The Last Chance Cafe

by Linda Lael Miller

  “What a cranky clown,” Kiera said.

  “I bet he didn’t get a nap,” Kiley added.

  They took a table in a corner, Chance and Hallie on one side, the twins on the other. The clown was forgotten as they discussed the movie, with most of the observations coming from Kiera and Kiley.

  When they’d finished eating, Chance tossed them each a cellophane-wrapped fortune cookie, from the little pile on his tray.

  “You like Chinese food,’ ” Kiley read exultantly. Then she made a face. “Well, duh!”

  Chance and Hallie laughed. “What does yours say, honey?” Hallie asked Kiera, who was studying the tiny strip of paper with a perplexed expression.

  “Be–ware–of–strangers-bearing–gifts,’ ” she recited.

  Hallie bit her lip, looked down at her plate, reminded of the danger she and her children were in. How could she have forgotten, even for a moment?

  “Hey,” Chance said, elbowing her gently. “It’s just a fortune cookie.”

  She smiled. “You’re right,” she said, and opened her own packet, pulling out the fortune with a flourish. “ ‘Your true love is near at hand,’ ” she read, and then blushed again.

  Mercifully, Chance made no comment. His was the only fortune still unread. He held it up with some ceremony, studied it ponderously, as though it contained holy writ, and said, “ ‘You will meet three beautiful women.’ ”

  The twins’ eyes were round.

  “Does it really say that?” Kiera asked, in awe.

  “Truly?” Kiley added.

  Chance folded the slip of paper and tucked it into his shirt pocket, where he tapped it once with the palm of his hand, as if to imprint its message on his heart. “Absolutely,” he said.

  “What did it really say?” Hallie asked, forty minutes later, when they were all in the truck, headed for Primrose Creek. Kiera and Kiley were sound asleep in back.

  “What?” Chance asked, tossing her a sidelong grin. The dim light inside the cab only accentuated his fair hair and white teeth.

  “You know what,” she pressed. “The fortune.”

  He smiled. “Why do you ask?”

  She swatted at him lightly, then wished she hadn’t, because her hand wanted to linger on his shoulder. She pulled it back. “Because I want to know.”

  “Do you always get what you want, Hallie O’Rourke?” he asked.

  She turned her head, looked out at the moon and stars and the dark, towering pines fringing the mountainsides. “Once,” she answered, surprising herself, “I had it all.”

  He waited, but she didn’t go on. She’d said too much already.

  A few minutes passed. “Seems to me, you’ve got everything that matters,” Chance said, indicating the girls with a slight motion of his head.

  She nodded. Smiled. “Yes,” she agreed softly. “I know.”

  He reached over, patted her hand. It was an innocent motion, companionable, rather than romantic, and yet it set off tiny fireworks under Hallie’s skin. Her every instinct compelled her to yank it away, but for some reason she didn’t. He closed his fingers around hers, squeezed, then took a proper hold on the steering wheel again.

  “We had a nice time tonight, Chance,” Hallie said. “Thank you.”

  “I enjoyed it, too,” he replied.

  She thought again of the families they’d seen at the movies, and later, in the restaurant. Most of them would go home, in groups, to the same houses. The kids would hear a story, say a prayer, slip off to sleep. The mothers and fathers would talk awhile, about bills and Chinese food and clowns with cell phones, and then they would go to bed, and some of them, the lucky ones, would go into each others’ arms, and make slow, sweet love.

  Hallie ached with a sort of benign envy. She’d been divorced from Joel Royer for a long time, and while she had never really missed the man himself, she’d certainly yearned for the feel of strong arms around her, deep in the night, and for the sound of a masculine voice. She would do just fine if she never had another relationship; even in her current straits, she knew she was complete, in and of herself. Still, the thought of being alone forever made life seem awfully, well, long. She sighed.

  “Are you married, Hallie?” Chance asked, out of the blue.

  The question caught her so off guard that she answered it. “No,” she said.

  His grin flashed, and he flipped on the turn signal as they pulled off the main road toward Jessie’s place. The big trees, ponderosas mostly, seemed to be dancing in the night wind. “Good,” he said.

  “I’m divorced,” she said. What was this, she asked herself. Truth or Dare? “What about you?”

  He shrugged. “Never met the right woman, I guess.”

  “Katie wasn’t the right woman?” Now what made her ask a personal question like that? She wouldn’t blame him if he told her to mind her own business.

  Chance’s sigh was heavy. “All that happened a long time ago,” he said, pulling into Jessie’s driveway. The truck jolted over the rutted road. He grinned again, this time sheepishly, and there was something hollow in his eyes. “I see the gossip mill is oiled and running.”

  Hallie wished she’d kept her big mouth shut. Not only was this a painful subject for him, it was his private concern. She had no right to meddle. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He drew the truck to a stop near the barn. The animals still needed to be fed, and their stalls would have to be mucked out. Hallie looked forward to the physical work, instead of dreading it. She needed the outlet.

  “It’s okay,” Chance said quietly. “After that scene at the Last Chance the other day, you’d have to be an idiot not to figure out that something was going on.”

  She looked at him steadily. “Is something going on?” she asked, and was appalled. Maybe she was moonstruck, she decided. Maybe she was possessed. Something was making her ask personal questions.

  “No,” he said, without hesitation. “Not that Jase would believe it.”

  Hallie heard the kids stirring in the backseat, and got ready to hustle them inside, where it was warm, before starting the barn chores. She had another few moments.

  “What happened? Between Jase and Katie?”

  “Mommy?” Kiera asked sleepily, from the backseat. “Are we home?”

  “You’re home,” Chance confirmed. “Come on, let’s get you inside, where it’s warm.”

  Hallie unlocked the back door, and paused for a moment on the threshold before stepping inside. Maybe she would always do that, when entering a dark house. You never knew what—or who—might be waiting.

  Chance reached around her to switch on the lights and, though she knew he had noticed her hesitation—how could he help it—he offered no comment.

  “I’ll just put the children to bed now,” Hallie said, somewhat hurriedly. “Thank you for everything.”

  He wasn’t ready to leave, not quite yet. His expression said as much, and so did the set of his shoulders. She was glad the kids were there, because if they hadn’t been, and he’d given her another of those nuclear kisses of his . . .

  “I’ll see to the horses,” he said. “You look after the girls.”

  She didn’t have the strength to argue that she had to pay her own way, depend on herself, even when it was late and she had sleepy babies to look after. She simply nodded, and shooed Kiera and Kiley up the back stairs.

  They called good-byes and thank you’s to Chance all the way to the second floor, and he answered with a jovial “you’re welcome” before going outside.

  Kiley and Kiera each gave their teeth a slapdash brushing, and Hallie helped them into their pajamas. By the time they stretched out in their twin beds, they were already nodding off. Hallie kissed one forehead, then the other, then hurried down the stairs. In the kitchen, she snatched her coat off the back of a chair and pulled it on.

  She nearly collided with Chance on the porch, and he grabbed her, steadied her. Her heart did a strange little flip, and electricity surged into the softest and most
secret parts of her anatomy. She waited for him to kiss her again, as he had done that other time, when they were standing in exactly this place.

  He didn’t. He set her away from him, in fact, with a slight thrust of his hands. “No,” he said hoarsely, and from the sound of it, he was talking to himself, not her.

  She searched frantically for her voice, and found a version of it. “You’re—you’re finished in the barn?”

  He nodded.

  “Come in,” she said. “I’ll make coffee.” Hallie had an unusual immunity to caffeine. She could drink half a pot by herself, and drift off to sleep the moment she closed her eyes. In fact, the stuff calmed her.

  Chance hesitated, then followed her into the kitchen, took off his coat and hung it from one of the pegs by the door, and pulled back a chair at the table. He sat in silence while Hallie brewed the coffee, apparently lost in his own thoughts.

  “You must have a lot of good memories of this place,” she said.

  He smiled, nodded. “I remember coming here in footed pajamas, when I was three or four. The whole family would gather, McQuarrys, Shaws, Strattons, Qualtroughs and Vigils, and the grown-ups would sit around this same table, drinking coffee and solving the problems of the world. Jase and I and the others would fall asleep on blankets on the floor, and those familiar voices were the last things we heard.”

  Hallie was touched by this glimpse into Chance’s past, and a little envious of it, as well. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  Chance shook his head. “Cousins aplenty, though.”

  “I’m an only child, too,” Hallie confided, sitting down across from him, cupping her chin in her hands. “But I didn’t have cousins. It was just the three of us.”

  “Sounds lonesome,” Chance commented.

  “I guess it was,” she recalled, “some of the time, at least. We were a pretty tight unit, Mom and Lou and me—” Too late, she realized what she’d given away. She felt the color drain from her face. A fool. She’d been a fool to think she could chat about her past without tripping up.

  “So he was your dad,” Chance said.

  She moistened her lips, looked away, looked back. “Yes,” she said.

  “And he was murdered.”

  She nodded. The coffee was finished, and she leaped to her feet, nearly overturning her chair, to get away from the table.

  “Hallie.”

  She stood frozen at the counter, with her back to Chance, her spine as stiff and cold as a spear of ice dangling from a roof in winter. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “But you know who did, don’t you?” he asked easily. “And you know why. And you’re scared.”

  “There’s so much more to it than that!” Her hand shook as she reached for the coffee carafe; she nearly spilled the stuff when she attempted to pour.

  Chance was beside her in a moment, taking the pot from her. “Are you sure you want a jolt of caffeine, in the state you’re in?”

  “Yes,” she said, in a sort of whispering wail. She put both her hands to her mouth and turned her back to him again, fighting to regain her composure. It was, for the most part, a hopeless effort.

  He filled the cups, set them on the table, squired her back to her chair, sat her down. “Talk to me,” he said.

  She shook her head, cupped both hands around her mug, blessed the heat that warmed her icy flesh. “I can’t.” A burst of frenetic energy surged through her; she should pack, get the girls, leave!

  But how? She had no vehicle of her own, and she couldn’t steal Jessie’s Jeep. The nearest bus station was probably miles away, maybe as far as Reno, and that meant a drive down the mountain, over treacherous, winding roads, in the darkness. She couldn’t take a chance like that with her children’s safety. On the other hand, were they in any less danger right here, on the banks of Primrose Creek?

  Chance caught her hand in his, held it tightly. “Listen to me,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking, but it won’t help to run from this, whatever it is. It’s time to stop, Hallie. It’s time to stand and fight.”

  She took a sip of her coffee, then another. Chance got up, went to a cupboard, came back with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He poured a generous dollop into each of their mugs, and Hallie offered no protest. A delicious, soothing heat raced through her blood with the first taste, and she began to relax a little. Power of suggestion, she figured. She was sure the alcohol hadn’t had time to really kick in. “You don’t fight these people,” she went on, after some time. “Lou tried that, and look what happened to him.”

  “Were you there when he was killed?”

  Hallie shook her head. “If I had been,” she whispered, “I’d probably be dead, too.” She stared into the middle distance, took another hit of whiskey-laced coffee. “He was shot in the chest.”

  Chance waited, still holding her hand. He didn’t urge her on, didn’t speak at all, just rubbed the callused pad of his thumb slowly and soothingly back and forth, back and forth, across her knuckles.

  “Have you ever seen a dead person?”

  He nodded.

  “Somebody you loved?”

  “A few,” he said.

  “Lou wasn’t even old,” Hallie replied. “He was only fifty-eight.”

  “That’s rough,” Chance said. “I’m sorry, Hallie. What about your mother?”

  “She died when I was thirteen. Cancer.”

  He sighed, shook his head, as if to say that the universe was an unfair place. Which, of course, it was.

  Hallie realized she was crying and, for once, she didn’t try to stop. “Lou was such a good guy,” she said. “Decent, through and through. He loved my mother, and he loved me, just as if I were his own. He and Mom tried to have more kids, but after her third miscarriage, they gave it up.” She sniffled powerfully. “He must have been disappointed—every man wants a son or daughter of his own blood—but bless his heart, he never let on, never let me think I wasn’t enough. Not once.”

  Chance’s smile was slight and crooked and more than a little sad, but it was real. He was real, in the same basic, nearly inexplicable way that Lou had been. “I’ll bet he was proud of you.”

  She remembered her coffee, took a big gulp, and nearly choked. She’d forgotten the whiskey.

  Chance stood, and patted her back until she caught her breath.

  “What did it really say?” she asked hoarsely, when he’d gone back to his chair.

  “What?” he asked, frowning.

  “The fortune,” she said. “The one you put in your shirt pocket.”

  He leaned forward, waggled his eyebrows. “It’s private.”

  “I told you my secret,” she pointed out, miffed. “And it was pretty heavy-duty, too. So why all the mystery—it’s just a fortune cookie!”

  He sighed philosophically. “My point exactly,” he said.

  She blew out a breath, and he laughed.

  “All right,” he said. “All right.” He reached into his shirt pocket, took out the scrap of paper, and laid it on the table.

  She picked it up, read it, read it again. Frowned. “ ‘You are turning a corner, from new to old,’ ” she murmured. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  Chance reclaimed the fortune, put it back into his pocket, patted it in the same way he had earlier, in the restaurant. “Maybe to you it doesn’t,” he said.

  She leaned forward. “Now, what the heck is that supposed to mean?”

  He chuckled. “You figure it out.” He pushed back his chair, with a deep sigh, and got to his feet. “I’d better get home. The new day starts early.” He was quiet for a few moments, studying her. “You’ll be all right?”

  She bit her lower lip, then nodded. “I’ll be fine,” she said, but she wasn’t so sure.

  “You won’t go running off someplace, in the middle of the night?”

  “How would I do that?”

  “I can think of several possibilities.”

  “I’ll just bet you can. Well, for your information, I’m no thie
f. I wouldn’t take Jessie’s car, or any of her horses.”

  He smiled, probably at the image of Hallie trying to escape the high country on horseback, with two kids and her discount-store suitcase. Then he bent, kissed the top of her head, and left. Hallie was still sitting right where he’d left her when she heard his truck start, then drive away.

  She waited until the sound of the engine faded to silence. Then she folded her arms on top of the table, laid her head down, and cried. She cried for Lou, and her long-dead mother, and for the kids. She cried for herself, and even for Joel. After that, she stood, went to the sink, and splashed her face with cold water.

  She locked the doors, made sure all the latches on the windows were fastened, and went upstairs. She took a long bath, brushed her teeth, slathered on moisturizer, and looked in on Kiera and Kiley. They resembled angels, lying there, smiling innocently in their sleep.

  She kissed her fingertips and touched them to Kiera’s cheek, then did the same with Kiley.

  In her own room, between Jessie Shaw’s crisp sheets, she thought of Chance, of the way it felt when he kissed her, and the heat of recollection took her breath away, and kept her awake for a long time, dreaming with her eyes open.

  8

  T he animals were waiting none-too-patiently for their supper when Chance got back to his own place, after leaving Hallie sitting at her kitchen table with tears on her face, and he was grateful for the distraction hard work afforded him, however temporary its effects. Smoke and Magic were there to keep him company while he did the chores, and they stuck to his heels when he went into the house, their toenails clicking rhythmically on the kitchen linoleum. They’d had kibble outside, but he refilled their water dishes before heading for the stairs. He took a long, hot shower, and when he came out of the bathroom, the mutts were sitting in the hallway, like a pair of sentinels, waiting for him, ears perked. He listened, following their cue, and heard the piteous lament of coyotes, somewhere nearby. Although the critters usually howled melodically in the movies, in real life they made a screaming sound, fit to raise the hairs on the back of a man’s neck.