When our other cook Irina calls in sick for the dinner shift, frustration wells up in me with such force that I nearly burst into stressed-out tears. Of course, I’m not going to cry in front of anybody here at the diner, so I’ll save it for tonight, after I can shut myself into my bedroom. I’ve got too much to do now, and that includes letting Mom know that she won’t have the night off and then seeing the look on her face as she tries to hide her disappointment.

She takes the news like a trouper, even though her eyes are weary, and I go back out to the front of the house where Grace is taking orders from the very early-bird dinner customers who’re starting to come in. With one look at me, she seems to know that Mom and the two of us are here for the long haul this evening. I’m so tired that I can’t even be angry with her for being so attentive to Quinn this afternoon. The whole time she was hanging out at his booth, I kept wondering if he was going to ask her to sip tooty-fruity wine with him, as if my sister and I are interchangeable. But right after he and Miguel left, Grace informed me that Quinn didn’t make any kind of move on her. She even took great delight in letting me know that his eyes were on me during his entire lunch.

Now that I think about it again, my tummy flips. I thought I felt him watching me, but I didn’t want to look up and find out that it wasn’t true, that he was watching Grace instead.

Still, he’s not an option, and as dinnertime approaches and business picks up, I put him out of my mind. So what if I keep looking at the door to see if he’s going to have dinner here tonight? I’ve got stuff to handle, checks to ring up, tables to turn, and it isn’t until traffic begins to level off that I find my thoughts returning to him again. I keep going back to thinking about his charming smile and replaying the moment he asked me out for wine the other day. Something fun and bright rushes through me every time I remember, and as the dinner crowd thins and darkness lays down on the horizon, I clean the tables, catching myself idly smiling and maybe even blushing.

God, I’m actually blushing. And I think I like it.

I’m still daydreaming and finishing up with table one when a loud booming sound from the kitchen shakes me out of my groove. I whip around with the sound reverberating in the air as my eyes adjust to what I’m seeing through the kitchen window: orange, flickering … flames?

Adrenaline grips me, making me freeze for an eternal second.

Mom?

Then I hear her panicked voice. “Fire!” Then screaming. Holy shit, screaming, just like the sound I used to hear from Mom back when Dad was alive and drinking and swinging his fists at her, and now I’m running toward the kitchen, stopping only to grab a fire extinguisher from beneath the front counter. I only have time to look back at Grace, who’s standing on the floor with her mouth open, her eyes wide, right before she starts pushing people toward the exit …

When I bust into the kitchen’s swinging door, heat smacks me, and I rear back. “Mom!”

“Gwen?”

She’s back by the griddle, where flames are spewing. I run toward it, letting loose with the extinguisher.

“Mom! Get the other one!”

She stares at me for only a moment, orange light flashing over her face and burning in her big, frightened eyes. Then something clicks and she goes for another extinguisher by the frying station.

Everything is a spray of white foam and heat, a clash of my ragged heartbeat and harsh breathing and fast-motion flames until the fire subsides, suffocated out.

As Mom and I back toward the door, smoke clouds the room. It seems that our surroundings are smeared with blackness: the ceiling, the walls, the floor. The griddle looks dead to me, and so do the counters and the stove and …

Nausea grips me. I’m going to throw up. Really throw up. I’m not really even sure this truly just happened. Our kitchen … our diner …

Dear God, our everything.

Days later, everyone is quiet around the kitchen table. Grace, who’s usually always smiling, has red eyes from crying, but it’s better than Mom’s empty gaze as she stares out the window above the sink. Raindrops tap on the glass, and I don’t have to see it to picture a gray sky over an expanse of dark green plains.

I’ve just gone over the damage report from the insurance company with them, and I let the papers drop to the table. “The news could be worse.”

Mom laughs bitterly. “What could be worse than having to close down Milton’s for the time being?”

Grace wipes her face with her palm, then forces at least something like a smile. “We could be dead, Mom, and so could the customers who were there. That would be a lot worse.”

“I almost killed everyone.” She exhales, and it shudders right along with her frail shoulders as she presses a hand over her eyes. “I should’ve done a status check on all the appliances so nothing would short out like the toaster oven did, but I just didn’t have the time.”

Both Grace and I scoot our chairs closer to her and hug her until we’re bonded.

“Don’t take this out on yourself,” my sister says.

“Grace is right.” I rest my cheek against Mom’s head. “Our insurance covers fire damage, so there’s that.”

Mom shakes her head. “But we have a huge deductible so we could keep premiums low. And insurance won’t cover our bills or anyone’s salaries while we’re closed. And what about Seamus and Irina?”

“They’ll be fine until we can get Milton’s back up and running.” Actually, Full Circle Technologies, which has already hired all the support staff they need for now, offered to put Seamus and Irina to work on a temporary basis. Neither of our employees is qualified to work on the mixed reality apps FCT is currently bringing to market, but at least Seamus and Irina will be doing odd jobs for them during the short term. Seamus has dreamed of being hired by them anyway, possibly using his artistic skills, so maybe this will lead to something big for him in the future.

There has to be a silver lining somewhere in this.

I rub Mom’s back. “Today I got a call from Zach Hamilton. He asked me to let him know how FCT can help out in any other way, and all of our neighbors have been asking, too. You know how Cherry Valley pulls together during a crisis.”

Mom lowers her hand from her face, her jaw tensing. “Are you suggesting that we should be charity cases?”

“No.”

“Gwen, even if I lost all of my pride and accepted money from FCT, how would that help right now when there’s a shortage of construction workers in the area? It’s springtime, and there’s a lot of building going on, including for the FCT work campus.”

Grace and I look at each other, and I can feel my twin’s heart sinking just like mine is. Mom’s always been a survivor. She taught us to be one of those, too, but she’s always had so much pride. Sometimes too much.

Mom goes on. “We’ll have to wait several extra weeks to get any work on the diner done. Even if we became FCT’s cause of the month, we’re going to need a lot of money to live on, more than we have in our pitiful savings.”

Grace’s gaze is starting to clear. It never takes her long to become an optimist again. “Gwen, you were on the phone all day trying to wrangle up someone to do the job on Milton’s sooner rather than later. Did you have any luck?”

I shake my head. I even offered money out of my own pocket as a bonus for anyone who could take our job ASAP. “They all just apologized and said they’re booked for weeks.”

Then her gaze lights up all the way. “What about Quinn Maxwell? I heard he’s been asking around about the fire and how we’re doing.”

Oh, man, I’m not up for another teasing session about Quinn, but it turns out that isn’t what Grace has in mind.

“We should get in touch with him,” she says. “Because what if he knows someone who can get the work done real soon?”

I lean back in my chair. Leave it to Grace to find the simplest solution. My head’s been so far in the smoke lately that I didn’t even think of this. Even Mom brightens up.

“Gracie,” I say. “That’s a brilliant idea. When can you talk to him?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you’re the charmer in the family, and you’re not the one who turned him down for a date … or whatever it was he asked me on.”

Grace looks at me like I’m prime grade idiot. “Excuse me, but Quinn likes you, Gwen. You’re the woman for this job.”

“Gracie’s right,” Mom says, turning to me and holding my hands in hers. “Will you talk to him? Please?”

There’s no way I can disappoint either of them, and even though I’m gritting my teeth, I know they’re right about this. I should be the one to ask him.

And all I have to do is hunt him down and pretend like I have even a smidge of the charm my sister does — or anyone else, for that matter.