Sage Creek (5 page)

“What will Lonesome Way do without Roy’s?”

“Well, there’s still the Double Cross Bar and Grill and the Lucky Punch Saloon. And the drive-throughs, but . . .”

Lissie shrugged, and in her head, Sophie finished the words she hadn’t spoken aloud.

Sophie could picture the small round tables in the front half of Roy’s Diner. The black vinyl booths in back. The white-tiled floor and homey pictures of old cabins, cattle, and horses on the green walls. Roy’s Diner served breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Its menu was extensive, from pancakes and sausages to hamburgers, milk shakes, chicken pot pie, and blueberry crumble.

“So? You coming?” Lissie winked at Ivy.

“Wild bears swarming up Main Street couldn’t keep me away. But I’ll drive. Your job is to sit back, relax, and count the baby’s kicks.” She turned to Ivy.

The girl had looked surprised when Lissie invited her to join them.

“You don’t mind if I tag along?”

“It sounds great. If Aunt Liss gets tired, then you two can go over to Roy’s while I finish shopping. Sometimes it takes me a while to try clothes on and decide and stuff.”

“Now that sounds like a plan.” Sophie remembered all too well the importance of back-to-school clothes. Particularly the seemingly momentous choices that would help determine one’s social standing in middle school. Ivy seemed to feel she had her work cut out for her.

“What are we waiting for then?” Sophie began loading the plates in the dishwasher with quick efficiency, then wiped down the table with a pink dishrag. As Lissie held out a hand, Ivy helped her rise off the kitchen chair.

“I’m only worried about one thing.” Lissie smoothed her top down over her bulging belly. “I hope you two can keep up with me.”

Chapter Three

Ivy’s cell phone rang while she was in the dressing room zipping up the cutest pair of black jeans she’d ever seen. Even before she grabbed the cell, her stomach started to hurt over what the caller ID might show.

But it was just her dad, so her heartbeat slowed down and the pain in her stomach eased away.

“Dad, did you get the mares?”

“One of them so far. She’s a beauty, Ivy. The other one’s coming up for bidding later.”

Joy rushed through her. A new mare. Maybe two mares. She could hardly wait to see them. “And what about the gelding, the one Mr. Henry said was skittish?”

“Got him too, baby. We’re going to have our work cut out for us.”

“Yeah, Dad, right. You mean, your work.” He never let her actually train the horses, not the difficult ones. She got to feed them, brush them, muck out their stalls SAGE CREEK 33 and stuff, all the boring work, but she didn’t get to start them or ride them until her dad had finished what he called “working out the kinks.”

It sucked.

She was eleven, not a little kid anymore, and she knew almost as much about horses as he did. And was just as good a rider. It wasn’t fair.

“Are you bringing him home today? I can see him tonight?”

“I’m bringing the mares back, honey. Shiloh will be delivered in a few days. You leave any clothes on the hangers, or have you bought everything in the store by now?”

“Very funny, Dad. Aunt Liss bought me a really cool shirt as a present, and I found khakis I can wear to Val’s party. And Aunt Liss’s friend Sophie spotted this pink top on sale—it’s sweet, the best top ever, and it costs ten dollars less than when I saw it online the other day.”

It had been kind of nice, actually, having Aunt Liss’s friend come along with them to town. Sophie was really pretty and sophisticated, like a model on TV, and her clothes were cool. She’d hand-picked a few other tops Ivy really liked too, before she and Aunt Liss went over to Roy’s for lunch.

Ivy was supposed to meet them there. But she still had lots more clothes to try on. Getting super-cute new clothes for school was way more important than eating lunch.

“Good deal, Ives. Listen, I’ll be bidding on the second mare at three, then I’ll head back,” her father said.

“Dad, don’t forget. I told Shannon’s mom I could come for supper. That’s still okay, right? I don’t have to eat supper at home with you, do I?”

The moment Ivy said the words, she knew they came out wrong. It’s not that she didn’t like eating with her dad. It was pretty fun, most of the time, unless he started asking too many questions, trying to find out if any of her friends were smoking or getting into drugs or anything like that. But she and Shannon had stuff to discuss tonight. Important stuff. Like school, and what to wear the first day. And Nate Miles.

Ivy had liked Nate since last spring. But she’d only gotten up the nerve to talk to him once, when she ran into him at the beginning of June outside the hardware store while her dad was inside buying lightbulbs or something.

“I mean, if you want to have supper together, that’s okay—” she backtracked, feeling guilty.

“Are you kidding? Without you around, I can be a slob, eat with my toes, and use my shirt for a napkin.”

“Dad!” She wanted to sound annoyed, but she couldn’t help it; she laughed. A rush of relief ran through her.

“You don’t ever have to worry about babysitting me.” He was using that serious voice now, the one that he used just before he planned to make a lame joke. “I’m busy too. Got myself a hot date getting a couple of really cute mares settled into their stalls.”

“Hilarious, Dad. If it wasn’t so pathetic.”

He had to go then, so she stuffed her cell back in her purse and tried to concentrate on how she looked in the jeans, but she just couldn’t get into it now. She kept having this feeling her cell was going to ring again, and this time it would be the call she was waiting for—and also dreading.

Maybe she wouldn’t answer it. She hadn’t answered last time. That was two days ago. And so far, no more tries.

Maybe there would
never
be another try.

Then how would she feel?

Her stomach started to hurt again. She might have already lost her chance.

So what,
she thought, hauling the jeans and a heap of other clothes from the dressing room, approaching the crowded sales counter with her arms full.
I don’t care. If I cared, I’d have answered the last time, right?

But sure enough, just as she gave Erma Wilkins the credit card her dad had told her to use, her cell rang again. And it was the phone number she’d been watching for.

“Call back in ten minutes, okay?” She hadn’t even said hello, and she didn’t wait for an answer but snapped the phone closed, her throat dry.

Ivy glanced around, feeling like everyone in Top to Toe was staring at her. Like everyone knew who she was talking to.

But Erma Wilkins was smiling her slight, crooked smile, handing back the credit card, and thrusting the big shopping bag at her over the counter.

A few feet away, Liza Craig and her mom were sifting through a table of neatly folded cable sweaters. Some other girls she knew from school were modeling jeans and pullovers for their moms in front of the big mirror.

No one was looking at her. No one was paying any attention.

“You say hello to your daddy for me, Ivy, all right? Tell him Erma said hey.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Outside, she glanced around, then ducked toward the alley behind First Street. She didn’t want to meet Aunt Liss and Sophie at Roy’s until after the call.

But now she’d have to wait. Eight more minutes.

Her stomach roiled. She felt like she might throw up. But she told herself to stop acting like a baby.

The trouble was, when the call came—
if
the call came—she had no idea what she was going to say.

Chapter Four

Sophie breathed in the delicious smells of the oldfashioned diner. Fried chicken and blueberry pie. Beef gravy and mashed potatoes. Burgers and onions crisping on a grill.

The big cozy diner with its antique cash register, curving display counter for pies and baked goods, and weathered booths was so intrinsic to Lonesome Way that a hard little jolt had twitched through her when she’d seen the sign in the front window with her own eyes.

“I still can’t believe Roy’s is closing,” she murmured.

“Believe it, girl.” Lil Waller strode past with two tall glasses of sweet tea in her work-roughened hands.

She was a big-boned woman, almost seventy, with a chin like a shovel and a smoker’s rasp, even though she’d given up her Camels ten years back.

“We’re headed to Laramie in six days—count ’em. And I can hardly wait. It’s time we lived closer to our kids. Me and Roy have had enough.”

Lil handed Sophie and Lissie setups just as Roy himself trudged from the kitchen bearing two large white plates piled with burgers and pickles and French fries. Roy Waller was tall and thin as a scarecrow, wearing his grease-splattered apron over a chambray shirt and jeans, as well as a frown so perpetual that when Sophie was younger she’d wondered if he was born with it.

“Enough? Enough don’t begin to cover it,” he tossed out as he headed toward the front of the diner. “We had a good long run, but now we’re kicking back, as you young people say. Anyone got any objections, they can take it up with me at the fishing hole over in Laramie. So long as they don’t scare away the fish.”

Lil rolled her eyes. “The man claims he’s going to do nothing but fish five days a week—and take the grandkids to the movies. I’ll believe it when I see it. Me, I’m gonna join a book club, knit when I’m not reading, and put my aching feet up for a change. Nobody better try’n stop me.”

“No one deserves it more than you do, Lil,” Sophie said warmly as Lil grabbed a couple of menus and handed one to her and one to Lissie.

“Everyone in town’s going to miss the both of you. Except this little one.” Lissie placed a hand across her belly. “She’ll never get to taste your hash browns, but at least the poor thing won’t know what she’s missing.”

“There you go.” Lil Waller patted Lissie’s shoulder, then turned her shrewd gaze on Sophie.

“Haven’t seen you around these parts for far too long.” Her gruff voice softened with affection. “I heard all about you going through a rough patch back there in San Francisco. Don’t let it get to you, you hear?”

Sophie pasted a smile on her face. Was there one person in this town who didn’t know every inch of her business? She did
not
relish being guest of honor at a Lonesome Way pity party. Unfortunately, that old saying of her father’s was true—if one person in Lonesome Way told a joke, the whole town laughed.

“I’m doing fine, Lil, honest. Don’t worry about me.”

Lil shot her a look that plainly said she knew Sophie was lying through her teeth, but just this once, she’d let her get away with it.

After Sophie and Lissie ordered grilled chicken sandwiches, carrot and raisin coleslaw, and a heaping platter of Roy’s special thick French fries on the side, Lissie ran down everyone who was coming to the baby shower.

Sophie tried to listen, but she was distracted, caught up in the familiar sounds and memories of the diner, in the smells of seared meat, fried onions, and the warm fresh-baked pies cooling on the counter along the back wall.

Her own recipe for cherry rhubarb pie had been acquired right here—scribbled down for her on an order pad by Lil more than a dozen years ago. For Sophie’s money, it was still the best cherry rhubarb pie she’d ever tasted.

Of course, when it came to her famous cinnamon buns, the ones that had first put Sweet Sensations on the map, that recipe was all Gran’s.

There were only a dozen people in Roy’s right now—some ranch hands in boots, T-shirts, and jeans; a couple of high school kids, including a boy and a girl laughing and throwing French fries at each other; and a thin, tiredlooking blond woman feeding bits of a grilled cheese sandwich to a toddler.

Across the aisle, Sheriff Teddy Hodge, who’d been Lonesome Way’s sheriff for as long as she could remember, was drinking a cup of black coffee and working his pencil across a crossword puzzle in a thin booklet. A trio of hikers were engaged in energetic discussion, their heads bent over a map.