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Well, most of the time. My instincts have failed me a time or two—once in dramatic fashion that cost me nearly everything.
But God redeemed it, so there is that—and maybe He’ll do it a second time and send John Chavez back for a diner breakfast some day soon. No small wonder, I guess, that he hasn’t been by to see his favorite waitress since the fiasco in my driveway. Why would he? There are a dozen other places he can get his scrambled eggs and bacon, establishments far finer than the hole in the wall where I serve pretty much seven days a week.
Why seven days? To pay for an attorney, an attorney like the one whose business card bounced off my shoe into a tiny puddle—and then into the trash that was carted off by the city first thing the next morning.
Another sigh rolls with me back to my left side. Forget about the two a.m. reading on the clock, it’s the aloneness that consumes my thoughts.
Marlene doesn’t understand why I don’t date—or at least take one of the cute construction workers home once in a while. My mom never understood why I couldn’t justget over itand find a nice man at church.
Isover itobtainable?
A head on another pillow might mean one who could share the load. Wouldn’t that be a nice change of pace?
A small noise gives me an excuse to abandon the reckless thoughts. With a quiet tap-tap, I push Jacob’s door open. Leaning against the wall—he still doesn’t have a headboard for the queen-sized bed I upgraded him to when he reached six-feet—the light from the smartphone I work extra hours to pay for illuminates his face.
I lean into the door’s edge. “Jacob, put that thing away.”
“I can’t sleep.”
The floor creaks beneath my feet on my walk to the side of his bed. “Give me that.”
“Mom!”
“Give. It. To. Me.”
He holds the phone away.
“Jacob William.”
“This is a private conversation!”
My stomach cramps. A private conversation in the middle of the night. “I’m not going to read you messages.”Perhaps.“You’ve got school tomorrow, not to mention an away game tomorrow night.” Another one I’ll miss, by the way.
As I make another reach, he powers it down. He better not have changed his password again.
Huffing and puffing, he hands the device over and throws himself under the covers.
Back in bed, I power his phone back up and enter the four-digit code—and I’m in.
But my stomach is in a ball, a ball that’s bouncing and rolling with my every fear.
Am I a good mom if I read his texts…or a very bad one? Heisseventeen now.
I can’t do it. I’ve had my fill of bad news lately. Tomorrow. In the light of day. I’m usually stronger then.
For now, I curl into the covers and kiss my worries, my lone companions, goodnight.
John
The flood lights outside Charlie’s Diner cast Hollie in an ethereal glow as she emerges from the greasy joint, yawning as big as the Grand Canyon. It remains to be seen if this exhausted angel will greet me with a smile or a slap. Yeah, I called her unreasonable…but she is.
Past tense, hopefully. It’s been a long blasted week. Not often anymore does work send me out of town, and the last four days in El Paso took the literal spring out of my step. Sad to say, it doesn’t take as much to accomplish that as it used to.
Maybe it’s been long enough to make Hollie Carpenter see…well…reason.
A man can hope.
Can he look too? Kicked back against my car, I use the moment she doesn’t yet see me to study her in the way I want to every time she’s around. At Charlie’s, she’s long been the only waitress worth looking at, and, confession time? I’ve always looked. Not that she would have known. I’m good at surreptitious.Half a decade of undercover work hones the skill.
