“May I join you?”

Norm Morgan gave a half-cocked smile.  “Since your husband owns this joint, I would be a fool to say no.”

“And if my husband didn’t own this joint?”

Norm smiled even greater.  “I would be a fool to say no.”

Jenay laughed.  “Good answer,” she said and sat down, with a cup of coffee in hand, at the table.  Norm wasn’t just head chef and manager of the Jericho Inn restaurant, but he was also one of Jenay’s closest friends.  They met in hospitality school in Boston, and she relied on him then, and still relied on him to tell it to her straight.

“What’s bugging you?” Norm asked as he dipped his biscuit into his tea.  “And don’t say you’re fine because you aren’t.  I’ve known you too long.”  He was a gay chef in a conservative town, but didn’t mask who he was.

“We have three conventions next week.  Three.  A medical convention.  A government workers’ convention.  And a bikers’ convention.  All happening at the same time.  That’s never happened here before.  I need this ship tight so that every one of those conventioneers will want to come back.”

“But?” Norm asked.

“I keep finding problems every time I turn around.  As soon as I figure we’ve got the protocol right, I get a new wrinkle.  A new hiccup.  Another employee that has to be off that week.  Not enough chairs for the Rose room.  Not enough whiteboards for the Castle room.  The wrong menu approved, by your staff by the way, for the Green room.  It’s been one issue after another one.  I don’t know, half the time, if I’m going or coming.”

“Or,” Norm said, more to the point, he felt, “if that gorgeous hunk of husband of yours is going or coming.”  He said this and then looked his blue eyes over at Jenay.

Jenay was a boss on the job.  She didn’t curry favors or allow any disrespect.  But Norm was the one employee who was able to take liberties with her.  Norm was the only employee who could cut through the crap, and still have a job at Jericho Inn.  “Meaning?” she asked.

“You and I go back a long way, Jenay.  You gave me this job, and with it a new lease on life, when nobody else would give me shit.  That’s why I’m not going to be cute about it.  Is there trouble in paradise, Nay?” he asked her bluntly.

Jenay hesitated, took a sip of her coffee, and then took another sip.  “What do you know about it?”

“I know, every time I ask Donald how his father is doing, he tells me he’s out of town again on business.  That’s practically every week now for the past I don’t know how many months.  And every time he’s out of town, you seem to be in a pissy mood.  No disrespect, darling, you know me.  But the truth is the truth.  And I’m just wondering if there’s more to it than just business trips out of town.”

“More to it?  You mean if he’s cheating on me?”

Norm didn’t mince words.  “Yes,” he said.

It had crossed Jenay’s mind, more times than she would ever admit, but she always dismissed such thoughts out of hand.  “No,” she said.  “He’s not cheating.”

“You know this for a fact, do you?”

“I hope that for a fact,” Jenay corrected him.  “I’d be the fool of fools if I pretend to know what somebody else is doing one hundred percent of the time.  But I know my boo.  That’s not him.”

  “Then why the disenchantment?” Norm asked.  “Why the worry and concern?”

“I just want us to be strong,” she said.  “I’ve seen too many marriages around here end in divorce because of stupid shit.  I don’t want that to happen to us.”

“With you involved, girl,” Norm said, “it won’t.  You’ll make sure of that.  But that husband of yours?  That Big Daddy?  I don’t know, Nay.  He’s a tough row to hoe.”

Jenay smiled.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He’s one of those alpha males, and a great-looking one at that.  The ladies are going to want him.  I’m sorry, but they are.  And as wonderful a family man as Big Daddy is, I don’t put anything pass these females in this world.  Couple that with a man who figures nobody can tell him anything about anything; a man who a powerful man like Mick Sinatra takes a backseat to, and you could have yourself a situation.  Prayerfully not, but I’m just saying.”

Jenay knew it too.  She sipped more coffee.

Then she heard that voice.

“Jenay?”

But it couldn’t be.  She frowned.

But when she looked at Norm, and his face was suddenly as white as a sheet, and he was staring in the direction of that voice, she knew she wasn’t hearing things.

She slowly turned toward the sound.  And standing there, as if all those years ago were just a day ago, was Percy Diallo.

Her heart slammed against her chest and the cup of coffee she held in her hands turned sideways, and slowly poured out.