There was a long silence on the line. Then Charlene said, “Beau Oakes, what in the world are you talking about at four o’clock in the morning?”
When he explained it, she didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he heard her set the phone down, and he could hear her crying in the kitchen, and then she picked it back up and said, “Is she still there? Is she still working there? I’m getting in the car.”
“Mama, there’s an ice storm.”
“I know there’s an ice storm. There’s always an ice storm.”
She didn’t get in the car that night. Beau wouldn’t let her. But two days later, when the roads cleared, she drove up to that Waffle House off Exit 205 with a pound cake on the passenger seat and a picture of Beau as a baby in her purse. I wasn’t there, I was still home with the baby, but Kayleigh the waitress sent me a video. It’s two women in their fifties and sixties holding onto each other in a diner booth for about four straight minutes while a whole lunch crowd pretends not to watch. You can hear somebody in the background say, “What’s happening?” and somebody else say, “Hush, it’s a whole thing.”
