Glimmers of Glass (A Glimmers Novel #1: Cinderella)

Chapter 6

Elle's dad was an airhead.

I'd been sitting at Pumpkin Spice with him for the last half-hour, trying to explain why hooking Elle up with Tyler was a bad idea. He'd spent most of the time saying things like "every girl wants to feel like a beautiful princess on the night of her prom!" and "he seems like a nice boy—exactly the kind of kid who could help her fit in with her peers." He seemed completely oblivious to the idea that Elle might not want to fit in—that she preferred to hang out with fellow geeks and spend her time on hobbies that were more interesting to her than going to high school football games or proms or whatever else her dad had picked up about adolescence from watching Sixteen Candles.

Greg was a tall guy, balding up top, with thin wire glasses and a pleasant smile. He was a pleasant person all around, with a mild voice, friendly manners, and, apparently, a deep-seated desire for his daughter to be happy. He was just completely off about what would make that happen.

It wasn't just my own inferences from her Facebook page that led me to this conclusion. The real clincher had been when I'd walked in the door and seen her at the counter, quietly arguing with him.

"I don't want to go to the movies with Sabrina," she'd hissed at him. "Sabrina and I are not friends. Just because Sabrina is Courtney's friend does not mean she is my friend, and I can promise you we'd all rather I not be there."

"Come on, honey," he'd said. "It's the weekend. You've got to get out and live a little. Enjoy your youth while you still have it."

"I'll do that when Pumpkin Spice is in hands that aren't trying to drive it into the ground," she'd said. "You're more than welcome to help with that. Any day now." 

The sarcasm in her voice had been palpable, and I had a feeling the discussion would have escalated if I hadn't caught his eye and nodded just then. He'd given in, then, and she'd sighed loudly and disappeared into the back, leaving Noah to handle the slow straggle of customers.

Pretending I hadn't heard them fighting, but that didn't seem to be getting anywhere, so I waited for Greg to pause, then cut in with, "So what did Elle mean about someone driving Pumpkin Spice into the ground?"

My voice was a little too casual, and Greg's pleasant face drooped into a slight frown. "It's nothing to worry about," he said. "Elle doesn't agree with the way I run this place."

I leaned forward. This was a more interesting than listening to his ideas about teenage prom dreams. "What's the deal?" I asked.

I expected him to wiggle away from the question or try to brush it off, but he only shrugged. "She doesn't think I'm professional enough and she thinks I have bad ethics," he said. He didn't sound embarrassed or upset by this. If anything, he sounded tired. "She really wants to replace everything on the menu with organic fair trade coffee and we just can't make that happen right now."

"Why not?" I said. 

Everyone else in the entire city served nothing but organic fair trade coffee, if the signs in cafe windows were to be believed.

"It's expensive," he said. "I know—it makes me sound like a monster, right?"

I shrugged. I didn't know enough about coffee or running a cafe to have an opinion on the subject. I'd heard people's comments about it, of course, but I only drank coffee when I came to places like this with Imogen. 

Regardless, Greg didn't strike me as the monster type. A little clueless, maybe, but clueless wasn't a straight shot to evil.

"I don't know, honestly," I said. "What's wrong with the coffee you have now?"

"It's not fair trade enough," he said. He was slender enough that his sigh seemed to make his entire body cave in for a moment. "She was upset about it, and I thought she had a point about making sure the people who grow coffee aren't exploited, so I started buying coffee with 'fair trade' on the label. Deborah—my wife, you know—helped me find a good brand we could afford. But apparently that's not good enough. It has to be fair trade, organic, shade-grown, bird-friendly, carbon-neutral, Rainforest Alliance coffee from one of three specific startup companies whose coffee costs three times more than the brands we use now. And she's got all these requirements for the milk and soymilk and cocoa we use. And I'd be fine with that. It sounds like a great idea, really. But we can't afford it. We can't keep enough clientele as it is. This isn't a great location. I know it makes me a bad guy to put the evil dollar ahead of all that, but I've got to keep the doors open. This place feeds my family."

The dots refused to connect in my head.

"So why are you sending her to prom?" I said. "Sounds like she's more unhappy about that than a dance."

He leaned forward, face lighting up like he'd just had a good idea. 

"I think she's lonely," he said. "She doesn't hang out with friends like the other girls do. She just works and spends time with her best friend and doesn't try to get to know anyone else. And she spends an awful lot of time and energy telling the customers how bad our coffee is and making them feel guilty for ordering it," he added, giving the counter a sidelong glance. "It's not great for the business or the family. We're a blended family, you know, and she's always struggled with getting along with her stepsisters. I think maybe if she got caught up in some other drama, some good drama, she'd realize there's more to life than yelling at anyone who thinks the coffee here is okay."

He said "drama" like old people always tried to say things like "took a selfie" and "went viral," like he was hyper-conscious of trying to be hip and with it. It was weirdly endearing.

"So you're trying to distract her by making her the star of some eighties teen movie?" I said.

He looked pleased, like I'd caught on at last. I forced my expression to stay still. 

"Exactly," he said. "Just distract her for a while. Give her a chance to see that there's more to the world than taking down the family business. She's a senior, so by the time prom is over she'll be heading off to college and she can start her own life."

"Instead of complicating yours."

He nodded. It was all making sense now. Weird sense, but sense.

"Yeah," I said. "I don't think that's going to work."

"I think it will," he said. "And that's what you people do, right? Faerie godmothers? You make people fall in love."

That was a gross oversimplification, but I couldn't pretend it was the first time I'd heard it. Everyone associated us with romance and midnight balls, even Glimmers who knew better.

"The thing is," I said, "I don't think she wants a magical eighties teen movie prom night."

Greg laughed at this. His laugh was loud and likeable. Everything that came out of his mouth was driving me crazy, but I couldn't actually be upset with him.

"She doesn't know what she wants," he said. 

The disrespect in the words made me cringe, but he seemed so well-meaning that I didn't think to react fast enough to stop what came next. 

He stood up. 

"I'm sure you'll do a great job," he said. "Your boss said it was your first case, but you seem like a real professional. I know you can do it." 

He smiled, like he was the inspiring coach in some sports movie who helped the main kid believe in himself—was this man's entire life lifted out of feel-good movies?—and, before I could get a word in, walked off.

I considered going after him, but I had a strong suspicion it wouldn't do any good. I'd been trying to talk reality into the man for the last forty-five minutes and gotten exactly nowhere.

On the bright side, I'd picked up a few insights. Elle had hangups about ethical coffee. I didn't know how that would ever be relevant to anything, but hey—at least the girl was kind of cool.