Free Liberty or Death by Kate Flora Page B

people. Particularly when those other people were related to the cause of all my problems. If it hadn't been for Jed Harding and his damned shotgun, Andre wouldn't have been kidnapped and I wouldn't be here. I'd be on my honeymoon. Smiling the smile I don't use enough. Sleeping—actually sleeping, not just lying in a horizontal position waiting for dawn to come—in Andre's arms. These were the last people I wanted to help. I should want to kick them, hit them, or scream at them instead.
    And yet. There was poor exhausted Mary Harding, fragile as an old dry leaf, and poor sad Lyle, as much a victim of this as I was, missing his daddy. It hurt to walk away, but I did.
    I'd gone all of three steps when Lyle called, "Dora, do you have a car?"
    And his grandmother said, "Hush, Lyle, hush."
    "Because if you have a car, you could drive me to see my daddy, couldn't you?"
    "No, she can't, Lyle," his grandmother said. "It's a very long way, the woman has a job, and she's a complete stranger. We don't ask favors from strangers." She moved quickly to shut the door, to drown out Lyle's pleading voice, and to keep me from seeing any more of the chaos of her life. It was the New England way—keep things to yourself, don't let people know your troubles, and don't ask for help. Chin up. Shoulders back. Pride intact. The door closed behind me with a distinct click, but all the way down the street, until I turned the corner by the church, his cries followed and made me feel wretched.
    Someone in the church was playing the organ. Someone new to the job, from the sound of it, just getting a feel for how the instrument worked. For as long as I was in hearing distance, the child's cries were replaced by that stirring war song, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God." The first stanza, over and over and over.
    Back at the restaurant, things were getting wild, even with three of us. In addition to our regular crowd, which was plenty, we had a group of Canadian tourists whose bus had broken down, crabby and voluble, with time on their hands and a free lunch courtesy of the tour company. It was a nightmare. Freebies, far from making people happy or grateful, seem to enhance their greed. I ran until I was sure my feet were going to bleed right through my shoes. I half-expected to look down and see bloody footprints on the floor. The only good thing was that it kept me from thinking about sad little Lyle Harding. The only good thing.
    Kalyn, hangdog and apologetic, left early for a doctor's appointment, and then we were two. I hated to see her go. She was wonderfully good-natured and observant. She'd pulled my ass out of the fire several times already. The fire of Theresa's wrath. If I'd had a dollar for every time she'd grabbed my shoulder and pointed angrily at something, I could have doubled my tips. I wasn't the only one running. Kalyn ran twice as fast as I did. And she could juggle. I mean, really juggle, not just balance stacks of plates. At one point, I heard laughter and turned around to find she had a whole table in stitches as she kept an apple, a hot dog, and a small stuffed lobster in the air. Even Clyde, who was one of the sweetest-tempered men I'd ever met, was getting snappish.
    Just about at the point where I thought I was going to collapse, the kitchen door opened and a woman who looked like a younger, prettier version of Theresa hurried in, tied on an apron, and said, without preliminaries, "The sitter was late. What tables shall I take?"
    "Take the row of booths along the wall," Theresa said.
    "Righty-O," she said, and hurried into the dining room.
    No one bothered to introduce me, but no one really needed to, and anyway, this was a business, not a social occasion. Clearly, this was Theresa's daughter, and equally clearly, from the way his eyes had followed her as the burgers burned, Clyde had a soft spot for her.
    "The burgers, Clyde," I reminded him, as I tore open a packet of coffee, dumped it in, and stuck a batch of buns in the