Dancing Shrimp with her neighbors, gazing at the early-bird chalkboard. Worse, as she debated between fried scallops and deviled crab, she was finishing her second hush puppy.
From the head of the table, Wanda was waving a straw like a scepter. “Nobody makes hush puppies as good as we do. Nobody else puts shrimp right inside them.”
Tracy was calculating calories in her head, a skill she had learned along with her ABCs. She had eaten a meal’s worth already, and she hadn’t even ordered. Worse, she could feel her hand struggling to reach for another hush puppy.
“And I told you, Janya, we have a vegetarian selection every single night. See, right there.” Wanda pointed to the place on Janya’s menu.
“Eggplant parmigiana. I will learn something.”
Wanda looked pleased. In fact, Tracy thought Wanda had looked positively radiant since Wednesday afternoon, when all the women had accepted her invitation to dinner. Even Alice and Olivia were with them. In fact, the date had been arranged with Lee’s schedule in mind. He was in Tampa at a seminar, and Tracy had promised she would keep an ear out for Alice and Olivia tonight. She just hadn’t mentioned she would be doing it at the Dancing Shrimp or, later, the dog track.
She still couldn’t believe she was going to the dog track.
A young server arrived to distribute drinks and take their dinner order. Even at this hour—or maybe because of it—the restaurant was bustling. The tables were jammed together, with fish nets, plastic pelicans and loudspeakers playing top-forty music just over the women’s heads.
To be heard, Wanda had to raise her voice to something approximating a shout. “So, where are we now with Herb?”
Tracy told herself one more hush puppy couldn’t possibly add more than say, an ounce, to her slender frame. What was an ounce?
It was gone in two bites. “Yesterday I stopped by city hall and asked if Pamela’s name turned up anywhere. It was a big waste of time. If she’s living here, everything’s under a married name. I called the local high school and asked if they keep alumni records, but they don’t.”
“Well, I’ve got something we can try,” Wanda said. “After we’re done here, I thought we’d go see if the house Herb lived in before the war is still standing. We’ve got the address from that welding certificate of his. Hall Street. It’s a long shot, but maybe somebody there remembers the family.”
“That was almost seventy years ago,” Tracy said. “What are the chances?”
“I’ll be happy to do something else, but that neighborhood’s over by the track, so why not give it a try?”
Tracy was running out of things to try. Maribel had promised to list Herb’s house as a rental starting in July, but she wasn’t optimistic about Tracy’s chances of renting it during the hottest part of summer. For now, Tracy wasn’t planning to start clearing out Herb’s things, but when the time came to do so, she figured she and the other women would have to move on.
“I don’t see what it can hurt, but it’s possible we’ve found out all we’re going to.” Tracy looked around the table and read the other women’s expressions. “Hey, we tried. Don’t look so down.”
“All his things. His plants, his little mementoes. It seems so sad,” Janya said. “And to think that his daughter will never know he’s gone.”
“Or maybe that he was alive for a whole lot of years when she thought he was dead,” Tracy pointed out.
Wanda finished the last hush puppy and signaled for a replacement basket. “It’s the darnedest thing, but I just feel like we got to keep going.”
They changed the subject. Olivia told them about her first week at youth camp, and the women applauded when she announced that her team had won the relay at the weekly swim meet. Alice told them how she was coming on the tablecloth. Wanda gave a rundown of that week’s All My Children.
They demolished the next basket of hush puppies, too, then their dinners. Tracy had asked if the cook would grill her scallops, but they arrived looking exactly like the hush puppies. Wanda had virtuously asked for extra cole slaw instead of fries, then snitched fries from every plate she could reach. Janya said the eggplant was good, although she thought it needed more spices. Alice beamed through the meal, as if this unexpected treat was the finest thing that had happened to her in months.
Tracy wondered if their quest to find Herb’s family was