The Last Chance Cafe

by Linda Lael Miller

  Kiera spoke quietly, intent upon whatever star she’d chosen to hang her dreams upon. “I wish we could stay right here at Primrose Creek, forever and ever, with Trojan and Madge and Chance.”

  Hallie blinked, and invisible fingers tightened around her heart. She knew only too well that neither child’s wish would be granted, but nothing would have made her shatter their hopes. She wanted them to believe in good things.

  Kiera caught her off guard. “What’s your wish, Mommy?” she asked.

  Hallie’s throat clenched, the way her heart had, moments before. To be safe, she thought, but she kept that to herself, too. “I just want the three of us to be together, and happy, for always and always,” she managed, at some length.

  “Me, too,” Kiera agreed.

  Kiley was plodding toward the back door, her small shoulders stooped. “Where do you suppose Daddy is tonight?” she asked, almost whispering. The sad thing was, she clearly didn’t expect an answer.

  5

  H allie was washing her hands at the kitchen sink that night after supper when she saw a truck pull in, and immediately recognized the vehicle as Chance’s. He parked near the corral, climbed out, glanced toward the house once, and then headed for the darkened barn. She saw the lights go on inside, and wondered at the little thrill of agitated delight the man’s arrival had stirred in her. She was at once glad he was there, and anxious to assure him that she’d been planning to feed the animals as soon as she’d gotten the girls to bed. It was important that he didn’t think she was irresponsible. She reached for her jacket, told the girls to put on their pajamas and brush their teeth, that she’d be back in a few minutes, and hurried out. Just as she reached the spill of light flowing from the open barn doors, she heard the distant cry of something fierce and wild, and a chill sprinted up her spine. She thrust her hands into her pockets and glanced back at the house, instinctively making sure her children were safe. It would be just like them to follow her, with or without their coats, in spite of her instructions that they stay put.

  Chance was pouring a bucket of oats and alfalfa pellets into one of the horse feeders. “Howdy,” he said, with a light touch to the brim of his hat.

  She stood still, just inside the doorway, shoulders straight. “You don’t have to do my work,” she said carefully.

  Chance grinned and went back to refill the bucket. “Just being neighborly,” he said. He looked, and sounded, like a cowboy in a Western movie. Hallie was charmed, in spite of herself.

  Get a grip, she thought. You’re just passing through, remember?

  The chilling animal sound, a bone-numbing shriek, came again, before she could think of a reply, and she stiffened in fear. “What is that?” she whispered.

  Chance’s expression had turned serious. “Cougar,” he said.

  She swallowed hard. “Is it close?”

  “Hard to tell,” he replied. “It could be as far off as a mile, or as close as the other side of the creek.”

  “My God,” she said. In the near distance, she heard the kitchen door open and close, and was instantly on high-alert. She turned to run back to the house, but the girls were already trundling toward her, through the deep, crusted snow, laughing gleefully as they came.

  “It’s all right,” Chance said quietly, and she realized he was beside her, that he’d taken a light but firm grip on her arm. A rifle had materialized in his free hand; he held it loosely, an expert. Hallie realized distractedly that the gun must have been leaning against the wall, just inside the barn door, since his arrival. “Don’t scare them.”

  The cougar screamed again, farther away this time, thank God, and the twins heard it, freezing halfway between the barn and the house, stiff as ice sculptures.

  “Here,” Chance said, and shoved the rifle into Hallie’s hands. “I’ll get them. Keep your finger away from the trigger unless you see the cat.”

  With that, Chance strode off toward the kids. Hallie waited for a moment, still in shock, then hurried after him. He scooped Kiera up in one arm, and Kiley in the other, and both of them clung to him, their little arms wound around his neck.

  He spoke gently, with a smile in his voice. “You’re okay,” he said.

  Hallie stood trembling, rifle in hand. She caught herself wanting to lean on this man, if only in a very small way, and resisted the feeling for all she was worth.

  “I thought I told you two to stay inside,” she said, looking from Kiera’s face to Kiley’s.

  “What was that noise?” Kiera asked, addressing the question to Chance. It probably seemed the safer course, given that Hallie was obviously upset.

  Chance linked gazes with Hallie. “It was a cougar,” he said. “Let’s get you inside, where it’s warm.”

  They trooped into the house, Chance and the girls in the lead. Hallie brought the gun, terrified the whole way that it would go off on its own.

  Kiera and Kiley hurried off to get ready for bed, the moment Chance had set them on their feet, and he turned to face Hallie. He grinned and relieved her of the rifle.

  “I’ll finish the chores,” he said.

  Her pride, temporarily routed by fear, kicked in again. “I’m accustomed to hard work, Mr. Qualtrough,” she said. At Princess and the Pea, she’d often put in fourteen-hour stints on site, then spent even more time going over spread sheets and invoices at home. She was a workaholic, according to everybody she knew.

  Chance shook his head, took off his hat, put it on again, plainly exasperated. She knew he thought she was being stiff-necked; she also knew his assessment was dead right. She wanted so much to tell him everything then, about Joel, and the cashbox hidden in the plastic Virgin Mary, and the cops she’d seen in the Polaroids, but she simply could not afford to risk opening her heart to this man, even by a crack. There was simply too much at stake.

  “You’d better keep this,” he said, ignoring her words, indicating the rifle.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know how to use it.” She was still fighting a singular yearning to extend some sort of olive branch, invite him in for coffee at the kitchen table, even tell him a little of her story. It was hard, knowing all that she knew, and being so very alone in that knowing, too frightened to share the burden with someone else. “I don’t mean to seem ungrateful,” she said, at last.

  “I could teach you,” he said.

  “I’m scared,” she confessed, hugging herself.

  “All the more reason to learn,” he answered.

  She backtracked, started over, after drawing a deep breath and letting it out very slowly. “I agreed to look after Jessie’s house and animals,” she said, “in return for a place to stay. I just want to keep my end of the bargain, that’s all.”

  He took off his hat again, shoved splayed fingers through his hair. Then he grinned at her, and because her defenses were down, because she hadn’t had a chance to steady herself after the last onslaught of emotion, her knees nearly buckled with the impact. “I understand that,” he said. “You can start tomorrow.” Then, after hanging the rifle above the door, utilizing two hooks Hallie hadn’t noticed before, he went out.

  Hallie took a few moments to recover her composure, then locked the door and went up the rear stairs to find her daughters.

  They were both in the bathtub, up to their chests in bubbles.

  “Are we in trouble?” Kiley asked.

  Hallie sat down on the toilet seat lid, sighed. “Should you be?”

  The twins exchanged glances. “Maybe,” Kiera allowed.

  Hallie bit back a smile. “Next time I tell you to do something,” she said, “I expect you to obey me. Is that clear?”

  Both children nodded, their expressions solemn. Then Kiley piped up. “Mr. Qualtrough had a gun,” she said.

  Hallie waited, unsure what to say. The children had never been around firearms before, except for seeing Lou’s service revolver, always from a safe distance, and it was hard to know what conclusions they’d drawn about Chance’s rifle. She didn’t want to
plant any ideas, so she merely nodded.

  “If the cougar tried to eat us,” Kiley said, “he would have shot it.”

  “The cougar was a long way off,” Hallie said. Her voice sounded hollow, and odd, like it was being piped in from somewhere other than her own throat. She had a sense, a brief flash, of what it must have been like to be one of the women who had originally settled this land alongside Primrose Creek, far from familiar places and people, virtually on her own in a beautiful, treacherous frontier, with loved ones to protect. Maybe she would learn to shoot.

  “Are we going to school tomorrow?” Kiera asked.

  Hallie reached for a washcloth and soap, knelt beside the large tub, and began scrubbing their small backs. “I was thinking we might do lessons right here at home, in the evenings,” she said. “Maybe you could go to Evie’s play-group some afternoons.”

  Both children seemed delighted. “You’d be our teacher?” Kiera asked.

  “Yes,” Hallie said. “We can try it, anyhow.”

  “Wow,” Kiley commented.

  When their bath was finished, and they’d both dried off with towels and gotten into their pajamas, Hallie oversaw the ritual of brushing and flossing, then tucked her daughters into their twin beds and read them an article from an old issue of Farm Journal, that being the first thing that came to hand. Halfway through the discourse on tractor maintenance, they were both asleep.

  Hallie smiled, closed the magazine, kissed both Kiera and Kiley on the forehead, and sneaked out of the room.

  Downstairs, she went immediately to the window over the kitchen sink, looking for Chance. He’d finished his work and gone, for the barn was dark, and there was no sign of the truck.

  Letting the curtain fall back into place, Hallie walked away from the window, made double-sure the doors were locked, and shut off the kitchen lights.

  Curiosity, not to mention a deep instinct for self-preservation, sent her to the computer instead of back upstairs, to her bed. She switched the machine on, then clicked the icon that would link her with Jessie’s server.

  While the program was loading—she’d used the same service herself, and it could be slower than the Second Coming when there was a lot of traffic on the Web—she went into the kitchen again, rummaged through the cupboards until she found tea bags and a mug, and brewed herself a pick-me-up in Jessie’s microwave. By the time she returned to the living room, the computer was ready to roll.

  She rested her fingers lightly on the keys, her heart racing a little, and went over everything she knew about computers and the Internet, which was comparatively little. She was paranoid when it came to giving away her location, and it would be all too easy to do just that, if she wasn’t careful about every single thing she did. Still, she needed to know if there were any new developments.

  Jessie’s server allowed for a total of seven screen names, and only one was in use. Anybody who might try to trace an e-mail back to its source—and she wasn’t about to connect with any of her friends back in Arizona in any event—would get only as far as Jessie’s electronic mailbox. Wouldn’t they? Besides, she wasn’t going to stay around Primrose Creek all that long. She mustn’t allow herself to get too comfortable, mustn’t come to care too much for the town or the people.

  She bit her lip, flexing her fingers above the keyboard, considering potential screen names. Finally, she chose “Primrose,” and composed a short message for Jessie. Hello from Primrose Creek. This is Hallie. She paused to think, uncertain how to go on. How to establish a relationship with her benefactor, without revealing too much. The horses seem to be okay, and Chance is sort of overseeing things. The Jeep runs fine. I guess that’s all for now, except to say thanks. You can’t imagine what your kindness, trust and generosity mean to me. I won’t let you down, I promise. Hallie.

  She hit Send, and waggled her fingers again. She sucked in a breath, held it in puffed cheeks, let it out with a whoosh. She was thinking of Chance, sitting in that same chair the night before, checking . . . what? Her name? There were a surprising number of Hallie O’Rourkes in the world, living and dead; she’d found dozens of them online when she’d done the research in a northern California library, having decided to take back the surname she’d had at birth, and helped herself to a defunct Social Security number.

  Of course, she knew exactly what Chance had been doing. Trying to find out more about her background, and her connection with Lou, whose name he’d seen on the truck title. Irrational panic swept over her and for a few moments she had to battle a purely adrenal urge to jump up, snatch her children from their beds, and race off into the night.

  She closed her eyes, breathed deeply. Calmed herself.

  Then, hands shaking, she started a search of her own, typing Lou’s name into the small box. A great many Lou Waitlins came up, with various spellings, but even with her limited experience, she was soon gazing, in horrified disbelief, at an archived newspaper article, bearing the headline,FORMER PHOENIX POLICEMAN KILLED IN ROBBERY.

  Nausea roiled in Hallie’s stomach. She clasped the bridge of her nose between a thumb and forefinger, rubbing hard. She didn’t need to read the piece; she knew the gruesome details by heart, and the image of Lou, lying in his coffin, would never leave her. Dear God in heaven, how she wished she could forget. . . .

  Elbows braced on the edges of Jessie’s compact computer desk, Hallie covered her face with both hands and pushed past the sad memories, into the sweet sanction of earlier times. She went back to her first meeting with Lou—she’d been a year younger than the twins were now—and felt a sense of calmness seeping into her spirit.

  It was a week before Christmas, and her mother, Cheryl, divorced since Hallie was a baby, and working as a teller at a bank, had begun dating a man she’d met at work, a young beat cop named Lou Waitlin. When he’d come to pick Cheryl up that evening, for dinner and a movie, he’d brought along a take-out pizza for Hallie and her baby-sitter, a teenager who lived in the apartment across the hall.

  Hallie smiled a little, remembering. Pizza had been a rare treat in those days, money being in very short supply. She’d liked Lou immediately, and hoped he would stick around, though even then she’d been a little jaded where things like that were concerned. Kiley was like her in that way, trying to protect herself from disappointment by looking at the world through narrowed eyes.

  Lou had come back, of course. By the following Christmas, he and Hallie’s mother were married, and the three of them had moved into that modest but cozy brick house in Phoenix. They were a family.

  Hallie came back to herself, back to the present moment, and found that there were tears on her cheeks. She dashed them away with the heel of one palm, straightened her spine, reached for her cup. Its contents were lukewarm, but she sipped anyway, and felt at least partly restored. Ah, she thought, the marvels of ordinary tea. She printed out the article, and after a little more deep breathing and tea-sipping, forced herself to read it. No mention of her name, but she wasn’t out of the proverbial woods yet. Leaning in slightly, she ran a search for Lou’s obituary, which had been published in the Arizona Republic a few days after his death, and it came up almost instantly.

  Louis W. Waitlin, 58, died Tuesday of gunshot wounds. Waitlin, a Phoenix police officer with a twenty-year record of exemplary service to his credit . . . will be buried on Saturday, with full honors. . . . He is survived by his daughter, Helene Waitlin Royer, and two grandchildren. . . . In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Phoenix Police Department’s Victims’ Fund. . . .

  “Okay,” Hallie whispered, almost sick with relief. “Okay.” Sure, she was mentioned, but not by the name she was using. It wasn’t likely that Chance Qualtrough, or anyone else in Primrose Creek, would connect her with the woman mentioned in the obituary. Helene was her legal name, but she’d always been called Hallie.

  The musical sound of an Instant Message startled her so much that she nearly spilled her tea. She blinked, thinking the sender might be
some random Web surfer, trying to strike up a conversation, then realized who it was.

  Hi, Hallie. Jessie here. I’m on my laptop computer. I went online a few minutes ago, and got that “your account is in use” report, so I’m using a different screen name.

  A little dizzy, Hallie hesitated briefly before typing her response. How are you?

  The answer was slow in coming. Tired. Homesick. Eager to get back to my weaving projects.

  I’ve been admiring your work, Hallie wrote quickly, and in all truth. The weavings hung throughout the house were as intricately worked as medieval tapestries, although their subjects were always Indian women, performing various tasks. You have an amazing talent.

  Thank you, came the eventual reply. But enough about me. Tell me about you.

  Hallie caught her breath. She had to say something, but what? I’m thirty-two, she typed, and I have two daughters, as you know. I used to run a restaurant, and I’m divorced.

  Chance must like you, Jessie answered. He doesn’t usually take to strangers.

  Hallie scraped her lower lip with her teeth. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say, at least, nothing safe. He’s been kind, she replied.

  Guess I’d better get myself to bed, Jessie went on. Big day tomorrow. Oh, and there’s room service with my midnight snack.

  Hallie smiled, rested her fingers on the keys. Good night, she wrote. And thank you.

  Good night, and you’re welcome. Jessie was gone, and Hallie’s aloneness seemed deeper, more profound. She exited the online server, then shut down the computer and covered it neatly. She rinsed out her cup in the kitchen sink, checked the locks yet again, turned off various lights, and headed upstairs.

  She was tired, but she dreaded sleeping. She felt all the more vulnerable when she closed her eyes, as though she were letting down her guard. She took a bath, looked in on the girls, who were resting well, and then crawled into bed. She started to read a mystery novel she’d borrowed from Jessie’s bookshelves downstairs, but her eyes wouldn’t focus. With a yawn, she switched off the bedside lamp, slid down between the sheets, and told herself everything would be all right. She would see to it.