Chapter 6 - The Ghost of Myron’s
That night, after the 4:30 was scrubbed, the grills oiled, and the registers balanced, I took the long way home.
I drove down into the valley, across the old iron bridge, and pulled onto the cracked asphalt lot of *Myron’s Family Restaurant*.
It was dark. The big neon sign—the one with the cartoon chef flipping a pancake—was half-unhooked from its transformer, hanging by one rusty bolt. Weeds grew through the cracks where mill workers used to park their F-150s at five in the morning.
I took the master key ring Dad had handed me three days ago and unlocked the back door.
The smell hit me first.
It didn't smell like bacon grease, clean bleach, and fresh coffee anymore. It smelled like damp drywall, dead pipes, and sour milk.
I clicked on my flashlight and swept the beam across the kitchen.
It made my stomach turn.
Marissa had torn out the six-burner Vulcan range I had maintained with steel wool every Tuesday night. In its place was a non-functioning commercial induction cooktop, half-disconnected and covered in dust.
The stainless-steel prep tables were gone. The walk-in cooler door was hung crooked on broken hinges, its floor thick with black mold.
I walked out into the front dining room.
The wooden booths—the ones Dad’s brother had built from local pine in the seventies—had been ripped out, leaving jagged raw gouges in the floor. Four cheap, velvet-upholstered circular booths were shoved against the back wall, covered in plastic sheeting.
A giant neon script sign hung over what used to be the counter: *“Bistro Myron – Gather & Savor.”*
I walked behind the counter area.
On the floor, under a pile of discarded menus printed on heavy cardstock that promised $18 truffled eggs and $14 mimosa flights, my boot kicked something metallic.
I knelt down and shone the light.
It was the trash can from the front register. The same gray plastic Rubbermaid container I had stared into the day of the retirement party.
It had been kicked into the corner and used to prop open a damaged utility closet door.
I reached inside.
Beneath a nest of dried paper towels and an old calendar, my fingers touched cold metal and rough wood.
I pulled it out.
The old spatula.
The wooden handle was scarred by twenty years of grease fires. The black electrical tape Dad had wrapped around the split grip was brittle and peeling, gray with age.
I held it in my hand. It was light. Perfectly balanced.
Dad hadn't given it to me because it was junk. He had given it to me because he couldn't bear to let go of the only part of the diner that truly mattered to him—the sweat. But his cowardice, his inability to admit that I was the engine that made his name mean something, had turned the gift into a curse.
I didn't drop it this time.
I slid it into the back pocket of my jeans.
May you like
“We’ve got work to do,” I whispered to the empty room.
---