Free The Day I Killed James by Catherine Ryan Hyde Page B

what, if anything, took place in that big black hole of later in the evening.
    Meanwhile Frieda told her to put on her clothes, she’d buy her breakfast. But breakfast was the farthest thing from Annie’s mind. And the farther it stayed from her stomach, the better.
             
    They sat on the outdoor patio of Sebastian’s Store and Coffee Bar in Old San Simeon. Annie sat with her back to the original Hearst warehouses, looking in the general direction of the Castle. Currently blissfully hidden in the early morning fog. Watching instead the old one-room schoolhouse and the flat brownness of the dry summer grass. Still very aware that the Castle was up there. Waiting for her. Whether she could see it or not.
    Frieda’s breakfast arrived, and Annie tried not to smell it. She asked the waitress if she had any buttermilk.
    “That’s not on the menu,” was the reply.
    “That wasn’t the question,” Annie said.
    “I could ask the cook.”
    “Please do. Thank you.”
    “I wouldn’t know what to charge for it.”
    “Make something up. Overcharge me. I really don’t care.”
    The waitress disappeared, and Annie lit a cigarette. Inhaled deeply and felt the predictable sensation of queasiness. She’d known all along that the first cigarette of the morning would make her sicker, but it really wasn’t optional.
    She thought again about Todd. Maybe she should drive up the hill after this and talk to him. No, he was off today. She should call him. But she’d have to look up the number. Which meant she’d have to remember his last name. Damn it, she knew his last name. At one time she had. Hell, she saw it on the schedule every day. Why didn’t she pay attention to these things?
    Frieda waved her smoke away. “By now I would think you’d have asked again.”
    “Asked what?” She felt vaguely irritated to be distracted from this problem with Todd. Before working it out in her head.
    “How I found you.”
    “Oh, that. Did I ask you before?”
    Frieda only rolled her eyes, broke the yolk of an egg, and mopped it up with a piece of toast.
    “Okay. I’m asking again.”
    “I was my own private detective. Your father wanted to hire one.”
    A kind of creeping anxiety in her belly, tangible emotion. “So when you get back, you’ll tell him I’m okay. Right?”
    “
Are
you okay?”
    “Just tell him. Please.”
    “Right. Like I didn’t already call him from my cell phone last night. He’s worried about you. We all are. In the state of mind you’re in. You know.”
    “No. I don’t know. Tell me.”
    “You might do something crazy.”
    “For example.”
    “Oh, I don’t know. Shave your head. Run away from home. Change your name and get a job herding tourists around a state monument. The name thing is weird.”
    “Why is it weird?”
    “Well, not the Annie part so much, being as that’s your middle name and all. But the Stewart part. Weird. Very unhealthy. Like you’re trying to marry a dead guy or something. Like those nuns that wear wedding rings because Christ is, like, their husband. Very unsettling.”
    “I’ve never been compared to a nun before. You still haven’t said how you found me.”
    The waitress appeared with a tall glass of buttermilk. Annie’s stomach felt more settled just to look at it. She indicated a spot next to her coffee cup, and the waitress set it there.
    “Cook says two dollars.” Almost apologetic. “Too much?”
    “A bargain at twice the price.” She sipped it gingerly as the waitress disappeared again, leaving them alone on the patio. A car full of tourists pulled into the dirt lot, but to Annie’s relief they only piled out and took photos, then drove away.
    Frieda said, “I just started at Ragged Point. Then next I tried San Simeon. Thought there might be a pattern there.”
    “And did what in these two places?”
    “Just asked about you. Described you. The Big Sur coast is a pretty sparsely populated place. Not as many bald women here as you might