Down Home and Deadly Read Free

Alice ,” she said softly. “But this is a fresh start for me. And the Down Home Diner is what I need.”
    My sister, the quintessential steel magnolia.
    Alice slumped. “Oh, it’s okay. You bought it. You should be able to call it whatever you want. I’m just an old fool.”
    Harvey sat down beside her and patted her hand. “This is a fresh start for us, too, Allie. Heaven knows we need one. And I think it’ll be easier for us to let go of the Down Home Diner than the Lake View Diner.”
    She nodded. “You might be right.”
    In unspoken agreement, we left them to their own conversation and walked out onto the front porch.
    Carly sat down at the small table that had started all of this and motioned me to sit across from her. She mussed her dark curls with her hand in a mannerism I recognized meant she had something on her mind.
    “What’s up?” I asked.
    She picked up a red checker and tapped it against the table absently. “Nothing really. Not yet , anyway.”
    “What does that mean? Is it about the diner? Or Elliott? ” Ever since I’d gotten engaged a few weeks ago, I’d been wondering about Carly and Elliott. Apparently that old adage about those in love wanting everyone to be in love was true.
    “You know Elliott and I are getting pretty serious.”
    I propped my elbows on the table and leaned toward her. “Yes?”
    She turned the checker up on its edge and rolled it from one hand to another across the wooden surface.
    “Carly! What’s going on?” Patience wasn’t my strong point. And she knew it.
    “I’m thinking about trying to find Travis,” she said in a rush.
    “Why?” I blurted out. Her ex-husband, Travis, had divorced her when she was pregnant with the twins and Zac was six. He’d run off with an emaciated model and eventually skipped the country to Mexico . We assumed he left the country to keep from paying child support. I’d loved my brother-in-law once, back before he betrayed our whole family and broke my sister’s heart. But going searching for him made about as much sense to me as trying to bring back a bad migraine once it was gone.
    She carefully placed the checker back in its original place on the board and looked up at me. “For closure for the kids. And for me, too, really. If we get married, Elliott would like to adopt them, and I’d like that , too. Even though I feel sure we could get it approved on grounds of abandonment, I’d rather have Travis’s permission.”
    I shook my head. “My gut is saying that finding Travis is a terrible idea, Carly. In this case, I can’t think of any better advice than to let sleeping dogs lie.” Or in Travis’s case, let lying dogs sleep, but I didn’t say that out loud. “What does Elliott think?”
    She bit her lower lip and pushed her curls back from her face. “He agrees with you.”
    I didn’t know what to say. Nobody likes to feel ganged up on. “So how’s the hiring process going?”
    She grimaced to let me know she knew what I was doing, but picked up the new subject. “Pretty good. I kept Arnie to wash dishes but hired a new guy, too. Same with the cook. Of course , most of the new staff isn’t starting until after the g rand o pening , since Harvey and Alice are going to help out with that. Hard to believe those two were doing half the cooking and dishwashing themselves.”
    I idly moved a black checker. “They don’t have kids,” I reminded her. “The twins and Zac would be disappointed if you turned into a workaholic.”
    She laughed and slid a red checker forward one space. “The twins might be. But now that he’s a senior, Zac thinks he doesn’t need his mama anymore.”
    “Is he going to work here after school?” I moved another checker.
    She nodded as she responded with a move of her own. “I’ll have some part - time hours for him. Most of the waitresses stayed on, though. And I hired Marco as a waiter.”
    I smiled. “Oh good. He always impressed me with his work ethic at the gym . He’s