Page 23 of January

“You don’t want to wait with your sister?”

“She’s fine on her own. Honestly, sometimes she’s best on her own.” She turned to Jolie. “Can you get me a coffee?”

“Oh, it’s chicory coffee there. Thought I should warn you,” Melinda said.

“She knows. She’s weird. She actually loves it.”

“You love chicory coffee? Most people haven’t even heard of it.” Melinda smiled at Kyle.

“I had it years ago for the first time and liked it, yeah. I don’t usually buy it for myself or anything, but down here, it’s all over the place, including at our hotel, so I’ve been drinking it by the gallon.”

Melinda’s smile grew before it faded, while Jolie bounced on her feet, indicating that she was anxious to go.

“Go for it. I’ll see you back at the hotel. Then, we’ll goto the house,” Kyle said to her sister.

“Cool. Melinda, thank you. This was great. I really appreciate it.”

Jolie turned to walk toward the line, and Melinda and Kyle stood there, facing one another.

“So, chicory coffee?” Melinda began.

Yeah… Small talk was definitely something neither of them excelled at.

“Yes, I like it.”

“And you speak French?”

“Yes.”

“I might have to ask you to say something to me in French, then,” Melinda said.

“Do you not hear enough of it around here?”

“Depends on the day. And I doubt Creole French is the French you were taught.”

“True,” Kyle replied. “But I’d love to learn that, too. I know enough Spanish to get by, and I can speak some Italian and Portuguese – that’s mostly because they’re all Romance languages, so they have similarities – but I love learning dialects, too.”

“That’s pretty impressive,” Melinda said. “Should we go?” She motioned in the direction of the stairs.

“Yeah, I don’t want you to be late.”

They started down the stairs and continued walking across the street when there was a lull in traffic.

“So, how did you end up deciding to become a translator?”

“Honestly, it’s kind of weird, maybe. I don’t know. My mom would randomly say words around the house that I didn’t understand when I was a kid. She’d speak a full English sentence with one or two different words in it, and I had no idea what they meant. Eventually, she told me they were French, and I liked how they sounded, so when it was time to pick a foreign language in high school, I chose French. I loved it and kept going.”

“So, she picked it up from your grandmother?”

“Yes, but she’d never admit it. From what my dad has told me, my grandmother spoke it fluently. Her parents came down here from Quebec before she was born, and she taught my mom some of it, but it seems like my rebellious mother might have resisted learning too much, and she left here when she was sixteen and pregnant with me, so I don’t know how much of it truly stuck.”

“Wow. Sixteen and pregnant?” Melinda said. “I cannot imagine. I’m twenty-five now, and I’m making ends meet okay, but having a kid to support while being a teenager? That’s a lot.”

“She did the best she could, I guess. Then, three years later, Jolie came along, and things were good for a while. When she and my dad split up, though, my mom kind of went off the rails. I think she’s been there ever since. Something happened between her and my grandmother, too, but she won’t tell us about it, so I came down here to see if I could figure it out for myself.”

“The family mystery?” Melinda asked as they walked by the grassy square.

“Does every family have one?” Kyle asked her.

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