Page 5 of The Strawberry Patch Pancake House

‘I mean … I could pick up some waitressing shifts…’

‘No, not that.’ Gladys waved her suggestion away. Apparently, after breaking multiple plates per shift and eating her body weight in pancakes, Iris wasn’t the top contender for waitressing jobs.

‘I have a better idea,’ Gladys went on. ‘How about nannying?’

Iris leaned back in the booth, waving her hands in front of her like she had to physically fight off Gladys’s suggestion. ‘Nannying children? No way.’

‘Why not? You’re so energetic and you’re a wonderful teacher. You’d be great at it.’

‘No, I’m great at teachingadults. Adults that are capable of real human communication. Children are a whole other can of worms.’

Gladys raised her eyebrows like she was not buying Iris’s deep and abiding mistrust of children. ‘Children are capable of communication.’

Iris shook her head. ‘They’re unpredictable, and I feel like they’re always plotting something. And why are they always so sticky?’

Gladys laughed, shaking her head. ‘Kids are just people. I’m sure you could manage one little girl.’

Just people? Just small, incoherent people hellbent on destruction. Iris had spent much of her own childhood with adults. Well, adults and Bex, but she and Bex were nearly the same age. Iris had no younger siblings, no little cousins. She never babysat for the neighborhood kids. And she’d had zero interest in baby dolls.

Her best friend growing up was their sweet upstairs neighbor, Josie, who was seventy years old at the time. She would look after Iris after school while her mom worked, and Iris adored her. She told the best stories and cooked the best spaghetti. To this day, it just didn’t feel like Sunday if there wasn’t sauce simmering on the stove. Josie taught her that.

Old folks were fonts of wisdom. Small children were just …wild.

‘Who would I be working for?’ Iris asked, not that she had any plans to take this insane job but now she was curious.

Gladys’s gaze slid toward the kitchen. ‘Well…’

Another crash and a shout.

Iris’s eyes widened. ‘The man currently screaming at your staff has a small child?!’

‘You heard about what happened to Cate Carpenter?’

‘Of course.’ Everyone had heard. It was a tragedy. Iris had gone to school with Cate, though the two had never been close friends. Still, hearing about something like that happening to someone so young was always stop-you-in-your-tracks terrible, the kind of story that made you question what the hell you were doing with your own life.

‘Well, apparently they found her little girl’s father.’

‘And the father is the maniac in your kitchen?’

‘He’s not a maniac,’ Gladys said with an exasperated sigh. ‘He’s a world-renowned chef and he’s whipping my restaurant into shape.’

‘Hmm.’

Gladys shrugged. ‘He needed a job to support his daughter. We were the only place looking for a cook.’

‘So, you now have a chef?—’

‘A world-renowned chef.’

‘A world-renowned chef flipping pancakes?’

Gladys grinned. ‘He’s going to reinvigorate the entire menu.’

‘And how does Lionel feel about that?’ Iris would have loved to be there when Gladys told her husband that the diner would now be run by a fancy-pants chef. The look on Gladys’s face told her that it went about as well as Iris would have expected.

‘He’ll come around,’ she said, folding her hands on the table. ‘Now, what do you think about the job?’

‘Gladys, I would love to help. Really. But I have zero qualifications to be a nanny.’