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   meet madeline jordan. // quick navigation.

Yona had a bad case of tunnel vision at the worst of times. If she didn’t need to pay attention to something, she essentially either a) discarded it from her working memory or b) remembered it incompletely and could only describe it confusingly. It probably wasn’t the best behavior when living in a small town with barely any people, but it left her brain freed up for a multitude of very important things- like knowing more than a person had any right to about the gameplay of Kingdom Hearts. “Uh, I mean, if you’re asking if I know someone who looks like you but younger, maybe? But I’m paying attention to you now because it’s kind of difficult not to.” Moms were hot. It was just a fact of life. She didn’t exactly think that moms with kids that she was old enough to poorly tutor would reciprocate her attentions, and Yona also didn’t think this was such a good idea… Focus, she told herself, clapping a hand to her face lightly to try to pull herself back into the moment. You need your hangers back- not to crash and burn with Madeline, even if she’s got really pretty lips and is a total MILF and- no. Nope. You are not doing this. Focus! This definitely wasn’t working.

“I stopped by a lot of places. I went to the diner, and then I went to the other diner because sometimes you want to eat two things but one place makes it better than the other. And at some point between those two I sat on the street. I also went to the bookshop, but I could remember why I went there, so I had to leave. I did get a phone call, but I didn’t pick it up because they were just trying to get me to donate blood. Uh… I don’t really remember which order I went to all of those places, but I also had to go to the bathroom at one point. One of the diners. Does that help?”

Madeline listened to her explanation of her afternoon, nodding along the way - okay, so there was a lot of ground to cover, but between the two of them they could surely make it work. Two diners and the bookshop, really, were their main points. Surely if she had left a box of hangers, they would have held them to the side for her - which meant all they needed to do was contact someone at all locations without letting Yona get distracted again. 

“Okay, I know the owner of the bookshop - how about I text them, and I’m sure you know the kids that work in the diner - we’re going to stay still and contact them to see if any of them have it before we move again.” Staying stationary would at least keep Yona focused for a few minutes, if she was anything like her daughter - sometimes just moving from room to room, Danica would forget what she was doing. Scatterbrained, Madeline’s own mother called her. Madeline was pretty sure it was more than that, but Danica didn’t want to get put on medication, so they all survived the best way they could. “How big is the box? It was just one box, right?” she asked, typing out a  text - did a cute girl leave some hangers behind earlier today? - “hopefully they’re there today and we can get an answer back ASAP.” 

“I haven’t been able to get close enough to check,” Asher responds, a mild frown cresting downward on his face.  “I think I’ve lost my touch.  I used to be the cat whisperer down at Horizon Park.”  Of course that had more to do with Asher sharing his scraps and using what little money he had to buy extra cans of tuna to share with the trailer park strays.  

The black cat rolled onto his back, belly up and Asher can hear a fain jingle on his collar.  He takes a gentle step forward and the cat doesn’t skitter away so he outstretches his hand so the feline could give it a sniff.  “Hey buddy,” he coos as the cat rubs against his hand.  “Looks like there’s a collar.  Think the doc could check for a chip?”  He asks looking over at the other over his shoulder not quite making the move to pick up the cat yet. 

“I didn’t know he was married,” Asher adds with a chuckle.  “Then again most of our conversations are about how to get riff raff to stop eating from the trash.”

Madeline keeps herself still; if there’s one thing she’s learned after a decade and a half with Sunny, it’s how to keep an animal feeling safe, calm. Asher seems to have a natural air of calm about him enough that she’s not surprised the cat is a little more accommodating - a smile graces her features as she shrugs at his comment. 

“We’re not actually married anymore,” she admits, “but it’s easier to call him that than explain our dynamic.” Ex-Husband Slash Co-Parent, all living under one roof raising a twelve year old - well, it was a mouthful, to say the least. “But I still have some pull. Think this little guy’s gonna let you pick him up yet?"

Andrew honestly didn’t know how much of a big of a deal this whole thing was. Just because he was back in town he was forced to celebrate dates that he didn’t in the past? “Well, considering how I do not have a wife, I have no fucking idea what she would be pleased about or not, so there’s that. And it’s just a date! It’s not like she made such a big of a deal for all the other birthdays I wasn’t even here. She just wants to fucking nag me over something,” he complained, crossing his arms over his chest. “What’s a bigger sorry than that? Chicks love flowers, right?”

“Fine, girlfriend,” Madeline relented. She knew how crazy Andrew was about Sam, though, and while Madeline might not have been her biggest fan, Andrew was going to marry her. She was sure about that. 

‘Up to you’ really is his favorite answer when it comes to asking people what they want to eat. He spends all day making breakfast plates and burgers and chicken tenders and it’s so fucking boring that sometimes he fucks it up on purpose just so people will leave. But then there are a few who have come to trust him and ask him to make them something different, something new. 

Madeline is one of those people; while tends to stick to the burger and fry formula, she’s never been afraid of what he might put on it and for that, he appreciates her. 

He gets to work for her, throwing one of the pre-made patties on the grill and listening to it sizzle for a second before he starts seasoning it. There’s a few rings of pineapple in the fridge, he remembers and suddenly he knows exactly what he’s going to make.

Grabbing everything he needs, he moves stations back towards the service window again, laughing when Madeline asks about Jas.

“Nah, it was me,” he says as he slices vegetables then looks up at Madeline with a far too wide grin. “Who do you think I’m chopping up back here?”

A little too dark, maybe, under the current circumstances but no one had ever mistaken Mason for an empathetic soul. 

“Fuck if I know,” he says for a more grounded answer. “It’s just been me since about nine or something.” 

Madeline shook her head at his dark joke - grim, all things considered - but she was too tired to chide him on it, and his sense of humor had always been slightly to the left. Twenty years ago, she would have eaten him up - the charm, the smile, the slight edge. Even now, she knew he harbored a little crush - an attraction, at most, really - but she had a kid at home to worry about, an ex-husband in another room next to her own, and dating just....hadn’t been in the cards for a long time. 

“Henry’s never been great at scheduling,” she acknowledges - she had worked at the diner in high school, trying to make a little extra money before she headed off to college. “He tried to schedule me on prom night, and I almost worked it when my date nearly stood me up.” Her date, aka her ex who was now lurking back around town with his near-wife, the ghosts of relationships failed around every corner these days. 

This absolutely was not helping Yona settle down. The last thing that she needed right now was to let her mind make up ridiculous fantasies about why a beautiful thirty-something woman was taking her so delicately by the shoulders. Getting distracted wasn’t helping her find her hangers. “You’re making breathing very difficult right now by being this close,” she said earnestly. That was the best way to not come off as a total creep and to actually accomplish the important task at hand.

Backing up, Yona started to gesticulate wildly- very normal for her. “Yeah, that’s the saddest part of all! I had the box. It was all mine. I was going to take it home from the post office, I make it outside, I do… stuff… and then bam, gone. Okay, maybe I didn’t hear a ‘bam,’ but it was a mental bam. Before I knew it, my stuff’s missing.” She was so excited to talk and trying to evade certain parts of conversation, so the explanation didn’t make the most sense.

Madeline let out a little laugh - the kids in this town ( and yes, she knew they weren’t really kids, they were in their 20s, but when you were busy with mortgages and first periods and trying to pay bills, anyone under the age of 30 was still a child for her )  were always too nice to her, but she backed away obediently, giving the other some time to breathe. 

“Okay, first thing. I’m Madeline - you might know my sister, Hadley, but she might be a few years older than you too. I dunno. Anyways, I’m a mom and I’m well equipped to figure out what the bam was - my daughter has them constantly, and if I can surface a paper on the dust bowl from underneath the refrigerator, we can certainly find your hangers.” The post office itself was only about a block away, so there wasn’t a lot of space that it could have disappeared in - or, on the contrary, too much space. “Did you stop in anywhere else between there and here? The diner? The convenience store? Did you get a phone call? I know it’s a lot of questions, but I promise there’s a purpose - if we can narrow down the area to cover, we’ll be able to find them easier.” 

JOSIE: Oh, I'm sure. Although my mom always said I was like, surprisingly easy. I mean, we DID have to be broody in front of chickens and wheat and not at the local mall, as teens always did in movies.

JOSIE: You should! I get great joy from it. It's like you're opening a box of mysteries every single day. And that is very kind of you to do. Really appreciate it. I'm pretty sure she'd swoon if a big kid so much as gave her a high five.

JOSIE: I like the splash of positivity there. It's gotta be a family thing, right? Just a family thing. Like, it won't happen to anyone else because thankfully, we're not an Ellis.

MADELINE: Speak for yourself - I was brooding in front of the library, reading Emily Dickenson and whining about how unfair it was that I had my sister trailing after me.

MADELINE: I don't really get happy surprises anymore. Now it's mostly notes with her friends about who's cute and who's not, or work she forgot to turn in, or her art. At least her art is pretty to look at. But I'll definitely tell her to keep an eye out - she loves Dallas, so I'm sure she'll be accommodating.

Yona ran her hands through her hair, clearly frustrated. She wasn’t exactly hearing anything particularly calming, and she really wanted those hangers to be found. She wasn’t an anxious person by nature, but she was definitely an emotional and dramatic one. When she had a problem, the whole world was the first to hear about it.

“Getting them shipped to me. I only need the hangers. This isn’t for a craft. It’s for Amazon to ruin my shipment, and possibly try to steal my package back from me.” Yona had definitely had a couple of packages stolen from her before, and she was quite concerned that something like that was going to happen again sometime soon. Today, even. Who didn’t need hangers, even if they came from an opened box? Any package could have value to a serial eBay seller. Ugh, was she going to have to swear off eBay now? Probably. “You can have the popsicle sticks for your kid if you help me find the hangers.”

“Okay, I’m going to need you to breathe,” Madeline offered, gently placing her hands on the others shoulders, hoping to help her settle. She was younger than her sister - though Hadley would have probably known her anyways, because she always seemed to know everyone. “I doubt Amazon has stolen your hangers, but let’s figure out what’s happened with them.” 

Problem solving was easy - work yourself backwards until you found the source of the issue and rectify it from there. “Were they ever in your possession? Or are you waiting for them to be delivered? If it’s the latter, were they supposed to go to your house or the post office, because if it’s the post office, we’re gonna need to go there and see what’s going on. I’m constantly missing packages from them, so they’re well aware of who I am by now.” 

JOSIE: Sometimes I wonder if I would've had less teen angst If I didn't grow up here. Or more? Who knows. I've been using it as an excuse to allow Dallas to sleep in my bed, which sounds like a good idea until she decides to sprawl herself across like she's not 39 inches tall.

JOSIE: Yeah, they're working on something. Got something sent home. A memorial seems easier to explain than a murder.

JOSIE: I'll keep that in mind. Thank you! We should be good for now though. I think things just need to get back to normal. Soon, hopefully.

MADELINE: I'm pretty sure we were gonna have teen angst anyways. We grew up in the 90s. We practically invented it.

MADELINE: I should start going through Danica's bag again. She never tells me what's going on at school. But I did tell her to keep an eye out for Dallas - I know they're on opposite ends of the building but she's still there for another few months before going to the high school.

Sunny was lounging on the couch, his focus primarily on the pint of coffee ice cream in his hand and not the weather man who was filling in for Madeline on the tv.  It seemed like every corner of the town was painted by the Ellis tragedy.  The town was so close knit, of course it made sense.  Except he couldn’t make a house call or take a trip to the market without somebody giving their own theory or telling their own story about the family.  

His heart sank for his daughter, every dad wanted to protect their children from the tragedies of the real world and he felt so hopeless here.  He remembered young Amelia running around the backyard with the rest of her classmates at Danica’s last birthday party.  It was a surreal feeling.  One moment they were all here, the next they weren’t.  

Sunny hands Madeline the spoon with a hefty scoop of ice cream on it.  He considers her question, he did have a massive amount of vacation time piled up just waited to be used.  “Got anywhere in mind?  Danica has mentioned New York City a few times.  I blame your sister’s instagram for that one,” he chuckles.  

“She does idolize Hadley,” she mused, though she’d never been a city girl herself - St. Louis had been about as crazy as she could handle - her sister loved it, and Danica did seem to want to follow in everything the other Jordan did. She swallowed the coffee ice cream, thinking to herself. Their daughter was probably getting too old to be enthused about something like Disney anymore - it used to be so easy, traveling to St. Louis to see the arch or down to Oklahoma for Six Flags. 

“New York could be fun for her,” she toiled the idea in her head, letting it formulate. “I’m sure we could even see if my sister wants to see us - maybe take Danica out for a day to distract her from everything.” Who knew what Hadley was up to these days, but if Madeline explained what was happening - well, she did love being an aunt more than most her age might. 

She leaned forward for another spoonful of ice cream, knowing Sunny would oblige. There were enough museums to make it an excuse for an educational trip, too - and Danica might like Broadway, even if Madeline wasn’t a huge fan. “I should take to the station manager tomorrow, see if I can get an emergency vacation. If I can, I say we do it. We have the means to help her with distraction, why not?” 

JOSIE: I genuinely do not know what i'm going to do when Dallas isn't obsessed with me anymore. Good luck with the angst, though, I'm sure you're doing swimmingly. As swimmingly as one can. Teen angst paired with all of THIS has to be hell on earth.

JOSIE: I'm hoping the elementary school can find a way to talk to the kids about so I don't have to. Or at least, give me a place to start. Send home some verbiage? I'll take anything.

JOSIE: Living on a farm too is what I think makes it the scariest for me. Figured if there's ever a time to get a little anal, it's right now. Hoping it doesn't come to booby traps.

MADELINE: She alternates between never wanting me to leave the house and never wanting to see me. She's only 12! But she's been pretty close to us since all this happened.

MADELINE: They have to have some sort of memorial for the kids or something, right? They all went to the primary school. It would only make sense to help them heal.

JOSIE: How's she doing with it all? The classes are so small, you know?

JOSIE: She asked me where the twins went and why everyone was sad about them and I kind of panicked? Might've changed the subject, because i'm obviously mom of the year duh.

JOSIE: And already paid ADT like, WAY too much money to send someone out here to give me an alarm system.

MADELINE: Your guess is as good as mine. Sunny and I have to come up with some way to tackle this, but I'm at a total loss. Tracking tornados? Not a problem. Dealing with pre-teen angst? Absolute problem.

MADELINE: Hey, we're trying to grapple with it too. And she's still so young - at least Danica can understand that they're gone, even if none of us can understand the why or the how or anything.

Mason considers her for a second; she was right, it was her daughter who always asked for a complicated, messy, and odd mix of whatever her taste buds demanded. It was often a crime against food and Mason almost always made someone else handle it. Every time the plate came back empty, he lost a little more hope in the future of humanity.

But tonight it’s just Madeline, alone, past the middle of the night. She looks exhausted and it’s not that Mason was taking pity on her, but even he could admit that good food fixed a lot of problems. Plus she was hot. Total MILF. 

“I can do a burger,” he finally says, sliding off the counter and through the swinging doors that lead to the kitchen. He slips his apron on and turns his hat backwards before poking his head out through the service window.

 “Do you know what you want on it or just want me to make it up for you?”

“Up to you,” she replied easily, “I’m done making decisions for the night.” 

She could feel the weight of exhaustion on her shoulders - everyone at work talked about the recent tragedy 24/7, and at home, no one seemed to want to talk about it. She needed to figure out how to approach it - how to broach the subject without further traumatizing her own daughter - but how did you ask about such a thing? 

She’d rather help her with complex trigonometry. At least that she understood slightly. 

Still, Danica would wake up in a few hours, and Madeline would paste on a smile and kiss her daughter’s forehead before sending her off to school where four of her classmates were now gone from. She needed her energy, and while she was usually distracted during these late nights with Jas chattering away on the other side of the counter, she noticed the diner was mysteriously...quiet for the evening. “Where’s your sidekick?” she asked, placing her phone down face first - no one would bother her except Sunny this late, and only if something tragic happened to them. “Don’t tell me a customer finally did her in - I’ve been warning her for years to keep her mouth shut around some people.” 

where: main street

status: open @nohopestarters​

“Alright, let’s just think this whole thing through here,” Andrew started saying, crossing his hands on his lap as he took a small breathe to organize his thoughts on the matter. “Women generally likes flowers and small gestures, that clearly shows that we care and think of them, right? So why the hell is she still mad at me for forgetting her birthday?” Granted forgetting his sister’s birthday was bad, but she clearly was just making a big case of that fact, right?

.

“You forgot her birthday,” Madeline sighed dramatically, shaking her head at Andrew. Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered - even after growing up together, she couldn’t truly be mad at Andrew’s ignorance. It was pointless - he was too charming, his smile too cute to be angry at for too long. “Think about it - would your wife be pleased if you forgot her birthday? No. And you’ve known your sister even longer.” She raised an eyebrow - “you’re gonna have to do better than flowers. You’re gonna have to come up with a bigger ‘sorry’.” 

JOSIE: so like, any advice on explaining to your very curious six year old daughter what's happening with all of this?

JOSIE: because like, I don't think anyone knows what exactly is happening, and this wasn't exactly covered in the parenting handbook I was probably supposed to read.

MADELINE: I wish. I have no idea how to talk to my 12 year old about this.

Mason likes the late shift at The Grill. There were usually less customers and that meant that the time he spent working while on his shift was pretty minimal. He makes sure everything is clean, of course, and bitches about whatever changes someone made to his kitchen while he was gone; but mostly, he just sits on the counter and tried to throw a rubber ball into the trashcans increasingly complicated ways.

Tonight is been the slowest of the week so far and his kitchen has been untouched for about two hours. He’s not even watching the door when the little bell jingles, but he definitely sees who comes in.

“Nope,” he says immediately. “Don’t even think about it. Your usual is disgusting and I just cleaned the flat top.”

Though she was simply the weathergirl, anytime a major news event happened, they all had to pull even later nights. It didn’t matter that Madeline had no real journalism background, aside from a few classes in college for her degree, or that she was touched - albeit slightly removed - by the tragedy in her hometown. Their main anchor was determined to solve the crime, which meant they were all there far past the ending of the 10pm news, and cooking at home would only wake Sunny and Danica. 

The Grill was the perfect substitute.