Perchance to Be

Chapter One: In Which Our Heroine Discovers a Key (But Doesn't Know It)

The beginning of summer brought two certainties: long mornings in Éclair de Lune, and the tale of Gentleman Ben.

“Why?” Tamsin whined, slumping into her chair at the cash register. “You tell it every year. I hate this story.”

“Maybe so, but Doyle doesn’t.” Mama Lune ruffled the five-year-old’s hair. It was too long for the Texas heat but he had insisted, as he had the summer before, on not cutting it. The longer locks stuck to the back of his small, sweaty neck. “You like the story of Gentleman Ben, don’t you?”

“Yes!” Doyle giggled as Mama Lune tickled his belly. He toppled onto the floor, flopping in the flour that had settled in the cracks along the tile.

Tamsin narrowed her eyes and fought the grin that pulled at her lips. A dusting of white clung to coarse fabric of Doyle’s black polo shirt.

“Now,” Mama Lune said, lifting Doyle into her arms and placing him on top of the display case. Only a handful of doughnuts remained, with no signs of the rare afternoon customers, but even still, Tamsin was irked by her mother’s lapse in basic food service hygiene. “Where was I?” 

“Gentleman Ben?” Tamsin offered, though she didn’t know why. 

“Oh right!” Mama Lune feigned revelation. “Well, then, Gentleman Ben.”

Please don’t recite the ballad, Tamsin pled, crossing her arms over her chest. 

“Gentleman Ben is my great-great-great Grandfather,” Mama Lune said. “He lived a long time ago – during and after the Civil War!”

“Whoa!” Doyle said, clapping slightly.

“He roamed the west, stealing and killing like bad men do.” Mama Lune’s eyes went dark and her mouth fell into a straight line. “And somewhere along the way, he found the pocket-watch. Do you remember the pocket-watch, Doyle?” 

His eyes gleamed, lips slightly parted, as he shook his head.

“It was a simple pocket-watch, made of soft gold and engraved with the outline of a soaring raven.” Mama Lune turned to Tamsin then. “No one knows where he got it, or what the raven means, but everyone remembers the pocket-watch.”

Out of respect for her mother, Tamsin suppressed a dramatic eye-roll. 

“In the fall of 1870, Gentleman Ben met my great-great-great Grandmother Mary,” Mama Lune continued. “He gave her the pocket-watch instead of a wedding ring, and the rest is history.”

“And now you have the pocket-watch?” Tamsin prompted. 

“It was lost some time ago,” Mama Lune replied, casually flicking her hand in the air.

Tamsin sighed, dismissed for yet another summer. The nearby church bells sung of two.

“It’s time to close up,” she murmured, pushing away from the register. 

“Wanna help Mama with the sweeping, little Doyle?” 

“Yeah!”

Mama Lune and Doyle disappeared behind the partial wall separating the display case from the deep fryer and ingredient storage. Once Tamsin was in the lobby, Mama Lune and Doyle began to sing the ballad that Tamsin begrudgingly knew by heart.

“…the fair and nefarious Gentleman Ben of the old American lore!” 

Doyle’s laughter echoed through the shop, bouncing off the glass as Tamsin bolted the front door and turned off the blinking “OPEN” sign. Her skin itched as the sound crescendoed, filling her ears and swallowing her up.