Over the Moon at the Big Lizard Diner

by Lisa Wingate

  Sydney …

  Anxiety crept over me, blocking out the sunrise and the cool, sweet breeze. You’re not up here to loll around in a teenage fantasy, I reminded myself. You’re up here to e-mail Sydney.

  A new sound cut through the stillness, a human sound, someone whistling long and loud. Mr. Grits perked his ears, and I leaned forward on the bench. Below, the horses lifted their heads, whinnied and cavorted in a whirling waltz of motion. The whistle came again, and as if by some silent agreement, the herd bolted, racing across the valley like the shadow of some giant beast gliding between earth and sky.

  Sydney should be here to see this, I thought, grabbing the digital camera from my backpack just as the herd topped a hill. The picture captured the moment perfectly—the valley, the shadows, the crimson-lined clouds, the ranch buildings squatting among the trees, the cowboy sitting atop a silvery-blue horse near the pasture gate… .

  The cowboy? Lowering the camera, I noticed him for the first time. He’d emerged from the trees while I was taking pictures. He whistled once more as the horses streamed past, bolting through the gateway into the barnyard. I knew him even from this far away. There was something unmistakable about his movements as he steadied his nervous mount, then swung the gate closed behind the horses.

  I moved to the edge of the bluff, watching as he latched the gate, then stood gazing at the far hills for what seemed like forever. All of a sudden, I realized it wasn’t Jeremiah Truitt I had fantasized about a few minutes before; it was Zach.

  He turned, looked up the hill, as if he knew I was there, and I blushed from head to toe, as if we were face-to-face. Surely he didn’t know I was watching him. Surely he couldn’t see me all the way up here… .

  Beside me, Mr. Grits threw his head back and let out a long “Ba-roo-roo-ooo!” that echoed through the canyon like a foghorn.

  So much for remaining undetected.

  Shading his eyes, Zach zeroed in on me and waved. Sheepishly, I lifted my hand in return, then proceeded back to the bench, my heart pounding and an odd tingle of excitement ping-ponging through my body.

  I tried not to think about what that meant, as I set up my communications equipment like a secret agent in a low-budget spy thriller. It felt fairly ridiculous, but Jocelyn was right; the cell phone picked up a signal, and within moments I was on the Internet. Snapping a quick picture of Mr. Grits in his pink fliggie, I downloaded the photo of him and the one of the horse herd, attached them to my e-mail, and sent them whizzing through the Internet to my daughter. When the message was safely away, I punched up Sydney’s message to me, which she would have probably written before bed, and normally I would have read late the night before.

  Her e-mail didn’t say much, just the normal things. Her dad was busy working. He left before she woke up, and she wasn’t sure when he’d be home for the night. Whitney had taken her shopping. She was learning some more Spanish. She played dolls in the courtyard with the housekeeper’s little girl, but Sydney’s dolls didn’t speak Spanish, so it was hard for them to talk to Rosa’s dolls. All the TV programs were in Spanish, so she couldn’t understand them, but it was funny to see Barney the Dinosaur singing “I Love You,You Love Me” in Spanish. She missed me a lot, especially when she went to bed at night, but I shouldn’t worry about her, because she was eight, after all. Tomorrow night wouldn’t be so bad, because her dad was having a party for his crew from the dig. They’d found several partial hadrosaurid skeletons, one of which had an actual tooth of a predator, possibly a Gorgosaurus, in it. Everyone was excited. Her dad said that could be a big enough find to make some of the magazines, which would bring in “big bucks” to fund a longer dig. He was sure they were close to unearthing a nearly complete skeleton. If he could dig long enough, he would find it, and then there would be really “big bucks,” and he’d get in National Geographic again. Sydney thought that would be “cool.”

  Cool, in spite of the fact that this was his first summer with his daughter, and all he could think about was the dig.

  Really cool. I wondered if he spared her a single thought in the course of his day, until he drifted in, exhausted, mellow, and probably halfway looped from stopping off for cerveza with his crew. If he was going to bring them home with him tonight, I hoped he made sure that they were reasonably sober and decent around Sydney. I didn’t want her hanging around the fringes of some grown-up party, exposed to … well, who knew what? Geoff wouldn’t think to look out for her, and he hired all kinds of riffraff on his crews.

  Panic tightened my throat, and I let my head fall into my hand, muttering, “God,” trying not to imagine the worst. Surely Whitney would watch her. She seemed to be trying to make a go of things with Sydney, even if Geoff wasn’t. Surely, if things got out of hand with the drinking and the partying, Whitney would send Sydney to bed.

  Then again, she didn’t send Sydney to bed on any other night. Whitney didn’t have any idea that eight-year-old girls needed bedtimes. To Whitney, Sydney was just like another college friend, visiting for the summer. Bedtime didn’t mean bedtime; it was just the time when Whitney went to her room to take a bath and lounge in front of the bedroom TV. Sydney went to the computer and used her talk-and-type software to compose her nightly e-mail to me, then wandered around until midnight, one, two a.m. until her father came home or she fell asleep somewhere, exhausted.

  I blew out a long breath, took in another, and blew out again, remembering Jocelyn’s advice from the day before. Sydney wasn’t in any imminent danger, and I had to allow her time to find out who her father and new stepmother were, and what kind of a relationship she could have with them. If I didn’t, she would never forgive me, and she would always wonder. I had to be patient, give it some time, have faith, Laura would have said. It was exactly the kind of thing my mother would have told me. Laura was becoming more like Mom every day.

  Who was I becoming more like? Dad? More off in my own world, more solitary and self-contained? Disconnected like he was, shell-shocked, not from tours of duty, but from a bad divorce and a husband who couldn’t love my perfect little girl? Did I really want to be like that, a sleepwalker insulated from everything, including the yearnings of my own heart?

  Shaking off the thoughts, I composed one last message to Sydney, with a delayed delivery time so it would arrive in the evening.

  MOMMY LOVES YOU, BABY GIRL. HAVE A GOOD SLEEP. DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME. I’M FINE. IF I DON’T GET TO E-MAIL YOU AGAIN TODAY, HERE’S YOUR GOOD-NIGHT KISS, OK? IT’S A GREAT BIG SMOOCHEROO ON YOUR FOREHEAD. SWEET DREAMS, ANGEL. MOM.

  Hopefully, she would get the second e-mail before she went to bed and be reminded that someone out there loved her desperately and missed her every moment.

  It would be just like tucking her in. From a thousand miles away.

  Sitting there looking at the blank screen, I considered something else—another possibility, an idea that was both tempting and repulsive. I could e-mail Geoff about the stolen tracks. If anyone knew where something like that might turn up for sale, it would be him, since he teetered on the edge of shady paleontology himself. If we talked about the tracks, it might open the door to dialogue about Sydney. Right now, we weren’t speaking at all.

  Swallowing hard, I punched up a new mail window. My pride burned going down. Dear Geoff. I wanted strike his name from the page, erase it from my life and my memory. I wonder if I could ask you about something totally unrelated to family issues… . Family issues. Such an innocuous-sounding euphemism. I am in Texas right now, working on a project. See? Not sitting home, curled in the fetal position crying my eyes out …

  I paused with the cursor on the delete button, again considering erasing the message. Beside me, Mr. Grits laid his head on the bench, lending moral support. Stroking his soft fur, I thought through the facts of the fossil theft—just the facts—then typed them into the computer. I added Gracie’s name and the sheriff’s department e-mail address so Geoff couldn’t accuse me of inventing the story as an excuse to pump him for informati
on about Sydney’s visit. Gritting my teeth, I pushed send before I could change my mind.

  “I hope that was a good idea,” I muttered, then opened a new window to type a message to Gracie at the sheriff’s department. I copied the fossil description I’d sent to Geoff, then listed tools that had probably been used in the removal, including parts and supplies that might have been purchased recently, such as blades for the diamond saw, compressed air, and rock-splitting feathers. If those things were bought locally, perhaps Gracie could track down the buyers. It wasn’t much of a lead, but at least it was something. I forwarded a copy of the e-mail to Collie, in case some of it might be useful for her article about the fossil theft. At the bottom I added a note.

  EVERYTHING’S GOOD SO FAR THIS MORNING. THE CABIN IS ADORABLE. YOU WERE RIGHT: I NEEDED A VACATION. TODAY SHOULD BE AN ADVENTURE. I’LL SEND MORE INFO FOR THE ARTICLE LATER, AFTER I’VE HAD A CHANCE TO LOOK THROUGH POP’S MEMENTOS ABOUT THE TRACKS.

  LOVE FROM THE BIG LIZARD BOTTOM—

  LINDSEY

  Clicking the send button, I closed the laptop and took one last look at the valley. Both the horse herd and the cowboy had disappeared into the tree-covered barnyard. Below, only the occasional sound of a horse whinnying, or the clang of metal on metal, or the far-off rumble of an engine testified to the fact that the ranch headquarters was waking up. Which meant that I needed to get moving, as well. I had a full day ahead of me. There were the dinosaur tracks to investigate, and the very intriguing possibility of more tracks or other fossil evidence in the vicinity. The notes and journals of Caroline Truitt might provide more clues, but to get them, I’d have to go see Pop at the ranch house. That would probably take a while. Pop obviously liked to tell stories. If I hung around the ranch headquarters part of the day, I might get to talk with some of the cowboys who worked there. Given time, I could probably get Jimmy Hawthorne to spill just about anything he knew. My cover as amateur historian and curious-tourist-slash-psychotherapy-patient would allow me to ask all sorts of dumb questions.

  My cover … I groaned under my breath. Before I could do anything else, I had to attend horse psychology class with the college students from UT.

  I tried to picture what it might be like, as I picked up Mr. Grits’s makeshift leash and followed him across the meadow of Indian blankets, through the maze of boulders, and down the hill. No potential images of horse therapy class crystallized in my mind, because I had absolutely no idea what I’d gotten myself into. I hadn’t really read the article Laura had given me, or asked any questions of Collie or Jocelyn. Nor had I told anyone about my bad experience years ago at Girl Scout camp, which was the beginning of my lifelong fear of horses. In Cairo, I’d once walked six miles through the desert, alone, in 120-degree heat, because I’d refused to get on a horse.

  Why hadn’t all of that occurred to me yesterday, when I was letting myself be talked into acting as an amateur sleuth? Everything had seemed perfectly logical, or at least reasonably close to logical, when I was road-weary and sleep deprived. Now, in the growing light of morning, it seemed idiotic.

  Surely Jocelyn didn’t intend for me to actually participate in the horse therapy class, whatever that entailed. Hadn’t she said something like, Just come by enough to make it look good? Undoubtedly that was why I hadn’t panicked when she and Collie suggested that I work “undercover.”

  Stop worrying, a voice said in my head. The confident voice of ten-year-old Tomboy Lindsey. You can handle it. It’ll be different. Fun. An adventure.You need something different. Your life is boring. Capital B.

  Which was true, for the most part. Cleaning fossils in the basement of a museum wasn’t the most thrilling day-to-day existence, but it was safe. There was no horseback riding involved, and never once had I been required to save a marauding dog from a band of gun-wielding cowboys… .

  I dropped the thought as we rounded the last bend in the path. Sighting the cabin, Mr. Grits lunged ahead, yanking me off my feet so that I stumbled forward, slid on a patch of wet dirt, hit the dewy lawn slightly off-balance and splay-footed, and proceeded to ski down the hill, clinging to the rope with the dog blazing ahead like a high-powered speedboat.

  Rounding the corner of the house, he skidded to a sudden halt, and I tripped forward, ending up in leapfrog position again. When I caught my balance, I realized we had an audience. He was leaning against the gate with his long legs crossed and his dark brows knotted like he’d seen one of those can’t-be-real acrobatic maneuvers on the Cirque du Soliel.

  His lips twisted into a wry one-sided smile, and I watched them with a strange fascination. “Guess now I know how my dog got out of the kennel.”

  NINE

  IQUIRKED A BROW AND SLANTED A GLANCE AT HIM THROUGH SLIGHTLY lowered lashes—a decidedly flirty maneuver. Stop that! Mommy Lindsey scolded. What in the world do you think you’re doing? You are somebody’s mother. Act like a grown-up.

  I barely heard her. Come on, live a little, Romance Lindsey countered. You’re a mother, not an android. You’re entitled to have a life. Lately even Sydney had been asking why I never dated. The divorced mothers of her friends dated… .

  Jutting a hip out jauntily, I twirled the dog rope around my finger, looking from the man to the beast, and back again. “Your dog?” I said sweetly, batting my lashes in false bemusement. “There must be some mistake. I believe this is my dog.”

  He drew back, making a tsk-tsk sound against his teeth. “I had plans for that dog. I know where I can find a great home for it. Nice house up on a hill. Little girl with curly red hair to play with. Just the place for him.” He grinned wickedly, and my stomach fluttered like a firecracker the instant the chain reaction starts inside the casing. Romance Lindsey and Tomboy Lindsey grabbed Mommy Lindsey, shoved her into a box, and sat down on the lid. Control Freak Lindsey ran away screaming.

  “Collie doesn’t want this dog,” I said, but I might as well have been saying, Hey, handsome, what’s your sign? I felt my lips slipping into a slow smile, tongue sliding along the edge of my teeth in a silent challenge. “Besides, he’s busy protecting me.”

  Zach’s dark brows lifted beneath his cowboy hat. “From what?” The words were so suggestive that a hot flush went through my body, pheromones or something racing in all directions.

  I swallowed hard. “Any number of things.”

  “Like … ?”

  “Like …” Like cowboys with crooked smiles and copious attitude. “Like … snakes, and”—and the things I’m thinking right now—“and wild”—urges … uhh—“animals, and other things.”

  “Other things?” His lips twisted into a question mark, waiting for me to further clarify.

  Which, of course, I did not. I pointed at him, saying, “You’re repeating me. That isn’t nice.”

  “I didn’t realize you thought I was.”

  “Was what?” Tipping my chin down, I watched him from the corners of my eyes, my mind tingling at the verbal repartee.

  “Nice.”

  A puff of air burst past my lips, and I raised my hands into the air, palms-out. “I’m not even going to go there. Actually, Collie said you were …”

  He cocked a dark brow, waiting for the rest.

  “… well, kind of a pain,” I finished. He took on a slightly wounded look, and I couldn’t tell if he was serious or just pandering for sympathy, so I added, “But she meant it in an affectionate way, I could tell.”

  Shaking his head, he looked down at his boots, his face hidden except for the slightly crooked, definitely overconfident smile. He knew Collie liked him. He knew I liked him, too.

  Normally that would have sent me running the other way. Men with easy smiles and flamboyant charm were not at all my type. Not since, at twenty-something, I fell for Geoff. After that ended so badly, I’d stuck to being friends with safe, studious guys, which was predictably uninteresting, which was just as well, because I had a daughter to raise, and that took up my free time. I didn’t want her involved in a parade of would-be stepda
ds and short-term suitors. She was better off, much better off, being raised in a solid, predictable single-parent home without all the unnecessary drama of dating and relationships.

  Which made me wonder why I was lingering in the gateway with the cowboy. Perhaps it was the change in location and the fact that Sydney was so far away that made this seem … well … harmless. Not harmless, exactly, but manageable. Anything that might happen between Zach and me was acceptably doomed, like falling for one of the crew members on a cruise ship. Next week I’d be off the boat, headed for distant shores. No risk, just the chance to unearth an ancient part of myself that hadn’t seen daylight in years. The ruins of Romance Lindsey had been buried under a mountain of divorce rubble, resentment, and unrealized hopes, but now that I’d excavated her, she was in surprisingly good shape.

  Glancing at his watch, Zach pushed his hands casually into his pockets. “So I guess you’re off to your first horse therapy session this morning.” He studied me in a narrow-eyed way that told me he was wondering why I needed psychotherapy—what I was in for, so to speak.

  I blushed, and not because I felt the least bit flirty. There was nothing romantic about masquerading as a head case, especially since, lately, I’d been one. “I’m here working on an article,” came out of my mouth. “About the ranch and the therapy program. But don’t tell everyone. I want to observe things in their natural state.” Odd how easily that big fat fib rolled off my tongue.

  “A writer, huh?” he said with interest.

  “Mmm-hmmm,” I chirped. I write signs for museum exhibits, notes to Sydney’s teacher, occasional copy for museum brochures. “But, like I said, we’re trying to keep it quiet. I don’t want to disturb anybody.”

  “You don’t look like a writer.” He scratched the dog’s ears absently, and Mr. Grits laid his head against Zach’s leg, suddenly smitten.

  I gave the rope a little jiggle, feeling mildly betrayed. “Great, then I’m doing a good job of blending in.”