This is all your fault.
That’s what Jamie thought every time she saw Lone Peak towering over the tiny town. Especially when she glimpsed the summit through the grimy window of Barney’s Eats, where she was waitressing the breakfast shift for the sixth morning in a row. If it hadn’t been for Lone Peak, Jamie sure wouldn’t have trekked from Tennessee to Utah to climb it. And if she hadn’t come to Utah, she sure wouldn’t have blown through her savings so fast. And if she hadn’t blown her savings, she sure wouldn’t be waitressing in this dump of a diner. So, yeah: it was totally Lone Peak’s fault. True, she loved scaling it. She’d been so eager to do some real climbing — and to escape Mama and the trailer park — that moving out here had been a dream come true. But now, trying to save up the back rent she owed Mrs. Baxelbelt — and the money she needed to get her car back from Cecil’s Auto Body — it seemed more like a nightmare. “Orders up, Scarlett!” the cook yelled from behind the grill, and the blockheads in the diner howled with laughter. Another downside of waitressing at Barney’s Eats was them making fun of her Tennessee accent by calling her Scarlett O’Hara. She was getting a little tired of it. It might be time for some payback. “Why, thank yuh kindly!” she replied in her thickest drawl, provoking further laughter. Then she added, so softly only the cook could hear, “ … Mr. Reginald, suh!” The cook’s eyes boinged open wide and darted around anxiously. “Don’t call me that!” he hissed. Jamie smiled demurely. In a work-boots-and-cowboy-hat town like this, you could name your diner Barney’s Eats, sure, but not Reginald’s Eats. The cook-slash-owner’s real name — which he signed to her paycheck every week — was a bit of blackmail she enjoyed every now and then, just to remind him that his attempted humor could have consequences. She expertly picked up her orders with a smile calculated to maximize her tips. “Now, who-all had the aygs?” she asked, leaning over the worn Formica counter and dialing her accent up to 11. “That’s me, sugar.” “Well, here you go, suh! And who gets this big ol’ stack o’ flapjacks?” “Right here, honey.” “And there you are! Now, which of y’all needs refueling?” she asked, brandishing the stained stainless steel coffee pot. It was while she was clearing some dirty dishes that her phone rang. She glanced at the screen and grimaced. She didn’t recognize the number, but she sure knew that Nashville area code. Meaning: probably family, few of whom she had any desire to talk to. She tapped Answer, partly in annoyance, partly in curiosity. “Hello, Jamie. Do you know how to pick the lock on a house?” Jamie wrinkled her nose, mystified. “Who is this?” she asked. “MaryElle Kimmins, your cousin.” “MaryElle — ?” Okay, at least it wasn’t Mama. But still. Jamie was frankly baffled why her know-it-all, condescending, and pedantic cousin MaryElle would suddenly call her out of the blue like this. They’d never been friendly, even as kids. And Jamie hadn’t seen or spoken to MaryElle in two years. It had been real nice. “MaryElle, I’m working,” she said shortly, then dropped the phone into the pocket of the frilly waitress uniform she hated. Jamie doubted whether MaryElle had ever worked. MaryElle’s daddy always seemed to be brimming with money, more than enough for her to always wear nice clothes, and now to attend Vanderbilt University, a pricey college in Nashville that billed itself as the “Harvard of the South”. When Jamie spotted a customer hovering near the register, she trotted over to him, flashing a smile and running a hand through her short blonde hair. He handed her a ten, and she rang up his check — $5.65 — and gave him the change — $4.35 — thrilled to hand him all those dollar bills. I’ll get a nice tip for once. “Thanks, y’all!” she trilled as he tossed money beside his empty plate and headed out the door. “Come again now, y’hear!” Jamie pounced on the tip like a pirate on a treasure chest, only to find: no dollar bills at all. A quarter and a dime. Thirty. Five. Freaking. Cents. This treasure chest was empty. Her smile vanished in crushing disappointment as she dropped the coins into her pocket and bent to haul away his dirty dishes. The coins clinked against something. Oh, right, she recalled with annoyance. Ms. Precious MaryElle. She yanked the phone out and frowned when she saw that her caller was still hanging on. “What do you want, MaryElle?” she snapped. “Can you pick the lock on a house?” MaryElle asked once more, as if there had been no lapse in the conversation at all. “MaryElle,” Jamie said, already exasperated, “if you’re locked out of your house, just call your Mama. Or the cops. They’ll help you out.” She lifted her finger to tap HangUp. “I can’t call the police: they’re the ones who sealed the house. And Mother is back in Nashville.” Jamie blinked in confusion. MaryElle lived in Nashville: that’s where she went to college. “Well, if you’re not in Nashville, where are you?” “Memphis.” Jamie began to feel a dull ache between her eyebrows, which was the usual result of any conversation with MaryElle. “Memphis? What are you doing in Memphis? Aren’t you in grad school at Vanderbilt or something?” “Yes, but Memphis is where the stolen diamonds are.” “Diamonds? You mean, like, diamonds? Real diamonds?” “Yes.” Jamie huffed with frustration. She knew that MaryElle couldn’t be drunk or high, because MaryElle was never drunk or high: that was just one more of her annoying features. She was the most serious-minded person Jamie knew, even counting cops and ministers. Still ... “MaryElle, what the actual hell are you talking about?” MaryElle sighed heavily, as if being forced to explain something that would be painfully obvious to an addled child of six. Jamie remembered that tone of condescension well. She hadn’t missed it. “I’m close to recovering some stolen diamonds,” MaryElle said. “If I do, the reward will be ten to twenty thousand dollars. I’ll share it evenly with you. That’s five to ten thousand dollars if you can get here and into this house that the police have sealed. How soon can you get here?” Jamie had no idea why a grad student in Nashville was chasing down stolen diamonds in Memphis, but her mind skipped nimbly past recovering, stolen, and police to zero in on the main point. “Wait — what? Did you say, ‘Five thousand dollars’?” “Yes.” “You’ll pay me five thousand dollars to come to Memphis and get you into a house?” “Yes.” Jamie’s eyes crossed, and she grew positively limp at the prospect. As of this morning, she owed nearly two grand to Cecil and her landlady before she could spring herself out of this podunk town. With tips of only thirty-five cents, she would have to keep waitressing until — well, the math escaped her, but figure close to the rest of her life. And now … Five. Thousand. Dollars. MaryElle might be nuts, but she wouldn’t make up something like this. But why would she think I could pick locks and break into houses? Oh, right. Because I can. And my juvie record probably says exactly that. Even so, Jamie didn’t want to go back to Tennessee. And she surely didn’t want to see MaryElle. And she absolutely positively didn’t want to get mixed up in some hare-brained scheme at a cop-sealed house that would likely land her butt behind bars. Again. “All right,” she found herself saying, with the same impulsiveness that had gotten her stuck in this town in the first place. “Excellent,” MaryElle replied. “Now — ” “You do know I’m in Utah, right?” “Utah? What are you doing in Utah?” Right now, talking to my clueless cousin, Jamie was tempted to reply. Instead, she focused on the five thousand dollars that MaryElle currently represented, and patiently replied, “Climbing Lone Peak and other mountains, when I get the chance. I’ve been living here almost a year now.” “Ah. I wasn’t aware of that. Well, how soon can you get here?” “To Memphis? From Utah? Hang on.” “Scarlett, the food’s getting cold here!” Barney-slash-Reginald whined. Jamie flicked him a look, and he backed up like he’d been jabbed with a sharp stick. She opened the browser on her phone and looked up flight departure times. Plus the time to drive to the Salt Lake City airport. Plus, however long it would take for her to steal her car from Cecil’s lot — figure 10 minutes — and sneak into her rooming house to snag a few things without running into Mrs. Baxelbelt — figure another 10 minutes. “I can be there about 7 tonight,” she announced, and waited for MaryElle to disappoint her by saying, ‘Oh, never mind.’ Instead, MaryElle said, “Excellent. Here’s the address. I’ll meet you there.” Jamie scribbled the address on her order pad, shaking her head in disbelief the whole time. “Okay,” Jamie said. Then, a practical complication occurred to her. “Hey, MaryElle, can you spot me the plane ticket?” “Spot — you — ?” MaryElle repeated quizzically. “Loan me the money in advance so I can pay the airfare.” “Oh. Certainly. Do you do PayMe?” “Uh, yeah.” Seconds later, Jamie’s phone dinged. When she opened the little window, she was delighted to find $500 sitting in her checking account, which was far more than she’d seen there in months. “Is that sufficient?” MaryElle asked. “That’s great. Wonderful. Fantastic. Thank you.” “All right. See you at 7.” “Yeah, yes, okay, 7.” They hung up. Jamie shook her head slowly. Easily the strangest conversation I’ve ever had with MaryElle, in a lifetime of strange conversations with MaryElle. And … Five thousand dollars. More than enough to pay off Cecil. And Mrs. Baxelbelt. And get out of Dodge. Or, maybe, stick around and climb Lone Peak for a while more. Thank you, MaryElle! Jamie called out, “Sorry, Barney, gotta bail. My great-aunt Abigail is feeling poorly.” Jamie actually had a great-aunt Abigail, and she might well be sick for all Jamie knew — Jamie hadn’t seen her for a couple of years — so, not a complete lie. Barney roared, “Again? What is it with hot blondes and their sick aunts?” She grabbed her backpack from the hook by the back door, and headed to the Ladies Room, where she changed from her uniform into jeans, Nike Air Maxes, and a T-shirt she’d won that said, “Tequila Es Mi Amigo!” She stuffed the uniform into her backpack, then pulled it out again and removed the address she’d jotted down. This time, she folded the uniform neatly and put it back in again. She had no intention of working at Barney’s Eats ever again if she could help it, but she knew that life had a habit of sliding sideways from what you preferred to do over to what you had to make yourself do. Like helping MaryElle break into a house in Memphis.