Over the Moon at the Big Lizard Diner Read online

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Over the Moon at the Big Lizard Diner

  A New American Library Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2005 by Wingate Media, LLC

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1050-5

  A NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY BOOK®

  New American Library Books first published by The New American Library Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY and the “NAL” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: November, 2005

  NOVELS BY LISA WINGATE

  THE TENDING ROSES SERIES

  Tending Roses

  Good Hope Road

  The Language of Sycamores

  THE TEXAS HILL COUNTRY SERIES

  Texas Cooking

  Lone Star Café

  Over the Moon at the Big Lizard Diner

  To Uncle Pug

  Otherwise known as Wonderful Winfred,

  Who said,

  “Some of the best adventures of my life never really happened.”

  Here’s another adventure.

  I hope they have a good library

  Up there in heaven… .

  Acknowledgments

  The story of Lindsey Draper’s trip to Big Lizard Bottoms would not have been possible without the help of some very special people. As always, my undying gratitude goes out to all the booksellers and media personnel who have shown such devotion to the previous books in the Texas Hill Country series, Texas Cooking and Lone Star Café, as well as the books in the Tending Roses series. My thanks also to the many readers who have shared the books with friends, taken time to send letters of encouragement, and asked for sequels. I hope you enjoy the trip to Big Lizard Bottoms as much as I did.

  My gratitude also goes out to those who helped me in the writing and research of Big Lizard. Thank you to Fred and Gwen Owens for sharing information about and articles about the theropod tracks stolen from your ranch. May your big lizard someday find its way home. Thank you to Kent Munden for providing information on the workings of the USDA. Thank you to friends in San Saba for offering stories and memories of the real Wedding Oak. Thank you to my father-in-law, Lawrence, for information on windmills and other ranch machinery. Last, but certainly not least, thank you to our neighbors, the Webbs, for letting us borrow Wally, the wandering Great Pyrenees, for the back cover photo shoot, and for providing the numerous dog biscuits required as Wally’s modeling fee.

  As always, my heartfelt gratitude goes to the staff at New American Library, my editor, Ellen Edwards, and my agent at Sterling Lord Literistic, Claudia Cross. Special thanks also goes to my family, including my wonderful mother-in-law, Janice, for helping with address lists, newsletters, soccer games, baseball practices, and always having the door open at the Nanny in Pajamas bed and breakfast. Thanks also to my mother for being a willing reader, a traveling companion, writer’s helper, and super grandma to my boys.

  Last, thanks to all the friends far and near, who have encouraged me along the way. We all need the help of a few special angels in this world, and I’ve received more than my share.

  ONE

  GRITS AND HORSE PSYCHOLOGY. NOT EXACTLY THINGS YOU THINK of as life altering. When I tell people it was grits and horse psychology that brought me to an epiphany, they look at me like I’m crazy—just one more single mother who finally cracked under the demands of career and parenthood. One more lost, lonely thirty-something woman who read too many romance novels, developed a Bridget Jones obsession, and decided to do something impetuous for love.

  But love was the farthest thing from my mind that summer. Romantic love was an idea completely beyond the realm of my existence, another planet I’d landed on just long enough to conceive a child with a husband who didn’t want to be a father. The blastoff from that world was so painful that I lay for eight years in suspended animation, drifting through space, isolated in my protective bubble while Sydney grew up dreaming that one day her father would come back.

  When she learned to write in first grade, she started sending him letters, which, of course, went unanswered, except for an occasional child-support check. She read about him in National Geographic, Paleontology Magazine, and on the archaeology Web sites. She reasoned that he was too far away to hear her, and kept sending letters.

  The year Sydney turned seven, a check arrived for all the back child support. I should have been suspicious. Geoff never did anything without a motive. The payments came on time for a couple of months, and then a courier showed up with a letter from a lawyer. Goeff had remarried and settled down, and he wanted Sydney for the summer. In Mexico.

  I’ve never ached the way I did hugging her good-bye at the airport, as she stood with her pink backpack, her long sandy-brown hair—his color hair—curling over the straps. I hugged her so hard I thought she might break. Then there he was, looking like the National Geographic portrait Sydney kept taped to her mirror. She slipped her hand into his like it was the most natural thing in the world. For an instant in the gateway, she lifted her hand and waved before he led her away. She was beaming. I wanted to die. In eight years, Sydney and I had never been separated for more than the length of a school day.

  The first weeks of summer were a blur. I was nonfunctional. Catatonic. I drifted back and forth between my apartment in downtown Denver and my job as a paleontology lab supervisor in the basement of the museum six blocks away. Somehow I ended up on sabbatical, in Texas.

  “Grits, baby?” I should have known I was a long way from home when the waitress called me baby.

  “Pardon?” I muttered, staring at the menu, reading the same words over and over.

  The waitress, a portly lady in her forties, gave me a sympathetic look. I imagined what she was seeing—a desperate woman in old jeans, a wrinkled T-shirt, and worn-out sandals. Stringy, uncombed dark brown hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail, eyes red and puffy around the brown centers, a body that used to be tan and in shape from hiking and mountain-bike riding with Sydney, but now hung pale and sallow, bent over the menu in some middle-of-nowhere Texas café. Lost as lost could be, even though I knew exactly where I was on the map.

  “You need a cup of our crossroads coffee,” she s
aid to my pathetic self as she filled the cup on the table.

  “It shows, huh?” I rubbed my forehead because my eyes were starting to sting. Driving all night from Colorado was catching up with me.

  “Well, you know, working here, you learn to spot when somebody needs a little pick-me-up.” She patted my shoulder, and suddenly I wanted to tell her everything. Which would have been completely unlike me. “Our coffee cures a multitude of ills,” she offered. “Cream and sugar?”

  “No, thanks. Just coffee,” I said miserably.

  “Grits?”

  “Huh?”

  “With your breakfast platter, baby,” she said tenderly. “Mernalene’s got some grits cooked up. Wouldja like some on the side? They’ll stick to your ribs. Comfort food.”

  “Sure,” I answered, thinking that Sydney would have jumped at the chance to see a real live grit. Grits played a cameo role in her new favorite movie, My Cousin Vinny. She loved the part where Vinny used grits to disprove the court case against his client. Sydney adored lawyer shows these days—probably because, thanks to Geoff and Whitney’s phone visits, Syd was way too privy to the ongoing custody litigations.

  My eyes teared up completely without warning. “No,” I said quickly. “You know what? I’ll just wait to order. I’m meeting my sister here for breakfast.”

  The waitress drew back, giving me a sudden look of recognition. “Oh, my goodness, are you Laura’s sister?”

  I blinked, surprised. “She told you I was coming?” It seemed unlikely, since I’d called Laura only a few hours ago to tell her I’d driven straight through last night. She’d suggested we meet for breakfast at this crossroads café, which was on her way to work in Austin.

  It was hard to picture my sophisticated sister eating in cafés where the waitress served grits and called everyone baby. Perhaps that was because I hadn’t actually seen Laura in her new environment yet. In the eleven months since she had fallen in love, eloped to Cancún, and moved permanently to Texas, I’d been tied up with Sydney’s custody case, fighting it right up until the moment I slipped her hand into Geoff’s and sent her off to Mexico for the summer. Laura had been to Colorado twice to visit me, but I hadn’t come down to Texas. Maybe it was jealousy that kept me away. Laura seemed blissfully happy in her new life.

  “Oh, we just love Laura around here,” the waitress gushed. “She called while ago, said to tell you she’d be a few minutes late.”

  “Thanks.” I nodded, looking glumly at my coffee, hoping the too-cheerful waitress would leave so I could brood about Sydney’s latest e-mail from Mexico. Without knowing it, my daughter had explained a lot of things about her father’s sudden interest. In the back of my mind, alarm bells were whispering like foghorns, still far out at sea.

  The waitress rested the coffeepot on the table. “I’m so glad to finally meet ye-ew. Your sister brags on you all the time, and your daddy can’t stop talkin’ about that granddaughter of his.”

  My father? I wanted to say. I couldn’t imagine my father’s name and the words can’t stop talking in the same sentence.

  Smacking her lips, the waitress pointed a finger at me. “I thought y’all were twins.”

  “What?”

  “You and Laura. I thought y’all were twins.Y’all don’t look anything alike.”

  “We’re the fraternal kind. Laura takes after Mom’s side, and I got the height and dark hair from Dad’s side,” I answered absently, my mind whizzing like a computer on overload. My CPU wanted to lock up, post a system-failure message, and hang there in limbo, as it had the past three weeks since Sydney’s departure.

  The waitress rubbed my shoulder, propping me up like a rag doll. “You look wiped out. I’m sorry. I’m just standin’ here talkin’ your leg off. I should get you some biscuits. By the smell of things, Mernalene and Hasselene just now took ’em out of the oven.” She checked her watch. “Good thing. The breakfast rush’ll be startin’ in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Oh,” I muttered. It was hard to imagine a rush of any kind here.

  “You bet,” she said as she crossed the room and slipped behind the counter. “The old Lone Star Café’s real popular with commuters since your sister put those articles in her magazine last year. After folks read about it, they all wanted to come try some of our special coffee. Of course, they had to wait until we were back open after the asbestos removal on the café building, but that’s another story. Don’t you worry, though. There’s no asbestos in the food or nothin’. We had crews in white spaceman outfits workin’ here for weeks. Cleaned the place top to bottom, and did an extra-special job, because Mernalene and Hasselene stayed in a camp trailer outside and kept the workers full of biscuits and coffee. Our coffee’s special—did I mention that?” Picking up the pot, she headed for the kitchen. “Cures a multitude of ills. Try some. It’ll perk you right up.”

  I wish it were that simple. Drink some magic coffee. Relax. Accept the fact that my daughter’s life was changing in ways I couldn’t control. Ignore the warning signs in her e-mails. Believe that everything would be all right.

  Taking a sip of coffee, I sat hoping for denial to set in. Halfway through the cup, I started to feel better. My pulse slowed and the whirring in my temples quieted as the place filled up and the breakfast rush began. The waitress whizzed by my table, leaving behind butter, jam, and a basket of biscuits wrapped in a blue gingham napkin.

  My stomach rolled with sudden hunger. For the first time in three weeks, it felt like I might actually taste the food.

  I took out a biscuit. It was warm and soft in my hands, the scent comforting in a way I couldn’t explain. It tasted impossibly good, and I realized I was starving. Taking another bite, I chewed slowly, savoring, relaxing, falling into the rhythm of clinking pans, the low hum of voices, and the rich, golden warmth of sunlight streaming in the window. The sounds conjured images of my mother, working in the kitchen years ago… .

  I sat staring at the inside-out letters on the glass, entranced, comfortably numb. The café door opened, and I heard it, but couldn’t focus.

  “Lindsey?” My sister’s voice barely penetrated the fog. She stood at the end of the booth, seeming uncertain. I wondered if I looked so bad that even my twin didn’t recognize me.

  “Hi, Laura.” I swallowed a sudden rush of emotion, hoping she hadn’t noticed the tremor in the words.

  Her brows knotted in the center, a sure sign that she had. “Are you all right? You look terrible.”

  “Thanks,” I said, self-consciously tucking unkempt strings of hair behind my ears. Fifteen hours of driving and crying had, no doubt, left me looking like the basket case I was.

  Forcing a tired smile, I made an excuse. “Long trip.”

  “Well, why didn’t you stop for the night?” She slid into the seat across from me. “You shouldn’t have tried to drive straight through alone.”

  “I caught a couple hours’ sleep at a rest stop.” All I could remember about last night was the vague thought that Sydney loved hotels, and staying at one without her would be unbearable. “I wasn’t tired.”

  Laura knew better, of course. “Yes, you were,” she said softly, slipping her hand over mine. “Come on, Lindsey. What’s wrong?”

  “Everything.” My voice was a thin, choked whisper. “Everything about Sydney being gone this summer is wrong.”

  “I know,” Laura commiserated, squeezing my hand. “But it’s just for the summer, Lindsey. It’s what Sydney wanted. It’s what she needs right now.”

  “Is it?” A litany of my darkest fears ran through my mind. Anger followed quickly like a noonday shadow, and words spilled out of me in rapid succession. “Because I’m starting to wonder. Oh, Sydney’s trying to put the best light on it in her e-mails, but I’m starting to get a pretty clear picture. Her father is hardly ever there. He’s gone to some dig site two hours into the interior, while she sits home patiently waiting up late, hoping he’ll spend a few minutes with her. Most of the time, she’s not with him; she’s with
his new trophy wife, Whitney. They’re doing hair and makeup and touring the open-air market—in between Whitney’s Zen infertility treatments, which, by the way, she feels completely free to tell my eight-year-old daughter all about. Whitney felt so sorry for Sydney, sitting around waiting for her father all the time, that she ordered voice-recognition software so Syd can write me e-mails without having to type everything. She must be spending hours each day on the computer, but what she really wants is to be with her father. She’s been dreaming of this for eight years, and he can’t even take a few weeks off to spend time with her.” Tears spilled over as I thought of my little girl in a strange house, waiting for something she might never get. “I’m afraid she’ll end up with her heart broken. I want to fly down there and bring her home.”

  Laura squeezed my hand and I felt the connection we’d always had. The twin thing. “Lindsey, you have to calm down about this.” She offered me a napkin, and I wiped the raw, puffy skin around my eyes. “You cannot fly down there and get Sydney. Geoff has custody for the summer. It’s always been joint custody, Lindsey, even if he never chose to exercise his right to visitation before. That was what you wanted when she was a baby—for her to have some kind of relationship with her father.”

  I knew Laura was right. I knew it, but for the past three weeks I’d been sliding down a hole so deep that rational thought had disappeared. I needed Laura to tell me what was logical. Letting my head fall into my hand, I admitted how far gone I was. “I was on the Internet the other day, buying a ticket to Mexico, when you called.”

  Laura gasped, slapped back against her seat by the statement. “My God, Lindsey …”

  “I know.”

  “It’s a good thing I called.”

  “Is it?” Part of me still wondered. “I could be with my daughter right now.”

  Laura leaned close, her blue eyes stern. “You could be in jail right now, Lindsey. In Mexico, for God’s sake. How would that be for Sydney?”