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Raven laughed.

"Very funny," he said. "Remind me to laugh."

"Is your memory that gone?" I countered.

He glared and then marched out of the restaurant. When I looked back at Charlie, I saw a wide smile on his face, but Patsy looked despondent.

"We'll be all right, Patsy," I told her. "If it gets too busy, I'll send for Crystal."

"I'm not worried," she said. "I've often had to do it all. Just me and Charlie manning the old fort, right, Charlie?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said, "and we ain't had no one leave unsatisfied. That's the truth," Charlie told us.

The customers began to stream in. Charlie's meat loaf was the favorite choice. Patsy had it up as the night's special, but from what we heard that was always the night's special and rightly so. It was delicious. To our amazement, the restaurant filled up within the first half hour. Crystal and Butterfly saw what was happening and came rushing over. I told Patsy Crystal could work the register if she liked. She thought that was fine. Butterfly pitched in busing tables, and soon we had things well under control.

However, Raven quickly found herself the object of attention and began to feed off it, stopping at tables to flirt and talk. Taylor Cummings, who had attracted her attention earlier in the day and asked her for a date, reappeared. Now that I looked at him more closely, I saw he was a good-looking man of about ty; thirty-five with long, reddish-blond hair and impish blue eyes. I had to admit that his smile could melt ice.

Patsy stepped beside me to whisper.

"They call him The Love Dozer because he's crushed so many young hearts. Tell Raven to be very careful," she warned.

I couldn't think of a more futile thing than trying to advise Raven when it came to love and romance Every time I passed by her, I commented on how busy it was and how we sure could use some help.

"Be right there," she kept saying, but it was as if Taylor Cummings held her in orbit. Even when she left his table, she was drawn back to him repeatedly.

"He's coming back for me in an hour," she told me when he finally paid his check and left the restaurant. "We're going dancing," she declared.

"You don't know him. How can you go out on a date with a complete stranger?" I turned to Crystal for help, but she simply shook her head. "Raven?"

"I'll be all right," she assured me. "I've been out with strangers before, Brooke."

"But we're on the road, Raven. We're . . . helpless."

"Maybe you're helpless," she said with a cold, arrogant smile, "but when it comes to men, I'm not, not ever."

There really wasn't anything else to do. I put it out of my mind

By the end of the evening, Patsy was getting tons of compliments on how smoothly and quickly the dinner hours had gone. Looking at the receipts, she said because they were able to turn over more tables, they had made more money that evening than they had in a very long time.

"You girls are a blessing from heaven!" she declared.

After the last customer left and we were alone, we all sat at a table, resting and having some of Charlie's apple pie. Patsy felt the need to apologize for Danny's behavior earlier.

"I'm really at my wit's end about what to do about him. I know he's headed for serious trouble."

"Danny's suffering from a low self-image," Crystal began. Patsy looked up at her and I thought, uh oh, here we go. "I don't know what his relationship with his father was like, but you told us that he became more of a problem after your husband's death. He probably felt inadequate, unable to fill your husband's shoes and be half the man he was. Rather than struggle with the anxiety, he gave up and went completely in the opposite direction, giving in to his weaknesses in order to live with them, so to speak," Crystal lectured. "It's a classic psychological defense mechanism, especially in teenagers."

Patsy stared at her with her mouth agape. "How do you know so much?" she asked. "Crystal's a genius," Butterfly declared with pride.

"She was first in her class and probably would have been class valedictorian," Raven added.

"What do you mean, probably would have been?" Patsy asked quickly. If she didn't catch the way we shifted our eyes, she had the perception of a stone, I thought.

"She means probably will be," Crystal corrected. "Don't you, Raven?"

"Oh, yes." Raven offered, laughing nervously. "I always make mistakes with grammar. If it wasn't for Crystal's help, I would fail English every year."

Patsy, however, still studied the four of us with a little more suspicion.