The Last Chance Cafe

by Linda Lael Miller

  The day that followed was unmercifully long.

  Chance stayed the same.

  Hallie paced, and Jessie and Doc talked earnestly on the hallway bench, sometimes clasping hands, sometimes shooting fire with their eyes. Hallie carefully filtered out the conversation and so couldn’t have told anyone what was said, even though she was standing right there much of the time.

  At four-thirty, Doc let it be known that they were all going back to Primrose Creek for Chance’s candlelight vigil. The roads had cleared some during the day and, though Jase had had to leave earlier, understandably swamped with police business, they weren’t stranded. They could all get home in the mid-size sedan Jessie had rented at the airport when she arrived.

  For Hallie, leaving Chance now was like having a dressing torn from a wound, but she needed to see her children, shower and change her clothes, and, yes, she needed to join in the vigil for Chance’s recovery. She needed to raise her lighted candle, with all the others, as a part of the ceremony.

  The twins, safely ensconced at Katie’s all day, were beside themselves with relief when she appeared, and she wondered, as she crouched to hug them, if they’d thought she was gone for good. It made her shudder to think how close she’d come to dying, to leaving her babies alone.

  “We’re going to light candles,” Kiera told her, lisping a little through the gap left by her vanished tooth. “Is Chance gone to heaven, Mommy? Is that why we’re having candles?”

  Hallie’s eyes stung, and she shook her head, hard. “Chance is still with us, baby,” she said. “But he’s sort of asleep.”

  “Maybe he’ll see the candles,” Kiley speculated gravely, “and follow the light to Primrose Creek.”

  Hallie could only nod.

  By six o’clock, the parking lot at the Last Chance Café was full of people, bundled up in coats and scarves and stocking caps, talking among themselves. Jessie was greeted with a sort of formal affection, and Hallie, to her slight surprise, was treated like a member of the community. Bear and Madge and Wynona served hot cider. The pastor of the Presbyterian church passed out candles, with little paper skirts around their bases, and then, standing in the bed of somebody’s pickup truck, he led the crowd in an eloquent prayer. He asked for Chance’s recovery, thanked God that he and Hallie had survived. He called for heavenly comfort for those who awaited word, and divine mercy for those who had set the tragedies in motion.

  Hallie, who had had neither the time nor the words to explain to Kiera and Kiley that Joel was gone from their lives, for good, was deeply grateful when the names of the dead were not spoken.

  The air was crisp, bitingly cold, and the wavering light of the candles, as the gathering sang “Amazing Grace,” was a sacred fire to Hallie. She knew that, whether Chance lived or died, she would always remember this little patch of time as a turning point. How ironic that, in the face of death, and despite all the turmoil of recent times, some mystical healing process had begun within her. She was stronger than before, battle scars notwithstanding, and places in her spirit, long since closed off and locked up, like forbidden rooms, were suddenly open to new experiences and new people.

  The majesty of it took her breath away.

  Madge approached, when the candles were out and the singing had stopped, and the two of them hugged tightly.

  “That’s some shiner,” Madge said.

  You ought to see the other guy, Hallie thought, but she didn’t say it aloud because, after all, the “other guy” had fathered her children, and he was dead. “I haven’t had one of these since I got into a scratching match on the playground in sixth grade,” she said. “I won, but Tiffany Brooks put up a hell of a fight.”

  Madge chuckled, and her hand lingered on Hallie’s arm. “How’s Chance?”

  Hallie sagged. “Not good,” she said. “But holding on. It would mean a lot to him to know about this little ceremony tonight.”

  “He knows,” Madge said softly, and patted Hallie’s arm again.

  That night, Hallie and the girls stayed at Chance’s place, as did Jessie. Jessie’s back door had yet to be replaced, although the crime scene guys were finished with the inside of the house. Just as Della had said, the animals were well taken care of by an organized contingent of friends and neighbors.

  Hallie slept in Chance’s bed that first night, sprawled across the wide mattress, at once comforted by the familiar smell and feel of the blankets and sheets and shattered by the indescribable emptiness. When Kiera and Kiley toddled in, sometime in the darkest hours, she was grateful for the company.

  Before dawn the next morning, Hallie sneaked downstairs to find Jessie already moving about in the kitchen. She was wearing a plaid flannel shirt, jeans, and barn boots, and her silver hair trailed, in a single gleaming plait, down the middle of her back. The room was warm with the scent of fresh-brewed coffee and the little fire blazing on the hearth.

  “Good morning,” Jessie said, as though it were an ordinary day, and Chance might pop in from doing his chores at any moment.

  Hallie had both hands on the railings as she descended the last few stairs, moving with a strange awkwardness, like an invalid just out of a sick bed. “Morning,” she murmured.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Jessie said, pouring coffee for them both. “Evidently, you’re having the same problem—insomnia, I mean.”

  Hallie sank into a chair at the table, nodded her thanks, and closed both hands around the coffee mug, as much to warm her icy fingers as raise the brew to her mouth. “Do you think it’s too early to call the hospital?”

  Jessie shook her head. “You go right ahead, if that’s what you need to do.”

  Hallie got up, made her way to the phone, and, after considerable difficulties with her memory and her awkward fingers, managed to place the call. “I’m calling to ask about Chance Qualtrough,” she told the Intensive Care duty nurse, after getting past the switchboard.

  The nurse sounded weary. “No real change,” she said, “although his heartbeat is a bit stronger this morning.”

  It was an inordinately long time before Hallie could speak; her emotions kept rising up out of her depths and filling her throat, swelling her heart to the bursting point, stinging her eyes. Finally, she got out a scratchy, “Thank you,” and hung up.

  Jessie was watching her. Waiting.

  “His heartbeat is stronger,” she said. “Otherwise—”

  “Nothing’s changed,” Jessie finished, with a sigh.

  Hallie nodded.

  “Sit down,” Jessie ordered good-naturedly, “and finish your coffee. You look like the downside of bad news.”

  Hallie more fell than sat. Reached for her cup.

  Jessie sat down across from her, the model of serenity and peace, and sipped from her own mug. Catching Hallie watching her with what must have been a puzzled expression, she smiled. “You’re wondering how I can be so calm, aren’t you?” she asked and, at Hallie’s slight nod, she went on. “I’m a lot older than you are, and I’ve seen plenty of sickness and death in my time. I’ve learned one thing—that the sad times are as important as the happy ones; it’s all part of the same tapestry. Why, dying is as much a cause for celebration as being born.”

  Hallie thought of earlier losses in her life, first her mother, then, some years later, Lou. She’d felt a lot of things, and repressed most of them, but an inclination to celebrate wasn’t among them. “I guess I just don’t see that,” she said.

  “That’s because you don’t really believe there’s another phase of life, waiting out there Beyond. Death is just another way of being born, that’s all. An entryway into a new place.”

  Hallie swallowed, stared into her cup. “If Chance dies, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “He won’t die,” Jessie said, with such confidence that Hallie stared at her. “Not for a long time, anyway. Chance isn’t anywhere near finished with all he’s got to do right here, on this earth.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Hallie asked. She wanted t
o cling to Jessie’s belief, but for her, it would be wishful thinking, nothing more.

  “Came to me while I was weaving one day, a long time back,” Jessie said. “Lord, but I’ve been aching to get back to my loom.”

  Hallie nodded, thinking of the colorful weavings she’d seen at Jessie’s. Rather than admiring the designs, or studying the mechanism of the loom itself, she’d concentrated most of her efforts on keeping the kids from touching anything they shouldn’t.

  “Well, when I weave wool or silk, my mind weaves, too. It uses different strands, colors and textures all its own, but it makes a picture all the same. Chance will fight his way back from this. He’ll marry and father children.” She looked up at the rafters supporting the roof. Sighed. “He comes from good pioneer stock, Chance does.”

  “Like you,” Hallie said. “You’re related, after all.”

  “We’re cut from the same cloth, all right.”

  Hallie smiled. “I read some of Bridget Qualtrough’s diary. What a woman she was. Good Lord, facing down Indians, recovering from a snakebite, trying to tame wild horses—”

  “She was nineteen when she came here,” Jessie said. “Already a widow, with a baby son, a younger sister, and a household retainer to support. She’d improvised a cabin of sorts when Trace showed up one day, carrying his saddle over one shoulder, bound and determined to take care of her.” Jessie paused, laughed. “She was having none of that!”

  Hallie grinned, picturing Chance’s great-great-great grandmother, holding her land by hard work and willpower. “What about the others?” Chance had told her some of the family history, but she knew she’d find a certain comfort in hearing it again.

  “It all started back in Virginia, when old Gideon McQuarry died and left his granddaughters 2,500 acres on either side of that creek out there.” She gestured with a thumb. “He was trying to reunite his family—his sons, the fathers of these four young women, died hating each other. I guess old Gideon figured they’d have to get along, those gals, living side by side on this land.”

  Hallie propped her chin in one hand. “What were the other three women like?” she asked.

  “Well, Bridget was the eldest. Her younger sister was Skye, a pretty brown-haired thing, a tomboy. She married a man named Jake Vigil, and the two of them built a timber dynasty that stands to this day, though it’s incorporated and all that. Across the creek were my people—Christy, who married Zachary Shaw, the local marshal—and Megan. She got hitched with a rancher named Webb Stratton.” She sighed. “I shouldn’t be surprised at the way Jase and Chance have always gone round and round about everything from religion to politics. They’re McQuarrys, after all, and the McQuarrys tend to go toe-to-toe with each other and duke it out.”

  “So Bridget and Skye, Christy and Megan, were all feuding?”

  “When they first settled down on this land, yes. They worked out their differences in time. Made some discoveries about themselves. All four of them lived to a great old age, and so did their husbands. Noah, Bridget’s boy, grew up to be a senator.”

  “I wish I’d known them.”

  “You know Chance and Jase and me,” Jessie answered. “That’s close enough. When this snow melts away, I’ll show you their graves, up there on the hill.”

  Hallie didn’t have the heart to tell Jessie she’d probably be gone before the snow was, though she wasn’t leaving until Chance opened his eyes, until she could tell him good-bye, face to face. “Thank you, Jessie,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “A place to live. A new start. Primrose Creek changed me.”

  “It changes everybody,” Jessie replied. “I can’t take the credit. Now, let’s get ourselves organized for the day ahead, shall we? I trust you want to go back to the hospital with me this morning?”

  Hallie nodded. She’d take the girls to Katie, try to keep things as normal for them as possible. Sooner, rather than later, she’d have to tell them about Joel, but she was still trying to frame the tragedy in words they could comprehend, and she was getting nowhere.

  “Good,” Jessie said. “Well, I reckon I’ll make us all some breakfast. If the children sleep awhile, we’ll just keep their French toast warm in the oven.” She went to the window at the sound of an engine, peered out. “There’s Jim Williams, coming to tend the critters. It’s nice to have neighbors at times like this.”

  Hallie thought of Phoenix. It was a great city, but like all densely populated areas, it was anonymous, and she was a stranger there, wandering among other strangers. She drew a deep breath, refilled her cup at the counter, and headed upstairs to shower and dress for another day of keeping watch.

  “Tonight’s the Harvest Festival,” she told Chance, a few hours later, when she stood beside his bed. There wasn’t a flicker of response, and yet she couldn’t help feeling that he grasped at least some of the constant stream of words and thoughts she sent his way. “Jessie says we all have to go. Present a solid front, and all that.” Chance didn’t move.

  She kissed his forehead, wound a finger loosely in his hair. Tears blurred her vision. “Did you see all those candles last night, Chance? They were all for you. We were calling you back here, back home, where you belong.”

  The day nurse, a young black woman, slipped in on crepe-soled shoes and touched Hallie’s arm to let her know it was time to step out. She delayed long enough to kiss Chance’s forehead again, then turned and headed for the hallway.

  Jessie and Doc were there, having another one of their spirited conversations, but as far as Hallie was concerned, they might as well have been speaking Japanese. She couldn’t seem to focus enough to eavesdrop, which was, she decided, just as well.

  Agent Walters was on duty again, and he touched her arm when she would have walked on by him. She’d gotten so used to ignoring Chance’s guards that they seemed invisible.

  “Yes?” she asked, trying to be polite.

  “I just thought I’d tell you, Mrs. Royer, that although the Bureau has held off the media as long as possible, they’re probably going to break through the red tape today, and they’ll be all over you.”

  Hallie drew a breath, let it out. “I’m not Mrs.’ anybody,” she said, a little stiffly. “Joel and I were divorced well before he died, and I’ve been using my maiden name since I got here.”

  “Whatever,” the fed replied, all business. “I’m just trying to warn you that you’re probably in for some harassment from those folks. There’s a big investigation coming up, you know. It’ll be very public, there will be arrests and indictments, and I’m sorry to say you’ll most likely be caught in the middle of it.”

  Hallie felt a headache take root at the base of her neck. Agent Walters was just doing his job, and he was right about the press. She’d left them out of the equation so far, but now she couldn’t afford the luxury. If she didn’t tell Kiley and Kiera what had happened to their father, they might hear it on the evening news or secondhand, on the playground. It was a risk she couldn’t take.

  “I’m sorry,” Agent Walters said and Hallie squinted up at him.

  “You sounded like you really meant that,” she said.

  He chuckled. “That’s because I did.”

  She believed him. “Thanks,” she said, and shoved a hand through her hair, already rehearsing, for the millionth time, what she’d say to her children. Kiera, Kiley, I know this is hard to hear, but—

  She shook her head.

  “It’ll be okay,” Agent Walters said.

  “Will it?” she asked sadly. She hoped he was right but, for the life of her, she couldn’t see how her life could ever be even remotely “all right” again, especially if Chance didn’t make it. If he died, she would mourn him for the rest of her days, and blame herself every minute of that time.

  It was late that afternoon, with more snow graying the sky, that Chance first opened his eyes. Hallie happened to be leaning over him at the time, trying to memorize every plane and angle of his face, the way his hair grew, the meter o
f his breathing, all of it.

  She gasped his name.

  Laboriously, he raised one wired hand from the bedclothes and tapped angrily at the plastic mouthpiece taped to his face.

  “Nurse!” Hallie cried, exuberant, rushing out into the hall. “Jessie, Doc—Chance is awake!”

  A nurse and doctor entered the room at top speed, and Jessie and Doc and Hallie all stood in a tight little knot in the hallway, waiting, holding their collective breaths.

  Finally, after what seemed like forever, the doctor came out, smiling cautiously. “Mr. Qualtrough would like to see Hallie.”

  Jessie and Doc exchanged glances, squeezed each other’s hands.

  Hallie dashed back into the room, almost tripping over some of the cables in her eagerness to reach Chance’s side.

  They’d removed the tube going down his throat, and the nurse was injecting something into the IV bag. He smiled at Hallie, and she smiled back.

  “Hi, Cowboy,” she said.

  His voice was a hoarse rasp, barely more than a breath, and the sentence took a long time to find its way, word by word, past his lips. “Who’s taking care of the horses?”

  18

  H allie smoothed Chance’s hair back from his forehead, her eyes hot with happy tears. “The horses are fine,” she told him. “There’s a volunteer crew of neighbors and friends looking after them ’round the clock.” He sighed, relaxed visibly, then tensed again, evidently noticing the bruise on her face. “What about you? How badly did he hurt you?”

  She chuckled. “Trust a cowboy to ask about his horses first,” she teased. “And I’m better than okay, thank you, now that you’re back in the world of the living.”

  He frowned. Every word he said, every breath he drew, was laborious, and Hallie knew he wasn’t out of the woods yet, not by a long shot. Chance was in for a long, slow recovery, but at least he would recover. “Your eye looks pretty bad—”