In the cast of the moonlight overhead he could see his cattle in the distance, some of them lying down for sleep, others grazing on the early summer grass. He turned his gaze upward.
Here in the country the stars looked close enough to grasp in your hands. Her eyes had held a sparkle like the stars. Lizzy's eyes.
What had stunned him more than anything was that for just a moment as he'd stared at her, as he'd seen that spark in her eyes and the warmth of her smile, an unexpected surge of energy, of life had washed through him. It was something he hadn't felt for a very long time.
With a deep sigh he turned and went back into the big house that resonated with a depth of silence he'd almost become accustomed to experiencing each time he walked through the door. Almost.
He needed to go to bed. It was just past midnight and there would be chores to get done early in the morning. But, he'd always found sleep difficult on Friday nights, when thoughts of Janice intruded heavily into his head.
Still, as he got into bed minutes later, it wasn't thoughts of Janice that filled his head, but rather thoughts of Lizzy, who preferred apple to peach and had, for just a minute, made Daniel feel something other than his own pain.
He fell asleep with a vision of whiskey-colored eyes in his head and awakened just after dawn with the same emptiness that had been his life for the past year and a half.
This ranch was where he'd been raised, the only child of a couple who'd had him in their mid-forties. They'd built the large house with the expectation of filling it with lots of children. Unfortunately, the children hadn't happened until Daniel, and there were no more after him.
His parents hadn't lived long enough to see him married, and thankfully they hadn't been alive to see him widowed. There were times he wished he had a brother or a sister, somebody who would help him get through this endless grief process, and at other times he felt he deserved to never stop the sadness that filled his very soul.
If things had been different, he would have turned to his best friend, Sam Benson, or one of Sam's brothers. But Sam's sister had died in the accident that had also killed Janice. The friendship that Daniel had shared with Sam and his younger brothers had been strained ever since.
The week passed quickly, as each one always did, with his mind emptied except for the daily chores that were involved in running a ranch with cattle, horses, a coop full of chickens and crops.
Each day unfolded like the last one, with Daniel spending as much time as possible outside and going into the big, silent house only to shower, eat and sleep.
It was on Friday evening after dinner as he showered for his regular trip into town that he thought again of the waitress at the Cowboy Café.
The ritual of driving into town each Friday night, of sitting in the café and ordering the pie he and Janice used to eat every Friday night of their courtship and marriage, had been part of his penance.
Since her death, each week when he showered to prepare for the night, he'd always been filled with a sense of dread, with the wish that he could turn back time and somehow make things different. But, of course, that was impossible. There was no going back in time to fix things. Some things simply couldn't be fixed.
Now as he stood beneath the hot spray of water he felt something much different, and he knew it had to do with the waitress. Lizzy, who had slid into the booth seat across from him and eaten his dead wife's pie, had also managed to shake him out of his numb state enough to fill him with a strange sizzle of anticipation as he thought of encountering her once again.
It was six-forty when he left the house for the fifteen-
minute drive into town to the café. He kept his
driver's-side window down, allowing in the sweet scents of early summer that emanated from the pastures and fields he passed.
Funny, he hadn't noticed the smells of home for a long time. All he'd been able to smell was the scent of his own misery, the odor of his remorse.
A knot of tension formed in his chest, a knot that tightened the closer he got to the café. This time he recognized that the tension had nothing to do with his past, but rather was an anticipation of the night to come.
Would Lizzy be working tonight? He'd been too shocked by her actions to utter a single word to her the week before. He had no idea what her normal hours were at the café. If she was there tonight he wasn't sure he would speak to her, but the fact that he was even considering it came as a complete surprise to him.
It was just a few minutes before seven when he parked his truck in front of the café. He sat for several moments, gripping the steering wheel as he stared at the ancient establishment.
The Cowboy Café had been around forever. Housed in a low, flat red building, a billboard on the roof boasted a cowboy wearing a hat to announce its presence in the area.
The café was the place in town for good food, a warm, inviting atmosphere and all the local gossip you could want. Mary Mathis updated the menus occasionally, but for the most part the café had remained pretty much the same over the years. The place was essentially the very heart of Grady Gulch.
He got out of his truck, and as he walked toward the door his emotions suddenly felt wildly out of control. He shouldn't be thinking about a waitress with amber-colored eyes and silky brown hair. He shouldn't be remembering the warmth of her smile, the vibrancy of her very presence opposite him in the booth.
He should be focused solely on the blond-haired, blue-eyed woman who had been his wife, a woman whose death, and that of her best friend, rested solely on his head.
Still, the minute the bell over the door tinkled to announce his arrival and he stepped into the air that smelled of savory scents, that rang with the boisterous noise of people dining and laughing, his gaze shot around the room.
Instantly his gaze locked with hers.
Lizzy.
She stood behind the counter, but it was as if she hadn't been working at all but rather had been just standing there watching the door, waiting for him to arrive.
In an instant he took in everything about her, the way her shiny hair had half escaped a low ponytail, how her T-shirt fit snug across her breasts and molded to her slender waist.
In that frozen moment of eye contact he noted the slight widening of her eyes, the way her lips parted as if on a gasp, and a crackling tension snapped in the air.
He wasn't sure who looked away first, he or she. He hung up his hat and then made his way to his usual booth and told himself that he was there to honor his dead wife, to punish himself for all the things he'd done wrong on the last night of her life.
He definitely wasn't there with any other purpose in mind other than the somber ritual that he felt compelled to perform. He slid into the booth, consciously keeping his gaze away from the counter area and Lizzy.
It didn't take long for Candy, the young woman who usually waited on him, to appear at the side of his booth. "The usual?" she asked, as she did every Friday night.
"Yeah," he replied. "No, wait," he added before she could move away from the booth. He drew a deep breath and wondered if he'd completely lost his mind. "Make that a piece of peach pie and a piece of apple."
* * *
Lizzy had been on edge all afternoon, wondering if Daniel would show up this evening. She'd imagined herself apologizing to him in a million different ways throughout the day. The minute he'd walked through the door her anxiety had shot through the ceiling.
She definitely owed him an apology. All week long she'd thought about it, thought about him, and hoped he'd show up tonight so she could apologize to him and assuage at least some of her guilt about what she had done.
Now he was there and yet she stood in place, nervous butterflies whirling around in the pit of her stomach. For just a moment as he'd walked in the door he'd made eye contact with her, and a flush of heat had washed over her. She didn't know if it was embarrassment that she felt or something else altogether. She'd whirled around and busied herself filling a napkin holder.
When she'd looked again Candy was serving him the usual, a cup of coffee and two slices of pie. When the waitress moved away from the booth once again, Lizzy sucked in a deep breath for courage and finally approached his booth.
She stopped a foot away from where he sat. "Mr. Jefferson?"
He turned to look at her with those dark gray eyes of his, and the butterflies in her tummy zoomed around at warp speed. "Uh … I just wanted to say how sorry I am for … uh … what I did, you know, last week … sitting down and … "