The Last Chance Cafe

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Just an ordinary shiner,” she said, laying her fingers to his dry lips.

  “I need . . . water,” he said.

  The nurse, who was hovering nearby, promptly provided a glass, with a bent straw. Hallie held it so Chance could take a few sips. He swallowed, laid back with a sigh, and closed his eyes.

  For a moment, despite her profound conviction that he would live, Hallie was afraid he’d gone back into his coma. “Is he—?”

  The nurse smiled, shook her head. “He’s sleeping,” she said. “That’s a good thing.”

  Hallie nodded and went back out into the corridor, where Jessie and Doc were waiting. “He’s sleeping,” she said joyously.

  Jessie started to weep, and Doc put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her against his side. “Best we let him rest, then,” he said. “We’ll head on back to Primrose Creek and spread the news.”

  “I’d like to rest up for the Harvest Festival,” Jessie said.

  “You’re amazing,” Hallie said, with a smile. “All of you Primrose Creekers. You just keep going, doing what you do, no matter what comes down the road.” It seemed to Hallie that a thousand years had passed since she and Chance and the rest of the community had made the preparations for the celebration, but it was right on schedule.

  Jessie hugged Hallie, then held her by the shoulders as she gazed into her eyes. “That’s the secret,” she said. “We always go on, do what’s there to be done, no matter what else is happening. When you do that, it all comes right in the end.”

  Hallie hoped they were right, because she had some seriously difficult tasks ahead of her. Telling the twins about Joel was first on her list.

  Back in Primrose Creek, where another snow was dusting the ground, this time lightly, she went straight to Katie’s house, greeted her children, bundled them up in coats and mittens, and took them out for a walk.

  The Grange Hall was bustling with final preparations for that evening’s town party, but they went on past, until they came to the church at the end of the street. Hallie took the girls inside, to sit in a wash of colored light from the stained glass windows. The quality of the reds, blues, greens and yellows was muted by the weather, but still brilliant, as though possessed of some other source of illumination than the sun.

  With one child on either side, Hallie looked up at the figure in the window, said a silent prayer, and started talking to her daughters.

  “I have something to tell you,” she said huskily, “and it’s very hard to say.”

  Kiley huddled against her, Kiera clung to her arm.

  “Something really bad has happened.” She stopped, too choked up to go on.

  “I know,” Kiera said, her voice small and soft. “Chance got hurt. He has to be in the hospital.”

  “Yes,” Hallie agreed, and bent to kiss her little girl on top of the head. “But there’s something else.”

  “Daddy,” Kiley said, with heartbreaking finality.

  “Yes,” Hallie said, putting an arm around both children and holding them tightly. “Your daddy’s gone, babies. He made some mistakes, and some awful things happened, and he died.” It was all she dared say, at the moment. The horrible details—that Joel had been planning to kill her, that Chance had fired the bullet that stopped him from accomplishing his purpose—would have to wait.

  Kiera and Kiley were both silent for a long time, probably numbed by the shock of that news. Then Kiera sniffled, and began to cry, and Kiley followed suit. Hallie felt tears slipping down her own cheeks, and that was fitting. For a while, they all mourned the very different Joels they had known, Kiley and Kiera grieved for a father more imagined than real, Hallie for a man who had once shared her life.

  The festival was packed with revelers, laughing, drinking soft cider and sodas, trying to win prizes, like teddy bears and homemade pies, at various booths. Della occupied an area made to look like the back of a gypsy’s wagon, dressed in colorful garb and running her hands over a crystal ball. Hallie, who had just left her listless but resilient children to have their faces painted, sat down across from Della and laid the requested fee on the table. The profits would go to Evie’s school.

  Della smiled mysteriously. “So,” she said, in what she probably fancied to be a picturesque Romanian accent, “you vant your fortune told.”

  “I’d rather have a haircut,” Hallie confided, teasing.

  Della laughed. “You need one,” she agreed, and looked into the crystal ball, waving her plump, hardworking hands in a summoning gesture. “I see an appointment here. Ten o’clock, tomorrow morning. Highlights and a trim. All for the bargain price of thirty-five dollars, plus tip.”

  Hallie chuckled. “I’ll be there,” she said.

  “But wait, ” Della said, her eyes widening in the Cleopatra makeup that surrounded them. “Eeet ees like zat televishun commercial for zee Ginsu knives. There ees still more.”

  Hallie leaned forward, laughing a little. “What?” she asked.

  Della looked up, as if surprised and a little hurt. “You’re leaving us. I see you leaving.”

  “I have things to do elsewhere, Della,” Hallie said gently. “Important things.”

  “Then you’ll come back?” Della wasn’t looking at the crystal ball. She was just asking, as one ordinary mortal to another. “To Primrose Creek, I mean?”

  Hallie had asked herself the same question. The truthful answer was, she couldn’t be sure she would ever return. She had the press to deal with, and the Arizona court system, not to mention the feds, and she wanted to shield Chance from all that, so he could make a complete recovery. In short, he didn’t need her kind of trouble.

  In time, sooner, probably, rather than later, he would be ready to go on with his life. He’d meet a woman, or take up with one he already knew, marry, and have the family he wanted. “I don’t know,” she said, after a long time. “There are things I have to do back home. People’s feelings change, when they’re apart for a while.”

  “Not if their feelings are real.” Della absorbed Hallie’s reply, looking sad, then tapped the crystal ball with one fire-engine red fingernail. “Well, now, that’s the future as you see it. You want to know what I see? You paid your money, and I’m not about to give it back.”

  Hallie smiled, in spite of the pain she felt, at the mere prospect of putting this place and these people behind her, for good. She shrugged. “What the heck?”

  Della condensed her energies with a visible reshaping of her body, cupped her hands over the crystal ball, and drew them back with a gasp.

  “What?” Hallie asked anxiously. There was, as Lou had always said, a sucker born every minute.

  Della smiled smugly and sat back in her metal folding chair, which had been festooned, like the card table in front of her, in multicolored crepe paper streamers, in shades of bright red, blue and yellow. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she said. Then she rummaged in her purse, somewhere in the vicinity of her feet, and brought out a little notebook and a pencil. She scribbled something, covering both sides of the paper, folded it, and tucked it into one of the little donation envelopes sitting beside her business card holder. With considerable ceremony, she licked the back of the envelope, then sealed it by laying it on the table and giving it a couple of good thumps with her fist.

  Hallie’s eyes were wide, then narrow. “What are you up to?” she demanded.

  Della’s smile broadened. “Open that, six months from today, and read it. We’ll see, Miss Smarty-Pants, who’s where, doing what, then.”

  “Huh?” Hallie said, confounded, but she tucked the missive into her fanny pack.

  “Next!” Della trumpeted.

  Hallie looked behind her—there was nobody waiting—then back at Della.

  “Do not forget,” Della said, in a booming voice, waving her hands over the ball again. “You have an appointment at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Wear something that buttons up the front, instead of going on over your head.”

  Hallie stoo
d, a little dazed, waggled her fingers in a weak farewell, and walked away.

  “You look . . . beautiful,” Chance said, with considerable effort, when she stood at his bedside the next afternoon. “Did you do something to your hair?” Hallie gave him a smacking kiss on the forehead. He’d been moved from the ICU to a regular private room, on the second floor, and there were a few less tubes and wires. “Thanks for noticing,” she said, her eyes shining with all she felt for this man, bittersweet and hopelessly complicated as it was. “You look pretty okay yourself.”

  He gave a small, dismissive grunt. “ ‘Pretty okay’?” he echoed. “Is that the best you can do?”

  She kissed him, not deeply, but sweetly, the way a sister or an aunt might do, and he registered the difference right away. She saw it in his eyes.

  “You’re leaving,” he said.

  She bit down hard on her lower lip, willed the tears thrumming in her sinuses to go no farther. “Yeah,” she replied.

  “Hallie,” he said, “whatever needs handling, we’ll handle it together, okay?” He paused, ground out the words she most—and least—wanted to hear from him. “I love you, Hallie.”

  She rested her forehead against his. “And I love you,” she replied. For the moment, it was all she could manage.

  “Then stay. Marry me. Make babies with me.” He was tiring, and Hallie was painfully conscious of that. He was on the road back to full health, but it would be a long trip.

  “I can’t,” she whispered. “Not now, anyway. Give me some time, Chance. Let me get things squared away in Phoenix.”

  He was going to be stubborn; she saw it in the set of his jaw and the glint in his eyes. The stress was already taxing him. “I won’t wait around for you to come to your senses,” he warned. “I’m tired of being alone.”

  He would be all right, Hallie told herself. More than all right. He had a family, and a whole town full of good friends, on his side.

  “I understand,” she said.

  He turned his head away, stared out the window, and Hallie wondered if he saw the trees, naked of leaves, and the skiff of snow edging their branches, there in the small park beside the hospital.

  “If you won’t let me share your troubles, help you through them,” he said, after a long time had passed, “then there’s nothing left to say but good-bye.”

  Hallie swallowed hard. Closed her eyes for a moment. “Goodbye, Chance,” she answered, when she could. Then, calling upon all her strength, which she now realized was considerable, she turned and walked out of Chance’s hospital room for the last time.

  Her condo had been tossed, at least twice, once by Joel and his people, probably, and again by the authorities. With a sigh, Hallie went through it, room by room, straightening up, putting things away, vacuuming and scrubbing, sweeping and dusting. The twins watched her in worried amazement, perched on the couch in the living room like a pair of birds. “I want to go home,” Kiley said.

  “This is home,” Hallie replied, gripping the handle of the vacuum cleaner.

  “No,” Kiera argued. “Primrose Creek is home.”

  Hallie’s entire spirit convulsed in a lonely ache. Maybe Kiera was right, she thought. Home, the old saying went, is where the heart is, and Hallie’s heart was certainly not in Arizona. It was back in the high country of Nevada, riding around in the shirt pocket of a certain stubborn rancher. “Not anymore,” she said. “Grilled cheese sandwiches?”

  The twins stared at her. “What?” Kiley asked.

  Hallie sighed. “Are you two hungry? Would you like sandwiches?” They’d made a lengthy visit to the supermarket that morning. Life was easier, now that she had her car again, and access to her bank accounts. Or so Hallie kept telling herself.

  Kiera punched a needlepoint pillow. “No,” she said. “I’m never going to eat again.”

  “Me, neither,” agreed Kiley.

  Hallie rolled her eyes heavenward. Then she put her broom away, washed her hands at the kitchen sink, and commenced slicing cheese and buttering bread and warming up a skillet. When she served the sandwiches, a few minutes later, her daughters came grudgingly to the table and ate.

  “I bet the kittens miss us,” Kiley said, fiddling. “The ones we left in the barn, at Jessie’s place.”

  “They have the mama kitty to look after them,” Hallie replied firmly, “and when they’re big enough, Jessie will see that they have homes. She might even keep them all herself, right there in the barn.”

  Both the children looked relieved.

  “It’s almost Christmas,” Kiley announced, tearing the crust off her sandwich.

  “It’s more than a month away,” Hallie said, hoping to avoid hearing what they wanted, since she already knew. They’d told her every five minutes since she’d piled them into a rental car, with the few belongings they’d acquired during their high country odyssey, several weeks before, and brought them back to Scottsdale.

  So far, she’d managed to stay one jump ahead of the press, but she’d already been informed that she would have to testify before a grand jury, and then in court as well. A great many arrests had been made; the drug-running network had been an extensive one, with money-laundering and murder thrown in for good measure, and there would be trials going on for months, maybe even years. The TV news-magazine shows were having a field day.

  Just the thought of recounting it all, over and over again, in front of an assortment of juries, practically crushed her. She needed, she decided, to get back to her yoga class, and get centered. She needed to reopen her restaurant. She needed sleep and peace of mind and time with her children. And vitamins. Lots of vitamins.

  Most of all, she needed Chance.

  She put that last thought firmly aside, as she had a hundred times before. He wasn’t going to wait for her to get her life squared away, he’d said as much. And she would be entangled in her affairs in Phoenix and Scottsdale for the foreseeable future. Better to sever all ties now, get it over with.

  The telephone rang, and Kiera and Kiley knocked over their chairs leaving the table, racing to answer. Kiera got to the counter, and the cordless phone, first.

  “Hello?” she cried. Then a smile spread across her small face. “Hi, Katie. I’m fine, and so is Kiley. Yes, Mommy’s here.”

  Hallie took the receiver, braced for bad news. Chance had suffered a reversal of some kind, she just knew it. Or he’d gone back to working with his horses too soon, and hurt himself. “Katie?”

  “Hi, Hallie,” her friend said. “How are you?”

  “Frazzled,” Hallie said, shoving a hand through her hair. “What about you?”

  “Jase and I are working on our marriage. I guess the things that have been happening around here lately have put some stuff in perspective. We’re going on an Alaskan cruise—we leave next week.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Hallie said, sitting down on one of the high stools at the breakfast bar, and waving away the twins, who were jumping around her like pistons in a high-speed motor, begging for the phone.

  “The Bureau of Land Management guys caught that cougar,” Katie went on. “Everybody breathed a sigh of relief when word got around.” She sighed. “Of course there are others, in the mountains, but you don’t see them often. That one must have been a rogue of some kind.”

  “I imagine the ranchers are celebrating,” Hallie said, sending the girls back to the table by pointing one arm and making a stern face. They obeyed, but not willingly, and she slipped into the next room. “Did they kill it? The cougar, I mean?”

  “In this day and age?” Katie answered. “No way. It’s gone to some private reserve, to be tagged and studied. Poor thing, they’ll probably harass it to death.”

  Hallie swallowed, waited, swallowed again. She finally found the courage to ask the question that was uppermost on her mind. “How is Chance?”

  There was a note in Katie’s voice that said she wouldn’t have been fooled by all the tactics in the world. “He’s getting out of the hospital next week. H
e’ll be fine, Hallie. Physically, at least.” She was quiet for a moment. “You broke his heart, you know.”

  Hallie closed her eyes. She wanted to go back to Primrose Creek, had started to go a million times. The pain of being away from him was a consuming thing, tearing her limb from limb, organ from organ, cell from cell. She wasn’t living, she was merely functioning, going through the motions, an actor in a play, with a very limited grasp on her lines. But something had stopped her, and that was the memory of Chance, telling her he wouldn’t wait. If she went to him, and he turned her away, she would die. “Katie—”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Katie said, on a soft breath. “I shouldn’t have said that, all right? It’s just that you two seemed so perfect for each other.”

  “Obviously,” Hallie said, blinking back tears, “we aren’t.”

  “How are things going down there in Phoenix?”

  Hallie glanced toward the kitchen door, beyond which her daughters were squabbling. “It’s a battle,” she admitted. The first night back, after the twins had gone to sleep in their frilly beds, surrounded by their many toys and closets full of fancy clothes, she’d sat down with a pad and pencil and listed all the things she had to do. She’d nearly been overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all, three weeks ago, and that feeling hadn’t abated. The list grew, every day, instead of dwindling. “What about Madge? How are she and Wynona and Bear?”

  “Wy and Bear bought a secondhand Harley and hit the road,” Katie said, with some amusement. “Madge is fit to be tied. Threatening to sell the place, or just board it up and take off herself.” Pause. “A few of us are still hoping you’ll come to your senses, come home to Primrose Creek, and run the place yourself.”

  Hallie didn’t say anything; her voice was stuck again, behind a sore place in her throat. If she tried to swallow, she would strangle.

  Katie’s voice brightened. “The townspeople special-ordered a stool, as a welcome-back present for Chance,” she said. “You know, for his place at the counter, down at the Last Chance? It’s upholstered in saddle leather, and his name is being worked into the seat.”