Page 20 of Always Knew It Was You

“That’s insane. A shoot-out, from a smuggling ring? Who knew that sort of thing could happen in a town like this??”

“No place is safe,” the first voice says. “We’re not as bad as the city, thank God, but we got our own share of riffraff. Like that Nate Huntley fella. Turns out he was involved with the smugglers but even before that I knew that boy was no good from the start. Always stealing from us hardworking folk. And now look. He’s probably going to rot in prison where he belongs. They’re probably going to charge him with all the deaths from the shoot-out.

“They’ll charge Rick too,” his companion adds. “I didn’t see that one coming. He seemed like such a good man, always willing to help me out with cash here and there. Come to find out that he got the cash from smuggling and, thanks to him, a whole bunch of people are dead.”

Bile rises in my throat as another one says, “I thought it was only three of them that died.”

“The whole lot of them should have died. Everyone involved was a criminal. Who goes around kidnapping little girls? God only knows what they would have done to the poor young thing if her father hadn’t gotten there in time. That Declan Tudor has more balls than I thought. He ran in there and saved his daughter and fought off like a dozen of them. Didn’t give a damn that they had guns or anything.”

“You alright, hon?” The white-haired woman in front of me regards me carefully while her husband slowly pulls out a bunch of gift cards from his wallet one-by-one, shaking his head with each one. The older gentleman mutters to himself as he searches, trying to remember if he even brought the right card. He’s already searched through his other wallet and his pockets while I’ve had to suffer the conversation behind me.

I stiffen at the woman’s question and realize that my smile has gotten a little tight at the edges. I try to ease it up, but I’m not sure I succeed. “Yeah, I’m fine, ma’am. Thanks for asking.”

“I got it!” her husband suddenly announces, pulling a credit card free and holding it in the air. “I got it, Meryl.”

“Thank the Lord.” The woman rolls her eyes, but she still smiles affectionately at him as he inserts the card. Then once he’s done, she takes the card reader and hands it over to me. “That should do it.”

“Thanks.” The card reader prints out the receipt and I give it to them, along with their card. Then I head back for the counter but not before I hear, “That entire Huntley family are losers. All of them. We’d be better off running them out of town before they inevitably cause another mess.”

Stomach tight, I thankfully reach the counter without further incident. Still, as I go around it, I have to stop and take a few seconds to catch my breath.

Unfortunately, it’s right at that time that Emma’s grandpa walks out of the kitchen, adjusting his Chinaman’s hat on his head.

He takes one look at my face and frowns. “You alright, Lady Fishy?”

Despite feeling like shit, I smile at Grandpa’s nickname. He’s called me that ever since I was little and told him that I felt sorry for the fishies he was always catching. He teased me and asked if I wanted to be the queen of the fishies, but I said no. I only wanted to be a lady fishy. Thus, the nickname was born.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I tell him.

But despite living with his head in the clouds, Grandpa can provide an annoying perspective sometimes.

“Ah. You heard someone talking trash about your family again, didn’t you?”

I shake my head, but he says, “Don’t bother lying to me, Carly. I’ve known you since you were practically at my ankles. You got that look on your face like you’re embarrassed, but you shouldn’t be. If someone’s talking about your family, shake it off, because you’re nothing like them. You can’t pick the stock you came from, so no need to take on their failures as your own.”

“I know that,” I tell him. But knowing it and accepting it are two different things. Because I know when other people look at me sometimes, they don’t see me as Carly, distinct from my family. Despite a lifetime of clean-cut behavior and hiding my occasional hookups, they look at me like they’re just waiting for me to mess up in some way, to maybe hold up a grocery store at gunpoint or pop out a drug dealer’s baby or something equally heinous.

“Well, then remember it,” Grandpa says and he pats my shoulder. “The same way I’m not gonna beat myself up about what Rick has done, you shouldn’t feel responsible about your parents.” Pain flashes across Grandpa’s face whenever he mentions Rick. The two used to be best friends, as thick as thieves. And now Rick is sitting in jail, refusing visits from everyone, including Grandpa, Emma, and Lou, the owner of the restaurant across the street who Rick had a budding relationship with before he got locked away.

All three are pretty broken up about what happened, but they try to hide it for the most part. For me and Yule though, Rick was more so a friendly employer and so, while we’re still sad, we’re dealing with it better.

“Alright, I’m going fishing,” Grandpa says, shaking off his sudden melancholy. “Y’all got it good here, right?”

“Yup,” I say. Emma has hired three more servers and they’re all on shift this evening. Plus, Yule has a few assistants now helping him cook the meals.

All these changes happened within the span of a couple of months.

This time last year, we were struggling to get enough customers, but with the reopening of the Pink Hotel and headlines of the recent happenings, Laketown has been flooded with visitors. As one of the only good restaurants in town, the Tiki Bar is now constantly packed. It’s overwhelming sometimes, but ever since the new employees got trained, we coordinate seamlessly now.

Therefore, Grandpa doesn’t need to be here. “You can take off.”

“Alright. See you, Lady Fishy.” He whistles as he cuts his way through the crowd, pretty agile for a man who’s nearly eighty. He even had a heart attack early last year, but it doesn’t seem to have slowed him down even a little bit. He’s as agile and active as ever, taking frequent walks in the park and going fishing nearly every evening.

After he’s gone, I continue work for the next few hours, trying not to think about the conversation I just heard and trying not to feel like everyone is staring at me. It’s probably in my head, I know. It’s probably just me being self-conscious. But the discomfort still clings to me all night.

I also try not to think about the college problem, for which I have no solution for now. I’ll probably need to get a second job, maybe an accounting internship. But, although I’ve applied for a few, none have gotten back to me.

Because you apparently need experience to get experience.

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