Into Something Good

Charlie Jewell had no high aspirations, no driving desire or urgent need to be anything more than what he was: a shy, divorced forty-seven-year- old cook at a little eatery called Alice’s. Even though the hours were long, the owner of the restaurant, Alice Kramer, gave him every weekend off and Blaney Long would work the grille. Since a greater part of his working life had been spent inside Alice’s rather than outside, he thought of Alice and his co-workers as more than just friends, more like the family he never had.

Charlie Jewell had discovered late one night while solving the crossword puzzle in that day’s newspaper, that, after four years of working with Rachel Mathers through the serving window and in and around the kitchen during set-up from one day to the next, he had developed feelings for Alice’s head waitress. A young woman of thirty-eight, and single mother of two children, Joshua, age 7, and Breanne, age 5, the raven-haired and trim Rachel had finally caught his attention, not so much for what she said or did, but mostly for the things she didn’t say. Like Charlie, she was very committed in her daily routine, and he liked that about her, that stability.