so this version of Kennedy was back again—and just in time for her to have a deciding role in the plans for the café.
How wonderful.
