Renewal; A Tale of Katrina's Kitchen

Counting Time

(Author's note: I'm not completely satisfied with this chapter, but it isn't getting any better.  So here it is, hopefully I can move on and take care of this at a later date.)

Katie washed rinsed her mouth, threw cold water at her face, the mirror reflected her horror. Her brown eyes were red rimmed from broken sleep, and her frantic visit to the toilet. The tightly curled mop she fought each morning was even more disarranged than usual. When had those lines around her eyes showed up? Katie shook her head at the woman in the mirror. Time to figure out how she was going to handle this challenge.

The final nightmare had brought the pieces together.  The nice young man and pretty woman had been celebrating their engagement.  How much later had the attack happened,and why? She made her way back to her chair, reached for the notebook and  wrote the latest details. Her emotions rode in waves, along with her slowly settling stomach. She glanced at the clock,  3:00 am.  She put the notes on the table and began her morning routine.

After she had showered and dressed, she stood looking out the window onto Main Street.  Was she ready for this? A shiver of fear worked its way through her already unsettled belly. With a sigh, she grabbed her keys and made her way downstairs to start her day.

After finishing the kitchen prep, she made a quick trip around the dining area, poured a cup of fresh coffee and started the next pot. Katie enjoyed the last few minutes of quiet before it was time to turn the lights on and unlock the front door. 

Shortly after opening, the residents of Renewal would start arriving, just barely beaten by the hired help.  They would be joined by the commuters on their way to their respective employment. 

The quiet would be broken by flirtatious banter between the morning waitress, Tara, and the mostly male customers grabbing breakfast and coffee. Tara was a busty red head, who'd found her way to Renewal several years prior. Katie had helped her with a telepathy problem.

Katie manned the grill for the first hour, until Duff showed up to take over.  She’d offered to let him come in the hour earlier, but he said 5:00 am was not a good time for him to be around people. Someday, she’d find out his story.  His ID said he was thirty two, but his early gray made him seem more like fifty plus.  He was a damned competent grill cook though, and worked anytime she needed as long as it wasn’t before 6:00 am.

About the same time Ben Marshall sometimes remembered to show up for dish duty.  Sometimes not.  Katie tried to like the boy, but he didn’t put forth much effort.  She would probably have to replace him soon.  It wasn’t easy to find someone that wanted to wash dishes five days a week.  Especially since summer was over and the few teens had returned to school.  Ben was a drop out.  He didn’t have any more ambition for school than he had for work.

Usually Katie didn't mind dish duty, but she wanted to spend some time on her laptop searching for information, mythic or otherwise on werewolves, shape shifters, or anything else that resembled the creature in her dreams.  She would also see if she could find a reference to a death attributed to a wild animal where there shouldn’t have been one.

Ben showed up about 6:20, looking like he hadn’t been to bed yet.  He mumbled an insincere apology, fiddled around with his apron and ball cap for ten minutes, then filled a soda before finally starting work. Now she was sure the kitchen was running smoothly, Katie spent a few minutes in the dining room chatting with the regulars then discreetly slid into her office.  She had a couple of hours to search the Internet for leads. She would have liked to close the door, but she knew she needed to keep an ear on her “in real life” business, as Gram had called it.

It only took an hour for Katie to become frustrated with her search for information on werewolves. Most of what she found was reference to movies, good, bad and very bad.  The mythologies contradicted each other on every point.  And she didn’t have the focus to search for death by monster.

She wandered back to the dining room to refill her coffee cup.  The locals had begun to show up in earnest now that the commuters had left.  

Randall Harrison, the owner of the hardware store, stopped in for his usual.  She greeted him with a smile, and as usual received a nod of acknowledgment, without smile.  Katie didn’t think she’d heard him speak more than his order for years.  Before his wife died, he’d been a different person. Sometimes she wished she could counsel people like Randall, with normal problems.  

Sheriff Denny Clark sat at the counter reading one of the orphaned newspapers left from an earlier customer.  He took a minute to return her greeting before returning to the funny pages.

Missy McKay, the town’s eccentric old lady, and owner of a huge house at the edge of town, called out to Katie.  Missy was ageless.  Katie remembered her doing housework and a little kitchen work in the diner for Gram.  Now she made ends meet by renting rooms in the old farm house the kids in town called the haunted mansion.

Katie carried a coffee pot with her to refill Missy’s cup.

“And how are you today, Missy McKay?”

The woman looked Katie up and down a moment before answering, “I’m better slept than you I believe, Katrina Crowe.”

Katie chuckled, “I look that bad, do I?”

“Not bad, child, just tired.  Coffee may keep you moving, but it won’t keep the circles away from your eyes.”

“I’ve already got a nap planned this afternoon. That’s also why I opted to close on Sunday.  That, and no one shows up to eat on Sunday.  After church, they all have big dinners at home.  Took me a while to get that growing up in the city.”

“Your mama should have visited with you more often.  You’da figured it out faster if you growed up around here. It’s too bad your mama left town, your Gram could have used the help.”  Missy looked sidelong at Katie, making her wonder, not for the first time, how much the old woman knew about Gram’s “work”.