The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [67]
“Children,” Edward said dismissively.
“I was one of those children once,” Bean pouted.
“But you’re not now, are you?” he asked. “You’re a woman.” His fingers still wrapped around the bowl of his glass, he brushed the back of his hand over her collarbone, his eyes locked with hers.
And Bean, if she had ever been planning to fight, surrendered.
Cordy’s first shift at the Beanery was quiet, as it would be in the summer. If you have never been in a college town in the summer, it is hard to explain. It’s a small town with a lot of large, empty buildings, and people knocking around between them like lost billiard balls. During the year it explodes, but in the summer there is nothing but time stretching thick and slow.
So it was just Cordy and her trainer, a junior at Barnwell who had stayed over the summer because his girlfriend had a work-study job on campus. To be honest, he could have run the Beanery just fine on his own. But he patiently walked her around and showed her the menu, and allowed her to inhale the rich scent of the coffee he made, and then banished her to the sandwich counter. Not that it felt like a banishment, she thought, the slick crust of the bread against her freshly washed hands as she spread egg salad between the slices, sneaking in some chopped dill to sharpen the quiet thickness of the eggs and the rich bread. She tucked the halves of the sandwich into a foam clamshell, closing it with a satisfying squeak, and handed it to the customer, who left, nudging the door open with his hip. When she had finished, she swept the stray crumbs into the well at the edge of the counter.
“It’s good you’re starting now,” Ian told her. “Because during the year, it’s crazy like woah.”
Cordy nodded. This seemed to be stating the obvious. Would she be here during the year? She wiped her hands on her apron, delicately festooned with edgings of powdered sugar from the lemon bars she had been slicing, and tried to imagine herself, her belly swollen and full, standing in front of piles of college students, their cheeks fresh from winter cold, the air swirling with the smell of stubbed-out cigarettes and the sound of books slamming down on tables and counters.
The bell at the front jingled. “Look sharp,” Ian said, motioning with his spiky hair toward the door. “It’s the ladies who lunch.” A series of maternal chortles swept in with a rush of humid air, and a gaggle of college employees, mostly department secretaries enjoying the quiet laze of summer, came up to the counter.
“Cordelia? Is that you?” Cordy turned, self-consciously adjusting the chopsticks holding her hair back in a spiky knot. The leader of the pack, as it were, Georgia O’Connell, was smiling at her expectantly. Mrs. O’Connell had worked as the secretary of the English department for as long as Cordy could remember. When we were little, our mother had taken us on walks to meet our father for lunch in the student union, and Mrs. O’Connell had let us each have a piece of candy from the omnipresent jar on her desk—butterscotch, or sometimes root-beer-flavored drops that released a sickly syrup when we bit into them.
“Mrs. O!” Cordy said, and leaned across the counter for a hug, which left a smear of powdered sugar on the woman’s clean pink shirt, like frost on raspberries. “What are you doing here?”
“Working, can’t you tell?” Her face curved into rich wrinkles that pushed together as she smiled. “More to the point, what are you doing here?”
Ah, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, that. Cordy shrugged, cast a winsome smile at Mrs. O. “You know, my mom and everything.”
“Of course.” Mrs. O’s smile fell away, and she nodded seriously. “How is she?”
“Okay, I guess. Still on the pain medication, so she’s kind of out of it. But we’re thinking we could sell some of it aftermarket,