Page 1 of Home Sweet Home

CHAPTERONE

“Oops. Sorry about that,”the woman said with a toothy smile, but the gleam in her eye said, “Isn’t my demon child so cute?” as her toddler crushed a saltine in her surprisingly strong fist.

Evie surveyed the carnage. Cracker crumbs were strewn everywhere—all over the table and across the floor underneath the high chair—and she would be getting on her hands and knees to sweep them up the second this family exited the premises.

“No worries.” Evie put on the most convincing fake smile she could muster at one in the afternoon. Annoying customers still left tips, sometimes. “Anything else I can get you?”

“Just the check,” the man said, eyes on her chest.

“Coming right up,” she said, turning before she’d even finished talking.

After dropping off the check, Evie leaned on the counter, and Kayla Martinez came up next to her, bumping her hip against Evie’s.

“What are the chances they feel guilty about their toddler going Hulk on me and leave a better tip?” Evie asked.

Kayla’s eyes narrowed toward the table as she tilted her head to the side. “The fanny packs say slim to none.”

“Great,” Evie muttered, just as the man slid his credit card into the pocket of the check holder, his gaze immediately finding Evie’s, like she wasn’t moving fast enough because she hadn’t come to grab it a nanosecond later. She peeled her arms off the counter, and her feet protested the added weight. “See you on the other side.”

The family paid, leaving a ten percent tip that stung more than a little. The door chimed behind them as they left, and then Joe’s Diner was empty except for a few stragglers sipping coffee or reading theCreek Water Chronicle.

Evie swept a rag across the peeling vinyl tabletop, gathering crumbs in the center before sinking to her knees to get the ones on the floor. The fatigue smashed up against her hard, like an unexpected wave in an otherwise calm ocean. The clock above the counter said it was only one thirty. It was Sunday, the worst day for tips—the after-church crowd wasn't especially generous even after spending hours in a pew with empty stomachs—and the worst day for her feet, which ached like she’d walked miles on bumpy cobblestone. Evie yawned as she shook the rag over the garbage can, sprinkling crumbs into the trash bag like tawny snowflakes.

“Please tell me you’re yawning because you were up until the wee hours of dawn with a hot date,” Kayla said. Bright-fuchsia lipstick coated her lips, the kind Evie always contemplated in the makeup aisle at CVS but placed back because on second thought she couldn’t pull it off.

“Couldn’t sleep.” The clock had read midnight when she’d given up on trying to make sense of the stack of bills on her kitchen table, but when she’d crawled under the covers of her bed, they’d followed her. Each time her eyes drifted shut, a bill she hadn’t paid had jolted her awake.

Being behind was not a new feeling. Since her mom had died, each day was a fight. Every sunrise without losing the house, her car, or her sanity was a victory. Lately, the pile had been multiplying, each new envelope deepening the hole.

Kayla held up the coffee pot, steam fogging up the glass. “Coffee, then.”

She poured two cups and slid onto a stool at the counter, and Evie joined her. It was the first time Evie had sat all day, and even wearing the insoles that had cost thirty dollars she didn’t have, she still ended every shift feeling like someone had repeatedly stabbed her feet with tiny needles.

“Dear God.” Evie closed her eyes, the relief immediate.

Kayla leaned back in her stool, head tilted toward the ceiling, hands clasped over her stomach. “I know. Better than sex.”

“Should twenty-four-year-olds feel this tired?” Evie asked. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m not secretly ninety.”

“It’s the job,” Kayla said, stretching her legs. “It ages you. My bunions are sprouting new baby bunions. My pedicurist definitely thinks I’m gross. She hasn’t said it, but I can see it in her eyes.”

Evie sipped the coffee. It didn’t make up for the hours of sleep she’d missed, but being on the other side of the morning rush helped.

The kitchen doors swung open as Joe Taylor pushed through them. “Sold out on your pies, Evie.”

Joe owned the diner. When Evie was eighteen, overwhelmed, and desperate for any job that would pay her, he’d handed her an apron and sent her out to her very first table. Evie hadn’t waitressed before, but the diner wasn’t unfamiliar to her. Before Evie worked at Joe’s, her mom, Amelia, had. Evie had spent half her childhood in a corner booth, doing homework or helping Josh with his, waiting for their mom’s shift to end. Joe brought them French fries and vanilla milkshakes while their mom zipped around, pouring cup after cup of coffee and shooting the shit with the regulars.

Every week for the years Evie had worked at the diner, Joe bought a few of Evie’s pies to sell. The pies weren’t life-changing money, but they were a buffer in a budget stretched so thin, it was one emergency away from snapping.

“You should have seen Marvin. Inhaled two slices of lemon, like five seconds after I set the plate down.” Kayla shuddered. “It was the most beautiful and disgusting thing I’ve ever had the displeasure of witnessing. Right up there with that video I saw of a horse giving birth.”

“I have so many questions, but I think it’s better if we just forget you ever said that,” Evie said. “And they’re just pies.”

Despite what she said, a burst of adrenaline rushed through her. Evie’s pies sold out every week, but the pride of baking something that was delicious enough to be a choking hazard always felt new.

“Hey, they’re special. Don’t forget that.” Joe grabbed a paper cup and poured in coffee before tightening on a lid. He glanced at his watch. “Heading to the bank. Nice work this morning, you two.” The door chimed as he left.

Evie drained the last of her coffee, dreading reaching the bottom of the mug. Her shift was over in two hours, and she’d decided that when she got home, a long, hot bubble bath was exactly what she needed.

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