Lovely Wild Read online

  She probably was the gossip.

  “Help you?” asked the guy behind the counter without even glancing at her.

  Great. Now she was such a nonperson even pimple-faced fry jockeys didn’t bother to check her out. She might as well get the upsized, triple-burger meal with bacon and some fried pie for dessert. So what if her face broke out and she gained, like, fifty pounds just by breathing the smell of it? Clearly she wasn’t worth paying attention to.

  Her mom was placing the order, one item at a time, carefully, the way she always did. It could be infuriating how she took her time, reading each item off the menu, but when Kendra glanced away from the plaques shellacked with newspaper articles featuring the Red Rabbit, the cashier didn’t look annoyed. If anything, he was even slower to ring up the items than her mom was saying them. Kendra sighed. So much for “fast” food.

  “Ellie? Ellie Pfautz?” the manager asked from behind the counter.

  The manager looked to be about four feet tall, with a stringy gray ponytail sprouting from under her baseball cap and—gross—a mouth full of crooked, jutting teeth. At least the ones that weren’t missing. Kendra looked behind her to see if the woman was talking to someone, but there was nobody there.

  “No, it can’t be.” The woman shook her head as she eyed Kendra. “But you look just like her.”

  “I’m not from around here,” Kendra said.

  “Kiki, what do you want to drink?” her mom asked, and the manager turned to her.

  “Oh, my God,” the manager said. “Oh, my God.”

  The restaurant hadn’t been full when they’d come in. Maybe eight or ten people in the booths, another three behind her mom in line. It seemed like every head turned at the sound of the manager’s voice. Kendra’s mom looked around, then at the woman.

  “I’m...sorry?”

  The manager looked back and forth from Kendra to her mom, then again. “Oh, my God. It’s...you look just like Ellie did,” she said to Kendra. “And that’s your mom, huh? You’re her mom?”

  “I’m her mother, yes.”

  Kendra’s stomach was twisting with unease—it was probably never a good thing to be singled out in a backwoods burger joint by the manager who sounded like she’d just accidentally put her fingers in the fryer. But her mom was calm, her voice cool and only a little curious. She’d clutched her purse closer to her side and reached for Ethan’s hand to pull him close, too, but that was the only sign she gave that anything might be wrong.

  “And you’re the one who...” The manager shook her head as if in disbelief. “Your mother, was she Ellie Pfautz?”

  Kendra’s mom took two steps back from the counter. Now everyone was definitely looking at them. Kendra’s mom saw it, too, her gaze sweeping the place, skating over Kendra, before settling back on the manager.

  “Yes?” She sounded uncertain.

  The manager moved closer, each step shuffling and awkward as she heaved the weight of her body from side to side. “I knew your mother.”

  Kendra’s mom made a small, helpless noise.

  “She worked here.” The woman had a sort of gleeful and horrified look on her face like she hadn’t been the one to fall into the hot oil, but was watching someone else take a dive. “Oh, my God.”

  If she said “oh, my God” one more time, Kendra thought she might scream. Even Ethan had stopped his bouncing. His hand linked through Mom’s fingers as he looked up at her, then at the manager. Kendra moved closer, too. It was crazy, like she and Ethan could somehow protect her. Kendra didn’t even know against what. Against something, though.

  The manager’s face split in a wide smile that tried to be friendly but came off grotesque. “You didn’t know?”

  “I didn’t know my mother,” Mom said in the voice that would’ve made Kendra or even Ethan stop talking. Even Daddy would’ve changed the subject. Mom didn’t get angry often, but when she did...

  “You didn’t know your mother?” The manager’s voice carried.

  Nobody was even pretending not to stare now.

  “No. I never knew her.” Mom gave the cashier a pointed look. “My change?”

  “Oh, sure.” He fumbled with the drawer.

  Mom took the couple dollars in change from the cashier and tucked them into her wallet, then gave Ethan and Kendra each a quarter from the coins before dumping the others loose into her purse. She always did that, and somehow that made all of this all right. It was normal, even if none of the rest of this was. Kendra clutched the coin in her fist, even though a quarter had long ago stopped being exciting. She rubbed the edge of it with her thumb. She didn’t want her burger or shake anymore.

  The drama hadn’t ended. The stupid manager wouldn’t quit. She heaved herself forward to lean on the counter. “You back in town? You in that house, huh? Ollie Barrett told us about you but I have to say, nobody believed it.”

  Mom nodded, her expression giving away nothing. She’d gone blank and far away. Kendra had never seen that face on her mother before. Anger, annoyance, boredom, polite disinterest. But never this blankness.

  It scared her.

  The manager laughed and looked over Kendra and Ethan. “And these are yours? Wow. Well, I guess you done all right for yourself. All things considered, I guess you were pretty lucky, then. I mean, nobody’d have thought, huh? I mean, Ellie had the baby right over there.” The manager pointed to the restroom doors. “Right in that ladies’ room! Can you believe it? And here you are, what, thirty-some years later? All growned up. Who’d have thunk it?”

  Kendra blinked rapidly. Ethan had been following their mom so closely that when she stopped, he bumped her. Their drinks shifted on the tray she held, slopping over her mom’s hands and onto the floor. Kendra pulled up so short her sneakers squeaked on the dirty tile floor.

  “Kiki, take this tray to a table, please. And grab some extra...extra...” Her mother drew in a breath, the only sign so far that she was at all upset. Her eyes darted back and forth, her face no longer blank. “Paper cloths. Paper hand wipers.”

  “Napkins?” Ethan offered.

  “Yes,” their mom bit out. Her voice sounded stilted and strained. It made Kendra’s stomach hurt worse. Ethan had backed up a step, his small face anxious. Kendra’s mind twisted the way her stomach had.

  Her mom had been born in the bathroom of a fast food restaurant? What kind of fuckery was that?

  “Nobody even knew she was pregnant,” the manager continued. “I heard she said she didn’t even know, but I want to know how anybody could possibly not be able to tell they’re pregnant?”

  “Maybe she was so fat she couldn’t tell,” Kendra said so loudly the sound of her voice shocked herself. “I mean, you could be pregnant and nobody would be able to tell by looking at you.”

  The noise of a dozen pairs of eyes rushing to fix themselves on any place but the manager was also the sound of Kendra’s mom’s sigh. “Kiki.”

  Kendra lifted her chin, jaw tight. She’d crossed her arms over her chest at some point, like she was daring that bitch behind the counter to say anything. But the manager, like most bullies, didn’t. She looked shocked, then angry and then, finally and much too late, in Kendra’s opinion, ashamed. She didn’t say anything, though, just turned and waddled to the back of the kitchen.

  The cashier let out a short, sharp snicker he quickly silenced when Kendra glared at him. Then he gave her an admiring, up-and-down glance that might’ve been flattering if he’d been cute—or she hadn’t just been a total bitch to a stranger in front of a restaurant full of hillbillies. She didn’t even smile at him, just turned to her mom and Ethan.

  “Can we take that stuff to go?”

  “Sure, honey.” Her mom sounded like her normal self again.

  In the car, her mom turned the music up loud and they sang along with stupid summer songs by lame fake rocker chicks who thought lyrics about dental hygiene mixed with liquor made them sound badass. Ethan made up some words of his own, most of them rhyming with or talking abo