Lone Star Cafe

Chapter 1

Cross - road (kraws'rod) n . an intersection; a place where two roads meet traveling opposite directions; a place to move across; a place of crossing; a gathering place.

In the dictionary, it is an unassuming entry between crossfire and crosswise . It is a word with a plainspoken feel, one that means exactly what you'd think it would mean. No mystery to it, just two roads converging then moving apart again.

Yet the mystery is the road. Not the one you're on, but the one you pass by as you slow at the stop sign, then hit the gas and move on to the next ordinary mile of an ordinary day. You don't notice the road, don't gaze down it and wonder, what would happen if I went the other way?

Not on an ordinary day.

For me, the extraordinary came by way of voice mail. I didn't know it then, but I was slowly drifting onto the other road, the one that traveled far from all that was familiar. The one that was a mystery.

The voice mail alert made me jump in my seat, and I didn't answer it right away. Less than an hour before, I'd been told that I might as well turn off the cell during my commute to Austin .

“There's no cell phone service on the old road,” my assistant had told me as I was getting in the car to begin my drive to the office. “Now don't panic, Ms. Draper.” Her voice took on a playful, pacifying tone. I could tell that, as usual, she was going to tip-toe merrily over the lines of strictly business behavior, and try to lighten the moment with a joke. “You can do this. If you start to have withdrawals, you can pick up the cell phone and rub it against your cheek and pretend it's working.”

“Very funny,” I muttered, more impatient with Kristi's teenager-ish personality than usual. I'd been in Texas a month, trying to push the first issue of Texcetera Magazine to press on time, and so far, nothing was going right. The fact that my assistant here was a bubbly twenty-three year old fresh out of college didn't help the situation. At thirty-six, fifteen years into a career editing magazines, I knew that when the magazine doesn't go to press on time, heads roll. I also knew that the publishing company wouldn't have pulled me from my editing job in Richmond and sent me to Austin unless they were desperate to launch Texcetera on schedule.

“Are you sure the interstate is closed?” I'd already asked her that once. I couldn't believe that with everything else we had to worry about, we now had to worry about the main road to Austin being out of service. “How can they close an interstate? That just doesn't happen.” It doesn't happen in Richmond . Lately, in Texas , nothing surprised me. So far, my trip had been like an episode of The Twilight Zone .

“It's been on the news here in Austin , like, all morning? A bridge fell down last night. Just poof.” She paused, and I pictured her illustrating the poof with hand motions. “Now they've found cracks in ten other overpasses, and they think maybe the contractor that built them cheated on the materials. They've been talking about it on every channel. Don't you listen to the news?”

“No time this morning.” I didn't want to admit that I'd been at my computer obsessing about the upcoming issue since four-thirty a.m., and that I did that every night because I didn't want to think about the other things that kept me awake. I didn't want to wonder why Dale had chosen to stay out of the country on another assignment for Time instead of coming home to Richmond, or why my father, who was supposed have been living in a retirement condo in Killeen since my mother's death, had run away and boarded himself in at the abandoned family farm. It was easier to worry about the magazine.

Kristi let out a playful humph on the other end of the phone. “OK, I just looked at the inbox on my computer, and I can tell where you've been all morning. Thanks for the huge to-do list. Don't guess I'll be going to lunch today. Don't you ever sleep?”

Normally, a comment like that would have irritated me, but I'd learned that whatever went through Kristi's mind, tumbled right out her mouth. She wasn't far off the mark, anyway. Lately I didn't sleep.

Kristi went on talking, her Texas drawl stretching one-syllable words into two. “There's a heck of a storm coming. I don't know if you'll run into it on your way or not, but it looks bad here.” The phone went dead for a moment, and then Kristi's voice returned mid-sentence. “…hear that? Gee whiz, thunder just shook the whole building, and the power blinked.”

“Is it that bad?” My mind began spinning ahead, worrying, as I backed out of my father's abandoned retirement condo and watched the garaged door close.

Kristi must have known what I was worrying about. “I'm sure the storm will blow over before time for the rose garden tours at the capital. Anyway, if you don't get going, you'll never make it here for the cover shoot. It's a ninety minute trip on the old road, at least.”

“You're kidding.” Glancing at my watch, I realized that in slightly over two hours, we were supposed to be shooting the first Texcetera cover – the first lady of the United States and the first lady of Texas together conducting the rose garden tour at the state capital. That picture would sell thousands of magazines and bring Texcetera onto the market with a splash. Dale had pulled all kinds of strings to get me and my photography team fifteen minutes alone with the first ladies before the tours began. Even from as far away as the Middle East , Dale still had the power to make things happen. After three years together, and even with all of the recent problems between us, that fact about him still impressed me. In his long career in freelance journalism, Dale had made contacts in almost every facet of print and politics. I couldn't believe who Dale knew and who knew him, and how far people were willing to go for him.

“All right, I'm gone. I'm leaving right now, so that puts me there in ninety minutes. I'll go straight to the rose garden for the shoot and interview. Call the photography team and tell them not to be late.” I climbed into my car and backed out of the parking space in front of the retirement villa my father refused to occupy. “I don't even have a Texas map here in my car. You're sure that all I do is stay on this… what number did you say it was… FM 47B, and that will take me all the way to Austin ?”

“That's it.” She paused, and I heard the office computer's battery backup beeping as the phone cut out and then came back. “Just get on 47B and head south. There's no place to get lost. FM 47B doesn't even cross a major highway or go through any real towns or anything; it crosses a few county roads that don't go anywhere. No one uses old 47B anymore, except locals, and sometimes the army guys from Fort Hood , but I imagine there will be a lot of traffic today, with the interstate closed down and all. The radio said that 281 is jammed bumper-to-bumper coming into Austin , so don't try that way.”

“All right,” I said. “Thanks for calling to give me the warning. I would have ended up trapped where the interstate is closed, I guess.” I was grateful for Kristi's loyalty, especially since I'd only known her a week. No one else on the magazine staff would have bothered to warn me. Actually, they probably would have loved it if I got stuck on the interstate and couldn't make it to work.

Kristi snorted into the phone. “No, you'd probably drive around the barricades and flash them your press pass.” She giggled, delighted with her own joke.

“All right, that's it. You're fired.” Kristi's sunny disposition was as hard to resist as it was to put up with. I caught myself going along with her jokes, even when we didn't have time for jokes.

“I know.” She sighed, almost as if she wished that were true. “Oh, don't forget to get gas before you start out. Hardly any gas places on old 47B. Not that are open, anyway. If you get desperate, stop at Crossroads Store. They sell gas. But don't ask to use the bathroom.”

I didn't inquire as to what that meant. She finished the sentence with a conspiratorial giggle that worried me.

An hour later, Kristi was on my voicemail, and the giggle was gone. Completely. Pressing the cell phone to my ear, I tried to hear through the static as I crept along with other commuters on a two-lane road that hadn't seen so much traffic since LBJ was president. In nearly an hour of driving, I'd only seen a couple of ranches and the rusted-out carcasses of a few old gas stations long ago abandoned by humankind.

For the first time since I'd known her, Kristi sounded panicked. “Laura, there's a problem with the…” Static obliterated the rest of the message, leaving my imagination to conjure all sorts of terrible scenarios.

I groaned under my breath and looked for a place to stop to try the voice mail again. Beside me, the shoulder of the road dropped off steeply into a thick tangle of wild sunflowers that covered a deep ditch. No place to pull off. Ahead, the cars and trucks were stopping at what looked like an intersection.

I could probably pull off there . Stretching in my seat, I tried to see past the vehicles coming to a halt one by one at a faded stop sign. Beyond the intersection, it looked like there might be an abandoned gas station or old grocery store. Hopefully, when I got there, the cell phone signal would kick in again, and I could pull into the parking lot long enough to get the message off my voice mail.

The tower signal on the cell phone disappeared as I came to a stop at the end of the long line of cars backed up at the intersection.

“Crud,” I muttered, shaking the phone as I counted the cars . One, two, three… all the way to twenty-three, plus one livestock trailer, and a gold Mercedes ahead of me. This would take a while. The woman in the Mercedes slammed her cell phone on the dashboard and threw her hands in the air, then pounded on the horn. In front of her, the cows stuck their noses through the trailer bars and mooed in reply. She waved her hands at the windshield, trying to shoo them away, but didn't honk the horn again. Absently, I read the gold-lettered decal in her back window, Shaw Real Estate , and the custom license place, HOUSHNTR. Cute.

Drumming impatiently on my steering wheel, I inched closer to the stop sign. Stop, inch, inch inch, stop … And on the cell phone, no signal, no signal, no signal…

Please let there be a signal at the top of the hill. One little bitty bar on the tower indicator. Please… It's amazing what you'll pray for when you're stuck in traffic on an unfamiliar backroad at nine in the morning, when you have to be in Austin by ten and your assistant has left a desperate message on the cell phone, and you don't know what it says . And please, get this traffic moving…

I knew better than to pray for things like that. I really did, but at the moment I was desperate.

Ahead, the traffic crept forward at a snail's pace. I ground my teeth, gripping and ungripping the steering wheel, watching the digital clock change, 9:04, 9:05, 9:06. Inch, inch, inch. Stop.

I turned away from the clock and looked out the window, squinting at the stop sign that was causing all the trouble. Clinging to a crooked post by one nail, it swung lazily back and forth, shaking its head at the traffic.

Leaning against the back in my seat, I tried the deep breathing I'd learned before dropping out of yoga class back in Richmond . Closing my eyes, I tried to imagine ocean waves coming in and out on a tide . Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale , said a soothing voice in my head, and then, if you don't get to Austin by ten o'clock, Laura, you're dead meat…

Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale…

The honk of a horn startled me and I bolted upright in my seat. Ahead of me, HOUSHNTR had moved three feet forward, and, while meditating, I had failed to close the gap. The guy in the pickup truck behind me was mad. I fought the urge to give him what my mother called, ‘the naughty finger'. In Texas , the naughty finger was best kept out of sight, because many of the pickups had at least three rifles on the back-window gun rack, and “shooting the naughty finger” took on a whole new meaning.

The guy behind me honked again, and I realized that the cars ahead were moving.

The livestock trailer rolled forward, and I saw the reason that the traffic jam was clearing. In the intersection, a guy in a cowboy hat was waving traffic through. He looked somewhat official, wearing some kind of uniform shirt, white with a badge or something, with blue jeans and boots. He was standing next to a pickup with lettering on it.

Thank God. Finally . Leaning forward, I tried to read the letters on the side of the pickup as we crept closer to the stop sign.

Two school buses rounded the corner on the crossroad just as HOUSHNTR and I were finally getting to the front of the line. The traffic cowboy put a hand up to stop us, then motioned for the school buses to move around his pickup and onto the highway.

“Oh, great,” I muttered, combing loose strands of blond hair away from my face, frustrated with the delay.

HOUSHNTR wasn't pleased either. She pulled into the intersection and the cowboy motioned for her to stop, so she slammed her hands on the steering wheel and rolled down her window to complain. He smiled and said something that must have been charming, because HOUSHNTR threw her head back and laughed, then backed up her car until she almost hit mine.

The cowboy glanced at me and shrugged apologetically as the busses passed by, then he signaled for our line to move along. HOUSHNTR leaned out the window and said something as she passed. He shook his head and grinned, his teeth an even white row beneath the shadow of his hat as he watched her car pass, still shaking his head at some private joke.

Raising my hand in a cursory wave, I slowly moved forward, absently reading the letters on his truck. Tri-County HAZMAT , it said. Whatever that meant. Trash collector, maybe? At the moment, I didn't care. He was a hero to me. I was going to make it to Austin on time.

The voice mail beeped again on my cell phone. “Yes!” I heard myself squeal, my elbow hitting the horn as I scrambled for the phone . HAZMAT jumped back like he thought I was going to run him over. Crazy lady in a rental car . I raised the hand with my cell phone in it, then ducked my head apologetically, hoping he might understand the sign language.

He shook a finger playfully at me, as I rolled past, and I caught a quick glimpse of blue eyes beneath the brim of his hat.

Pressing the phone to my ear, I tried to hear as static garbled the voicemail menu, then cleared. Behind me, the pickup honked again, and I realized I had slowed to a crawl, holding my breath, hoping the voice mail wouldn't fuzz out before I could get the message.

“Laura.” That was definitely panic in Kristi's voice. “There's a problem with the cover shoot for this morning.” A fist twisted in my stomach, and I tried to imagine what she meant by problem . “And… ummm… there's a problem with the Hometime feature.” Now I felt sick.

The pickup driver honked twice more, and I moved off the road, toward the overgrown parking lot of what had once been a gas station or store, now nearly hidden among a tangle of vines, scrubby Texas trees, and underbrush. Ahead of me, HOUSHNTR veered sharply to the right, cutting me off as she too pulled into the parking lot, talking on her cell phone and gesticulatingly wildly.

I stopped under the shade of one of the trees as Kristi's voice continued serving up the bad news. “…got word that the hailstorm this morning wiped out the rose garden at the state capital. The electricity is out all over Austin , and now we heard there was a tornado on the ground at Round Rock. That's not too near us, but still it's scary. The governor's aid called and said the first lady has gone on back to Crawford and they're leaving for Washington tonight, so there's no way we'll be able to shoot the cover.” A long pause, during which Kristi actually emitted a sigh of despair, something I'd never heard her do before. “And when the power went out, it crashed my computer. It wouldn't come back on the battery backup. The whole thing is fried,” another long pause, and then, “And… the only copy of the finished Hometime feature was on there. I'm… ummm… I can probably get another copy of the original, but it took me three days to get it put together the first time. The thing was a mess the way Mrs. Bronstad sent it. I didn't want to say anything, but it was only… like… a bunch of notes. She may be great at doing crafts on TV, but I don't think she knows how to write a magazine article. Anyway, as soon as we get power back here, I'll get another copy and get started on it again.” Her voice trembled as she finished the sentence, and I wondered if even Kristi had finally reached the breaking point. “I'm sorry, Ms. Draper. I hope you get this message before you get all the way to the capitol building.”

The cell phone beeped and an electronic voice said, “End – of – messages.” I rubbed the growing ache in the center of my forehead and tried to think of a way to salvage the situation. Think of something, Laura. There has to be a way. Think of something.

Staring past the bridge of my fingers, I studied a rusty Moon Pie sign that hung on the weathered limestone wall of the old store. Sunlight glinted off the M as a breeze puffed through the parking lot, rattled the sign, then disappeared into a passing dustdevil.

A hailstorm wiped out the rose garden … How could that be happening in Austin when it was only partly cloudy here?

The weather in Texas always borders on the impossible. Lots of things in Texas seem impossible. The plants, the wildflowers, the differences in terrain, cows with horns spanning six feet, the largeness of the sky, the sheer distance across the state. It is a place you learn to love for its idiosyncrasies…

The words from an article I'd read a few days before came into my mind. An article written for Texas Monthly by my old college friend, Colleen Collins, who had left behind a reporting job in DC to move to San Saline , Texas , get married, and run a small newspaper there. Back in college, Collie, my twin sister Lindsey, and I had been inseparable. Collie had called to tease me about being sent to Texas to temporarily fill the editorial position at Texcetera , and she'd told me to call her if there was anything, anything , she could do to help.

“Collie,” I whispered, in a moment of Eureka . Now was the time to take her up on that offer. Picking up the cell phone, I quickly dialed the office number. Busy signal, which meant the power outage had brought down the phone system. I hung up, dialed my email server, pushed the button to compose a message to Kristi, and spoke as clearly as possible into the cell phone.

“Got your message. Call Colleen Collins at the San Saba County Review and ask if she has the rights to that photo she showed me of the first family at the ranch in Crawford. Tell her we'd like to buy it for the cover of Texcetera . Also, ask if she has anything we could use for the Hometime feature. I'd take a reprint of something from her newspaper if it's ready to go and it has the right feel for the column.” I paused, then said, “Send,” which, as usual, the voice recognition software didn't recognize, I repeated, “Send… send… SEND!”

Finally the phone beeped, and I moved it away from my ear, watching the screen as the message scrolled by. As usual, the software had garbled the message, but Kristi would be able to decipher it.

Beside me, HOUSHNTR finished her cell phone call and made a wide circle around the parking lot, looking curiously at the old stone building. Slowing as she passed the windows, she studied something behind the cloudy, dust-covered glass. I wondered what was in there.

HOUSHNTR continued her circle, but gave a long glance over her shoulder like she was thinking about going back for another peek. I chewed a fingernail, watching her car come closer to mine, wondering if I should honk the horn, or if she would turn around and look where she was going before she ran into my rental car. I gave the horn a polite tap, just in case.

HOUSHNTR startled and turned around, then smiled and waved as she passed, a big smile and a little wave, like a beauty queen in a parade. Lifting my fingers on the steering wheel in reply, I looked at the building again. What did she see in there? The old stone structure looked abandoned …

The cell phone rang, and I jumped, dropped the phone, then fumbled on the floor, trying to get to it. My fingers closed over the phone somewhere near the gas pedal, and I pressed the button, hollering, “Hello… hello… I'm here!” even before I could get the phone to my mouth.

“Laura?” I recognized Dale's voice.

“Dale?” The line fuzzed then cleared as I pressed the phone against my ear. “Dale, is that you? I'm here.” For an instant, the familiarity of his voice was comforting, like snuggling into a warm blanket. Then a sliver of apprehension needled me. Dale was still in Saudi, not due home until early next week. He never called home when he was busy on an assignment. “Dale, what's wrong?”

“Don't panic, Laura. Everyone's fine.” There was something different in his voice, something about the way he bit out my name, heavy on the L, clipped at the end. I sat mute, not sure how to react.

“Laura, are you there?” That sounded more normal.

“Yes.” I took in a breath and let it out. The stress of the day was getting to me. “Sorry. It's been a seriously bad day so far. You won't believe what's happened this--”

“I heard about the rose garden shoot,” he interrupted, and I fell silent again. It wasn't normal for him to cut me off, especially when we were talking about work. That was one thing we'd always had in common. Dale and I could talk magazines all day long. “I called the Texcetera office earlier. Your assistant told me about the hail storm ruining the shoot.” Rushing the words, he cut the sentence abruptly in a way that said it wasn't the shoot that he wanted to talk about. “I was sorry to hear about that.”

I was sorry to hear about that . No, hang in there, baby, it'll be all right . No, let's crack open a bottle of wine when we get home and make the world go away . Just , I was sorry to hear about that . It was the kind of thing you would say to an acquaintance, a colleague. Not to your soulmate.

“Oh.” I was probably being too sensitive. Anyway, I didn't want to argue. “Well, you won't believe where I am right now. Stuck on some back road between Killeen and Austin . A bridge fell down on the interstate, and now the whole thing is closed. The whole interstate. Can you believe that? Kristi routed me on this old FM 47B. Anyway, as far as I can tell, there's only one spot on this whole highway where the cell phone will pick up a signal, so here I am, marooned in the parking lot of some abandoned gas station. If you'd called a minute later, you wouldn't have gotten me.”

He didn't answer, which usually meant he was either not in a talkative mood, or was distracted by his laptop computer. Either way, there was no point going into the whole story about my detour. “Well, I can tell you all about it when we're back home. The magazine goes to press on Friday. I need to handle some distribution issues and work on the balance sheets this weekend and early next week. I'll get a flight out of here next Wednesday or Thursday and be there in time to meet with the realtor Friday. When do you think you'll be getting in?”

There was a long pause that let me know I'd hit on the reason for the call. He wouldn't be back in Richmond next week.

“I'm not coming.” Three little words that could have meant a myriad of things.

“You mean not next week?” A whisper of irritation crept up my spine and tightened the muscles in my shoulders. If I had to cancel another appointment with the real estate lady because Dale was delaying again, the woman was going to think I was nuts. “I've got the real estate lady all set up to show us some houses in the country outside of Richmond . A couple of them sound nice – house, an acre to two, exactly what we were looking for.”

The silence on the other end was deafening. I wondered if the signal had cut off and he wasn't there anymore. “Dale, what's going on? Are you still there?” The words were sharp—the tone our conversations seemed to take lately.

“I'm here.” I heard papers rustling in the background, and he took a deep breath, his words coming fast, sounding impatient. “Meet me in Rio , Laura. Get Texcetera in the bag, catch a plane, and meet me.”

“You took another assignment over there, didn't you?” Frustration made me come to the point. I was sick of hailstorms and closed highways and conversations with hidden meanings. I was sick of Dale making excuses to delay coming back to Richmond . In the past ten months, he'd taken every overseas assignment he could get his hands on. Between his freelance work, and my employer sending me here and there on emergency jobs, we'd barely seen each other in the last three months. He'd even managed to be out of the country for my mother's funeral. “You know what, Dale, I don't want another set of tickets to Europe or anyplace else. I want to go look at houses, together , like we said we were going to. Are you going to be home next week, or not?”

He exhaled a long, weary sigh that changed to a huff at the end. “Laura, I'm not coming. I've been trying to find a way to tell you. It never seemed like the time was right. I didn't want to make things any harder on you.”

“Things?” I repeated, stunned.

“Your mother's illness. Her passing away. All the trouble with your father. I didn't want to add our problems to it.” Our problems . He said the words as if this thing, this problem , had existed for months without my knowing it.

“I don't understand.” My mind raced back to our last conversation, three days ago, and the one before that, a week and a half ago. “I didn't think we had a problem. The last thing I knew we were talking about traveling less, getting a house, moving to the country and trying to make some time for each other. I had the real estate lady set up to show us houses next week. I told you that. We talked about that last week.” The emotions of the day came rushing from the pit of my stomach, swirling through my head like smoke, making the conversation, the rumble of the car engine, the distant growl of thunder seem unreal, like part of some bad dream from which I would awaken any moment. I killed the engine so I could hear myself think.

“ You talked about that last week, Laura.” His voice held the eerie calm of words rehearsed ahead of time. “You talked about it. Lately you've been doing all the talking.”

I blinked hard, shaking my head, staring out the car window as the wind picked up, pelting the windshield with loose leaves. The Moonpie sign clanged against the building, the sound hollow, empty. I studied the uneven cream-colored stone blocks around it, staring until the thick mortar lines started to blur. “What do you mean, I've been doing all the talking? You were right there, telling me it was all right to set things up with the real estate lady. You were right there talking about getting a house, getting married, maybe even starting a family. You were the one who brought up the idea of adopting in Romania . Don't you remember that? How can you say that was me?”

“It was you, Laura,” he insisted. No emotion. No hint of the churning tide I felt within myself. “That was all you. In the first place, I never said I wanted to move to the country.”

“You did.” I felt like we were talking from opposite sides of the moon. “You said you could make your home base anywhere.”

“Good Lord, Laura, that was a passing comment you turned that into shopping for a house in the country. I mentioned that they'd taken the significant-other clause out of our health insurance, and you turned that into a reason to get married. I mentioned the story I was going to shoot on the orphanages in Romania , and you turned that into some kind of save-the-world fantasy of adopting kids overseas.”

“What are you talking about…” I choked out, my mind racing back in time, trying to determine if I could have been so blind, so busy, so self-deluded that I hadn't noticed our conversations were one sided. “How could… how could you let all this time go by without saying anything?” I stammered, trying to put words to the thoughts careening through my mind.

“I don't know.” For the first time, he sounded guilty. “I don't know, Laura. I guess I thought if I gave it time, it would go away. I thought you'd turn back into yourself, into the person you used to be.”

“What would go away?” I heard myself scream, my voice echoing through the car, blotting out the noise of the rising wind outside as storm clouds blew in with frightening speed. “What did you think would go away?”

He didn't answer right away, and I could tell we'd gone beyond the words he'd rehearsed, into what he was really thinking. “This whole home-and-family, biological clock thing. This whole thing that started a year and a half ago when your friend Collie quit her job and moved to Texas . It's as if you couldn't stand it that first your twin sister and now your best friend were going the marriage and mommy route and you weren't.”

“That's not true,” I spat bitterly. “And how could you bring my sister into this? She's a divorced single mother, for heaven's sake. I feel bad for her. I'm certainly not jealous of her, or Collie.” But somewhere deep inside, I wondered if there was a grain of truth in what he was saying. Was I trying to compete with Lindsey and Collie? Was that why my life--Dale and me, living together, pursuing our careers, doing our own thing, didn't seem like enough anymore?

“Yes, Laura, it is true.” His voice became steady again, practiced, back to the lines he had rehearsed. “And then when your mom died you went completely nuts about it. All of a sudden, you're desperate to get a little pink house in the country and hide from life.”

“I'm not hiding from life, Dale. I'm trying to make a life.”

“Oh, come on, Laura. You've been over the edge ever since your mother died. You're trying to get over your guilt by molding yourself into something that would have made her happy.”

“I don't feel guilty over my mother's death.” Did I? “She had a stroke, Dale. It wasn't anyone's fault. It just … happened.”

Dale exhaled a breath of frustration, his voice softening. “Yes, you do, Laura. You're full of guilt over it, and you shouldn't be. Everything in this world is not, I repeat not, under your control. You've done more for your parents than your brothers did or than Lindsey did. You're still doing it. The only reason you didn't put up a fight about going down there to work on Texcetera was because it was a convenient excuse to check up on your father. And now, there you are trying to control whether your father stays at the retirement home or out at the farm. Leave it be and come home.”

Righteous anger kindled in my chest. How dare Dale, who didn't even speak to his family, tell me how to care for mine. “For heaven's sake, Dale, my father has a bad heart. Of course I'm worried. He shouldn't be staying out at the farm alone. The place has been sitting empty since the last renters moved out. The house is practically falling down. It's full of old furniture and other junk my brothers use when they go out there on their hunting trips. Dad doesn't eat. He doesn't take his medications. Half the time he doesn't turn on the air conditioning. It's a hundred degrees in there, and he's wrapped up in a blanket. Yes, of course it bothers me to find him like that, when we thought he was living at the retirement condo and dealing with Mom's death all right. I wonder how long this has been going on. I wonder whether he stayed at the condo at all after my brother moved him down here. He didn't come back to Texas because Mom is buried here, Dale, he came back to cash it in on the farm where he was born. He always said he'd die there, and now here he is waiting to follow Mom to the grave.”

“Lindsey and your brothers don't agree with you, Laura. They all think he's trying to manipulate you, and that you're making the problem worse by falling for it. They all think you've lost perspective since your mother died. You never used to let him do this to you.” Dale was steady, confident in his argument, speaking to me in slow, measured words, as if I were a child. “Why is it that you're the only one who can't see what's going on?”

“There's nothing to see!” I exclaimed, angry that Dale had been talking about me with my siblings. “I am not losing my mind ...” Everything that had happened in the past two months came crashing down on me—my mother's death, Dad convincing my brother to help him move into a retirement home in Texas, me finding Dad wasting away at the farm, the problems with Dale and me, the growing sense that there was something wrong with my life. I lowered my head into my hand, trembling, sobbing out words that were barely words. “How can you do this to me, Dale? How can you do this to me now? On a damned cell phone? How can you do this?”

I wanted to be angry, to say , If you could do this to me now, when I need you, after three years together, then you're not the man I thought you were. You're not a man at all. I don't need this. I don't need tickets to Rio , or any other vacation spot. I need time at home to relax. I need someone to talk to, someone to lean on.

I don't need you.

Instead, all I could do was cry.

Thunder rumbled outside, and wind buffeted the car, a mirror of the emotions within me as he answered. “Laura, there's a lot more going on with you than the problems between you and me.”

“Stop analyzing me!” I screamed, my mouth filled with bitter tears. “Stop it!”

He let out a long breath and paused, determined to keep his cool. “All right then, I'll tell you how things are from my perspective, and then I'm going to hang up. I'm a forty-six year old man. I'm at the top of my career. I'm financially comfortable. I like my life. I like my condo in Richmond and the Corvette in the garage. I like my golf days and my sailboat and all the traveling my job involves. There's no room in my life for baby seats and diapers. I have two grown children. I've done the house and family thing, and I'm not looking to go back. I'm not looking to move to a house in the country and mow lawns and rake leaves. I want to go to Rio and have a nice time and get back to our normal lives. This is me. This is who I am. You knew it when we got together. I'm ten years farther along in life than you are, Laura, and maybe that makes a difference. I'm not likely to change. You can think it over. You can cuss me out, call me a jerk, never speak to me again, or call me tomorrow and tell me you're ready to fly to Rio , but really think about it, Laura. Really think about whether my life, our life, is the kind of life you want.”

And then he hung up. The line went dead and I sat there holding the phone, listening to silence through one ear and the storm through the other. I stared out the window through the haze of tears as the first drops of rain fell on the glass. Outside, the trees leaned in the wind, branches whipping wildly toward the north, allowing a view of the old store building. A deep crimson Oleander bush caught a gust of wind and parted, revealing a faded sign painted on the ancient blocks of weathered white limestone.

I squinted to make out the words.

Crossroads , it said.

You are here.