One

Spring 2022

T he morning sunlight transformed Anna Stanten's glass hummingbird into iridescent glimmers of color twirling like a magical ballet. The cherished hummingbird, a poignant reminder of the mountains… and her mother.

But the light danced alone. She pressed the phone closer. "I don't understand. Who are you?"

"I'll be texting you an address in Idaho." The caller's raspy whispers faded in and out like icy breath on the back of her neck. "Your mother was wronged. If you want things made right, you'll go to this address within the next few days."

Anna's grip tightened around the phone, her knuckles pinching white.

After a brief pause, the unnerving voice became insistent. "Do not delay!"

The phone fell silent.

Her hands tingled as she loosened her grip, staring at the black screen.

Was this call real or something else—a cruel joke? She swiped to see the recent call, but only Unknown Caller and the time displayed. Time! What time was it? Well, the call may not be real, but Mr. Gray, her manager at the diner, was real enough. Slicked-back orange-blond hair, thin mustache, perpetually stunned expression. If she was late—well, she couldn't be late again.

She grabbed her purse, locked up, and hurried her pace to erase the prank caller's cryptic words from her mind.

When the scent of fresh-brewed coffee greeted her at the door, she gasped. How? The last thing she remembered was grabbing her purse, the drive to work a blur.

Evie headed straight for her, long blonde waves swaying in sync with noteworthy curves. In the six months since Evie, in her early twenties and full of life, started at the diner, she had one goal—finding a handsome boyfriend.

"You better hurry," Evie warned. "Mr. Gray has been asking about you. It's crowded today, and he's in one of his moods."

Tom Jones's full-throated voice crooned "It's Not Unusual," setting a nostalgic vibe for Food to Remember Diner. A vintage jukebox skirted one side of the entrance. The antique mirrored podium used to greet customers bordered the other. The midday rush was in full gear, customers sat in high-backed booths lining the wall, on stools at the long bar near the kitchen, and on chairs beside tables spread evenly about.

Anna imagined herself happy, stepped past the mirrored stand, and avoided the truth.

Hours later, she began to sag. "Do you mind watching the front since the rush is over? I need to wash my hands." Proving her point, she held her sticky hands in the air, white pieces of a napkin stuck to the sides.

"Let me guess." Evie arched her brow. "Blueberry syrup from booth 2?"

Anna nodded.

After washing her hands, she rubbed the purple splatter on her apron. It wouldn't budge. She returned to the front, shaking her head. How did she end up here, worrying about a syrup stain on a faded uniform? She had goals, dreams—

"You take the large group." Evie interrupted. "Bored college students. Too much energy for me at the end of a shift. They'll probably want the all-day pancakes."

She flashed a mischievous grin, sped past Anna toward the hostess stand, and wagged a finger toward a large table. "Welcome to Food to Remember Diner. You can sit over there."

They punched in songs on the jukebox, then clattered into Anna's section. Their high-pitched voices overplaying The Animals "We Gotta Get out of This Place," a subtle shot across the bow.

Evie swayed to the music, sending Anna a victorious wave.

Anna bit her lower lip, pulled out her pad, and jotted down their order.

When a muffled ringtone came from her apron pocket, apprehension traveled down her spine. Hitting ignore, she switched the phone to vibrate, then lifted the tray and returned to the table.

The young woman in the group—golden hair, angelic face, devilish eyes—held her phone high, recording every move.

A wannabe actor didn't wait to take his cue, he smirked behind his plastic white-rimmed glasses, then spilled his drink. Red liquid dribbled on the tile floor. "You gonna clean that up before someone slips, waay –tress?"

Mr. Beall, a regular, stood up and took a step toward the scene, but Mrs. Beall gripped his shoulder and halted the rescue.

Anna brought out a cloth, and two wide-eyed boys watched from a nearby table, encouraged by their father to hurry their meals. She hummed a childhood song under her breath while wiping the floor. When her thoughts drifted back to a disheartening memory of her mother, her cheeks flash-heated. She was meant to be more than this. Did they think they were original? No, she wouldn't fall prey to a social media challenge or a childish dare.

"Let's bail, guys." The leader hopped to his feet. "This place is dead. Waay–tress, we'll need separate checks."

Ha. Who'd have guessed that? Stifling her smirk, she slid the already prepared checks out of the holder and dealt them faster than a poker dealer in Vegas.

Her phone vibrated. Seriously? To avoid more torment, she slipped into the break room and dug in her apron to silence the call. Fumbling, she answered instead.

An eerie voice screeched through the speaker. She lifted the phone to her ear. The words froze her motion, and everything else faded.

"I'm texting you the address. Don't wait!"

The caller hung up.

Her phone chimed with a text. Her finger swiped away the address on Warm Springs Avenue in Boise, Idaho. An unease tightened her stomach. Cupping a hand against her mouth, she rushed to reach the restroom before the rising tide and locked the door behind her just in time. Once the nausea ceased, she pushed herself up from the cold tile floor.

"Get a grip, Anna," she muttered, her hands trembling. She splashed cool water on her face. A pale reflection with lifeless eyes stared back at her. She lowered her lids and let the gurgling water splash against the sink, her voice mechanical as she counted to thirty. She kept her eyes closed while tapping her hand along the wall for the paper towels. Then she blotted her face dry in the calm of the darkness. When the count reached thirty, she welcomed the light. Her dark-brown eyes were now alert, and a rosy color brightened her cheeks.

Knock, knock, knock.

"Anna? Are you okay? Can I come in?"

She released the latch. Sandy, her mother's dear friend, stood outside the door, concern in her eyes.

"What happened? I came into the break room to put my purse away and saw you run into the employee restroom like you saw a ghost. Evie mentioned some trouble in your section. Those jerks couldn't have gotten you that upset. Did Mr. Gray do something?"

No. Anna shook her head. "A call…"

The caller had exposed her emotional frailty when it came to her mother. Why would this happen now?

"I assumed the first call was a prank, but the text, the address, the words—it all makes it seem real. She, the caller, said something about my mother. Thinking about her, about Idaho, released a flood. You knew Mother and stayed close with her after you moved. She was never someone who opened up about feelings or serious things. She had secrets, either for her protection or for mine. I could only glean pieces, just enough to bewilder me that she never became bitter." Shaking her head, Anna rubbed at her temples. "I never understood it. Maybe she gained her strength from all the heartache she endured."

"You're upset and rattling on." Sandy tucked an arm around her. "You aren't making any sense. You've had more than one call? Who would call you? How would they even know to call you?"

Someone pounded on the restroom door. "Where is everyone?" Mr. Gray called in. "The shift has started. Customers are waiting. Evie is out there alone, and you know what that means. Things are getting backed up. If you don't come soon—"

"Calm down. We're comin'." Sandy squeezed Anna's arm and jerked open the door. Before stepping out, she glanced over her shoulder. "We'll visit about this later and figure out what's going on. Get through this shift. We'll talk afterward."

Anna dug her index fingernail along the cuticle on her thumb.

The caller's words rang in her ears—" There is much you do not know or understand. I cannot explain right now, but someone needs to make amends to your mother ."

Make amends. She needed to make amends too. Find forgiveness. Salty liquid seeped down her cheeks faster than she could wipe them.

" This will be your journey because your mother was wronged and it should be made right. Please, Anastasia, please come ."

"Anna, you coming?" Mr. Gray echoed the voice in her head. He'd cocked a hip against the opened door, wiping his glasses on his shirtsleeve, his naked eyes glaring at her.

"I'm coming." Head high, she sidestepped him. The Mr. Grays in this world hadn't gotten her down yet, and she wasn't going to make it easy for them.

Two hours later, she dropped beside a round chrome table across from Sandy, fingers curled around an oversized mug of the best coffee in Grandville. The only perk of working here, even if she had to pay for every cup, but man, some days it provided priceless relief, a lifeline.

"You ready to tell me about it?"

With "You Can't Always Get What You Want" screeching in the background, Anna took a deep breath. "The creepy woman on the phone said something about Mother. Something about her being wronged. It's got me all jittered."

"We don't speak about your mother much anymore. We probably should." Sandy found a chip on her red nail and picked at the corner. "I knew her and considered her a close friend, but like you said, she didn't discuss personal things, difficulties. If you wanted to be her friend, you had to know the boundaries. I didn't know a great deal about her."

"She had it rough." Anna twisted the mug in her grip, pressing warm coffee heat into her palms. "Her mother disappeared when she was young—some kind of tragic unsolved mystery—and it drove her father over the brink, I guess. Mother only spoke of it all once."

Shivering, she could still hear her mother's soft voice as she told the details, still feel the coat of freezing sorrow wrapping around her from her mother's loneliness and pain as she spoke. Her hazel eyes distant, her mother came back to the present with one last sentence. "I will never discuss this again, Anna." She'd closed her eyes then, and that was the end of their discussion. They never had gone there again.

"What did the caller mean my mother had been wronged? Why did she want me to go to Idaho?"

Sandy touched her hand. " thing I've learned over the years, dear. If you don't take action, take a risk, you'll always wonder about it."

Anna thought of the red punch, wiping the floor while others watched. What happened to the woman she imagined she would be? More than anything, a part of her still wanted to right things for her mother. Wasn't that why she'd once pursued a career in law? To stand up for people like her mother who wouldn't or couldn't stand up for themselves? To fight back for those wronged? She'd let that dream die with her mother, becoming weak herself. But could this be her opportunity?

A small spark lit inside her. "You think I should go?"

Sandy tapped her nails to the tabletop. "I am not the wisest person, or I wouldn't still be working here—with Mr. Gray—after fifteen years. But life can be filled with regrets. You don't want this decision to be one of them. What does your heart tell you?"

Anna pulled out her phone, then pressed hard against her twitchy left eye as she searched for flights. "Great. The last-minute prices are high enough to charter my own plane." Too much for a journey that stoked both excitement and dread. She dropped her phone on the tabletop, shoved it aside, and buried her chin in her cupped hands. "You know I only returned to Idaho one time."

Why had they gone back?

"Mother's friend let us borrow this old blue sedan—the ‘blue beast' mother called it. Keeping it going required applying pressure with one foot on the gas pedal while pressing on the brake at the same time with each stop. If the idle dropped low, the engine sputtered and stalled—the entire trip."

"Whew, she must've welcomed endless stretches of road."

"You got that right. Plus, heavy windblasts seemed to blow the car sideways in Wyoming. Utah brought slow, winding roads up steep mountains with only a sliver of gravel to separate the road from the edge. I remember being afraid to look down when the road was so close to the edge. My imagination would take over." She'd sat stiff, not wiggling, fearing any movement might hurl the car straight down the mountain to smash against the sharp riverbank.

" Come to the mountains, Anna ," the caller's voice replayed . "The mountains of your youth ."

"The caller seemed to know things about me and Mother, but so long ago, I pushed away memories of Idaho, even the good ones."

"And now you're wondering if you're ready to go back to face them?"

Anna shifted her position on the red-vinyl-topped chrome stool. It moaned in protest at the weight of her small frame. "Doesn't matter. I can't afford the trip regardless of the feelings stirred. Besides, what do I even know about this caller? It could be a cruel prank, a modified version of…" She gestured toward the table those jerks sat at earlier. "I may not love this place, but I need this job until I can find a better one. Until I can step out of the shadow of my mother, start over, find my own strength." She pushed from her seat, tucked the phone back in her apron pocket, and clamped a hand on Sandy's shoulder. "It's getting late. I'll let you head home. Thanks for being there for me."

"Anytime, dear." Sandy yawned and followed her toward the parking lot.

There'd be no travel. Anna relaxed.

But the voice wouldn't stop. Come to the mountains, Anna .