Over the Moon at the Big Lizard Diner

by Lisa Wingate

  I squeezed my eyes shut, nodding. She’s right. She’s right.You know she’s right.

  Laura continued on the attack. “You are not buying any airline tickets.”

  I nodded again.

  “You have got to get a grip. Sydney is not in imminent danger. She’s staying the summer in a nice little hacienda with a maid and a swimming pool, and a stepmom who comes from money and likes to spend it. Hopefully, she’s having a little time with Geoff and things will grow from there. If you try to take Sydney away from her father now, she’ll never forgive you.”

  “But what if it’s not good for her to be there? What if she ends up getting hurt?” Laura didn’t have children. She couldn’t possibly understand the depth of a mother’s protective instincts.

  My sister sighed, stroking a hand along the side of my face. “Have a little faith, Lindsey. Sydney’s a smart kid. She’s spent a lot more time in the adult world than most eight-year-olds. Give this a chance to work itself out. Just because you don’t have control of the situation every minute of every day doesn’t mean there’s an impending disaster.”

  I laughed miserably at Laura’s famous last line. I was the notorious control freak in the family. “Yes, it does.” I groaned.

  “No, it does not.” She sounded and looked like our mother, who always knew how to bandage the wounds and soothe the hurts.

  “I wish Mom were here,” I whispered.

  Laura smiled tenderly. “I know. But you’ve got me and you’ve got Collie. One way or another, we’re going to girlfriend our way through this thing without your buying a ticket to Mexico.”

  “OK.” I took a fortifying breath, strengthened by the image of Laura, Collie, and me together. Ever since college, we’d been the unstoppable gal trio. Strong. Determined. At least two-thirds sane at all times. Now that I was the one bungee jumping over the edge, I knew they would anchor the rope.

  “So … speaking of Collie …” Laura’s tone told me she had concocted some sort of plan to save me from myself. “She’s working on a story down there in San Saline and she needs your help.”

  I drew back, smelling a setup. Laura was busy today, so Collie had been assigned to babysit me. “What help could I possibly be on something for Collie’s newspaper?”

  “The story isn’t for the San Saba County Review. It’s for my magazine. I’ve contracted her to expand a little piece she wrote last week, so that we can run it as a feature in the next issue of Texcetera.”

  “I don’t think I’d be much help writing a magazine story,” I hedged.

  Laura raised a hand impatiently. “Give me a minute. Let me explain. It’s a story about dinosaur bones.”

  “Really?” Now she had my interest. Writing wasn’t my area of expertise, but fossils were. I hadn’t heard of any big new finds in Texas lately… .

  Laura leaned close, as if she were about to share a mysterious secret and the walls had ears. “There’s a ranch near Collie’s place—Jubilee Ranch. Anyway, one of her husband’s cousins owns it, and it’s been in the family for a hundred and fifty years. These days, they run some kind of New Age therapy camp where screwed-up suburbanites come to get a dose of pioneer life and horse psychology.”

  I lowered an eyebrow at my sister, and she raised her hands palms-up. “I know, it sounds strange, but here’s the thing. One of the big attractions on the ranch has always been the dinosaur tracks in the riverbed. In fact, that area has always been called Big Lizard Bottoms because of all the fossils. People come from miles around to see the dino footprints. Schoolkids take field trips to it. Lots of old folks around here had their pictures taken as babies, sitting in the dinosaur tracks like a bathtub. So, two weeks ago, guess what happened? In the middle of the night, someone came in with heavy equipment and stole the dinosaur tracks. No kidding. They chiseled a huge section of limestone right out of the riverbed, and somehow managed to load it onto a truck and make off with it.”

  “They came prepared… .” Mentally, I calculated the tools required for such an operation—diamond-blade saw, generator, portable air compressor, pneumatic driver and tools, steel wedges and splitting feathers, hoist, and hydraulic lift. Not a small endeavor. “What kind of tracks were they?”

  Laura tapped a finger on the table contemplatively, watching her wedding ring glitter in the angular sunlight. “I can’t think of the name. Collie knows it. Some kind of meat-eating dinosaur with three toes. Thera-something.”

  “Theropod?”

  “I guess.” Laura had never shared my interest in long-extinct animals and other antiquities. “They were some of the smaller tracks, but they were the most perfect ones—the ones that were stolen, I mean. There are still some others from some kind of bigger dinosaur. I guess they were too large to steal.”

  “Or else the thieves are coming back for them after they get the first ones sold.” Which was what often happened. Black marketers who sold fossils and other antiquities often pillaged sites a bit at a time.

  Laura grimaced. “I hope not. The old man who owns the ranch was so upset, he ended up in the hospital with heart trouble. The trackway was always a part of his family’s place, and now it’s gone.”

  “Poor man.” After these past few weeks, I understood how it felt to have something precious and irreplaceable taken from you.

  “I know.” Laura was pleased at having me hooked and largely distracted from the Sydney situation. “So Collie was hoping that you’d go down there, help her with the story, and maybe assist the local sheriff in getting the word out to places where the fossil might turn up for sale.”

  “I’d love to.” A surprising buzz of excitement zinged through me. Other than flying to Mexico, I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather do than help track down thieves who sold fossils on the black market. I had long suspected that, in addition to his legitimate work, Geoff dabbled in illegally selling antiquities to the highest bidder. “Call Collie and tell her I’m on my way to San Saline.”

  Laura laughed. “Well, it’s good to see you so charged up. Don’t you think you ought to eat first?” She waved at the waitress, who quickly brought over two breakfast platters, complete with grits.

  “Did y’all get everything all worked out?” the waitress asked. Obviously, she had been poised for Laura’s all-clear signal. I wasn’t sure, but I thought she winked at my sister.

  Laura gave her a keep quiet look, then blinked innocently at me and started in on her breakfast.

  “Well, y’all just enjoy.” The waitress backpedaled. “Eat them grits; they’re good for ya. Those’ll stick to your ribs all the way to San Saline.” Eyes flying wide, she popped a hand over her mouth and gave Laura a look that said, Whoops.

  I smelled a setup larger than just my going to San Saline to help Collie with a story. Lowering my fork, I dead-eyed my sister, who was turning red, but trying to look nonchalant. “All right, Laura. Out with it. What’s going on?”

  TWO

  LAURA WOULDN’T ADMIT THERE WAS ANYTHING GOING ON, OF course. Or that her sudden phone call the day before, and her insistence that I come for a visit, had anything to do with a plot to save me from myself.

  “Oh, Lindsey, don’t be so paranoid,” she said, as we ate our breakfast platters, and for the first time, I saw a real, live grit up close. Lots of grits, actually. They looked like lumpy Malt-O-Meal and tasted like wet potato chips. I ate the whole bowl and asked the waitress for more. My throat was raw from crying all night, and the grits felt warm and soothing.

  Laura laughed as I started on seconds. “I didn’t know you were such a fan of grits.”

  “I’m not,” I said, pushing the bowl aside after a few bites. The grits were expanding in my stomach and I felt like a pop bottle that had been dropped down the stairs. “I was starving.” Which was true in more ways than one. There had been a ravenous emptiness inside me since the day Sydney left. My sister’s presence and the warmth of the grits filled it in some way. It felt good to be here, eating, talking, watching the world pass by outsi
de the window instead of hiding out in the basement lab of the museum.

  “So, tell me about this horse psychology place,” I said. “Sounds interesting.”

  Laura shrugged casually, but I suspected she was hiding something. “Don’t know too much about it,” she said, glancing at her watch. “Collie can tell you more. It’s a cousin that runs the place—True’s cousin, I mean, that would be Collie’s cousin-in-law. It’ll take you around two hours to get there. Collie said just to meet her at the newspaper office in San Saline, and you can drive out to the ranch together. She has an appointment to do an interview there at ten.”

  I glanced at my watch as the waitress cleared our plates from the table. Seven thirty-seven. “Guess I’d better get going.”

  The waitress paused. “Aren’t you going to wait around and see your dad? He comes in every day about this time. He and Hasselene are so cute together. Just shows you that romance can happen at any age.”

  Laura gave her the be quiet look, and the woman winced, then mouthed, Ohhh, and quickly changed the subject. “I’ll put your leftovers in a to-go container. It’d be a shame to waste all that food.” Hurrying to the counter, she plopped my grits into a container, then brought it back.

  Sliding to the end of the booth, Laura stood up, suddenly in a hurry to be gone. “Well, that was good. Don’t worry about the check. Graham and I pay our tab at the end of the month.”

  I waited while Laura crossed the room, said hi to the people in the kitchen, then met me at the door. “What’s Dad doing driving way out here every day?” I asked as we stepped onto the porch. A new-old worry needled my mind, pushing aside the Sydney obsession. “And what’s this about a romance?”

  Laura stiffened, tucking her short blond hair behind her ear, her chin jutting out defensively. “He’s fine, Lindsey. Don’t worry about it.”

  “He isn’t supposed to be driving, and do you really think it’s a good idea for him to be having some senior romance when he’s still trying to get over losing Mom?”

  Huffing, Laura crossed her arms, and I could tell we were about to get into one of our bossy-sister versus nice-sister arguments. “He’s fine. He passed his driver’s test. You’re the only one who thinks he shouldn’t have his keys. Mark, Daniel, and I agreed that there’s no reason Dad can’t drive, and we’re all OK with his dating Hasselene. Mom’s been gone over a year, and he’s lonely. Mark thinks Dad and Hasselene ought to get married and Dad should move out here.”

  I stood blinking at Laura, openmouthed. Apparently, there had been a family conference involving my brothers and my sister, and no one bothered to include me. “Well, it would have been nice if someone had told me.”

  “Leave it be, Lindsey.” Laura sounded so much like my mother that my heart lurched. “I know you wanted him to hang around the senior center and take up woodcarving, but he isn’t interested. He’s been afraid to tell you that. He doesn’t go to any of those senior activities you send him e-mails about. He likes spending his days here at the café, doing little repairs and odd jobs, and, as it turns out, he likes Hasselene. He’s happy. End of story.”

  I coughed in disbelief. Everyone in my family had been lying to me. Normally such a realization would have caused a temper flare, but I just stood there feeling hurt and unwanted.

  Running a hand down my arm sympathetically, Laura tilted forward to catch my gaze. “Lindsey, it’s OK. It really is.You had so much on your mind this last year with Sydney, we didn’t want to burden you, and … well … we didn’t want to deal with your reaction to Dad dating Hasselene. It’s like you go into a panic about anything you can’t micromanage. Life happens, Lindsey. It just … does. The fact that you didn’t plan something doesn’t mean it’s going to end in disaster. Let loose a little bit before you kill yourself. Have a little faith.”

  “Faith isn’t my forte,” I whispered, scrubbing my eyebrows with my fingertips, feeling my lips tremble into a wan smile. “Control works much better for me.”

  Laura laughed, pulling my hands away from my face and holding them in hers. “Control is an illusion.”

  “I can’t lose Sydney.” My darkest fear bubbled up like stagnant water trapped below the surface.

  “You’re not going to lose Sydney.” She squeezed my hands and I felt the bond between us, her strength flowing into me. “Go do the story with Collie. Have fun. Relax. Distract yourself for a while and you’ll be that much closer to Sydney coming home, right?”

  Taking a deep breath of the fresh air, I gave her hands a resigned jiggle. “You’re right. You’re right. I have to get myself together.”

  “Good.” Seeming satisfied, she reached into her briefcase and pulled out a couple of newspapers. “Here are some articles about the ranch. Collie wrote the one about the stolen dinosaur footprint. The other one is a USA Today article about the horse therapy program. Apparently horse psychology is all the rage, ever since Oprah, or somebody, featured it on a talk show.”

  “Really?” I said, glancing at Collie’s article and then at the one printed in full color in USA Today. “Where in the world have I been?”

  Laura chuckled. “Apparently not in Texas.”

  “Apparently not. I didn’t …” I paused, losing my train of thought as I studied the picture of a solemn-faced cowboy next to the article. In the photo, he was standing with his elbows braced on an old wooden fence as he looked thoughtfully into the distance. His black cowboy hat was pulled low, so that it framed his silvery green eyes and straight, dark brows. “Who’s this?”

  Laura craned her neck to see the picture. “That’s one of Collie’s cousins-in-law from the horse psychology camp.”

  When I looked up, my sister was studying me, seeming contemplative, slightly expectant. Pasting on an artificial smile, she gave me a quick hug and said, “Guess you’d better get going. Tell Collie hi for me,” then practically shoved me down the stairs toward my vehicle. “Collie’s newspaper office is right in downtown San Saline. You can’t miss it. You’ve got a map in your car, right?”

  “Of course,” I replied. “And a new GPS system, actually.”

  Laura rolled her eyes. “Good Lord, Lindsey. You don’t leave anything to chance.”

  “Not if I can help it.” I gave her a quick sneer, playfully snide, like I would have done when we were kids competing against each other on the same softball field. Laura was always petite, puny, and afraid of the ball. I knew that the key was to learn to control it. Once you had control of the ball, there was nothing to be afraid of.

  “You’re such a brat,” she shot back over her shoulder, as she headed to her car. “Call me later.” Opening the door, she put one foot in, like a bank robber about to make a getaway. “You’d better head out. You’ll miss Collie.” She added a little head bob, her short blond hair swinging like a Clairol commercial. “Love ya. ’Bye.” Then she disappeared into her car.

  As I climbed into my Jeep, I caught her watching me again as she answered her cell phone. I had the strangest feeling she was talking about me.

  She smiled and waved, then put her car into gear and drove away like she was afraid I’d change my mind. My original plan had been to hang out at Dad’s place and spend the day rearranging his pills, cleaning up the farmhouse, or finally sorting through Mom’s things and sending them off to Goodwill. Something, anything, to put life in order. Someone’s life.

  Only now, Laura was telling me that Dad had better things to do. He had a life of his own. Laura had a life of her own—new husband, in-laws, a comfortable little ranch house that I’d seen only in pictures. Worst of all, Sydney had a life of her own. New father, new stepmother, new bedroom that she said was bright-pink stucco decorated with lively Mexican-tile mosaics.

  Everyone was moving on, and no one had bothered to consult me.

  “Do you think I have control issues?” I said to the horse psychologist in the newspaper. I propped him up against the door handle so that we could see each other better. “Because I don’t think I have control issues.�
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  The horse psychologist studied me with his faraway look. If he had the answers, he wasn’t sharing. The big brown doe eyes of the horse in the picture next to him regarded me tenderly from beneath a mop of frosty white hair. He didn’t think I had control issues. To him, I was just a normal, well-adjusted, thirty-something single mother having a bad day … bad week … bad month … bad year… .

  Anyway, the point was that I didn’t have control issues. Once I got Dad’s life and Sydney’s situation back in order, I’d prove that to Laura. Admittedly, I needed for things to be on an even keel, reasonably predictable. That wasn’t the same as being a control freak.

  Was it?

  The horse psychologist answered me with the slightest hint of a sardonic, know-it-all smile. He thought I had control issues.

  I laid the paper facedown, because I really didn’t need his opinion anyway.

  Picking up the road atlas, I glanced at the route to San Saline. I was heading from nowhere to nowhere. Nothing between me and San Saline but two-lane roads and towns in small print. Easy drive. I punched the starting point and destination into the GPS console, and an electronic map displayed the route. Estimated travel time, 108.5 minutes. Adequate fuel. Outside temperature, seventy-two degrees, weather fair, wind speed eight mph.

  The GPS pinpointed my current location on the digital map. “Proceed east point-one miles. Turn left onto FM 47-B,” the electronic voice instructed pleasantly as I put the car in gear. Sydney and I laughingly called the woman in the dashboard “Gertie.”

  Circling the parking lot, gazing at the wild Indian blankets blooming around the edges, I sifted out a childhood memory of my mother picking a bouquet of the bright yellow flowers with velvety crimson pinwheel centers. I couldn’t even remember where we were living then. My childhood was a series of army towns that all ran together.

  “Make a legal U-turn. Proceed east point-one miles. Turn left onto FM 47-B,” Gertie repeated, her electronic frustration obvious, despite the singsong voice.