OVER THE MOON AT THE BIG LIZARD DINER

Chapter 1

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, just 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 websites. She reasoned that he was too far away to hear her, and kept sending letters.

The year she 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 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 pony tail, 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 cafe. Lost as lost can be, even though I knew exactly where I was on the map.

“You need a cup of our crossroads coffee,” she said 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, when you work 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. Would'ja 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 Vinnie . She loved the part where Vinnie used grits to disprove the court case against his client. Sydney adored lawyer shows these days—probably because, thanks to Geoff and Whitney's weekend 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 cafes 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 Cancun, 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 email from Mexico . Without knowing it, my daughter helped explain 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 coffee pot 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.

The waitress smacked her lips and 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 overload 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 cafe 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 , I thought. 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 emails. Believe that everything would be all right.

Taking a sip of coffee, I sat wishing 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 again, falling into the rhythm of clinking pans, the low hum of voices, and the rich, golden warmth of morning 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 dark brown 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 are,” 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 unspoken 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 emails, 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 emails 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 be 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 just 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 can not 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 ?”

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 step mom 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 sooth 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 you 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 bunji jumping over the edge, I knew they would anchor the rope.

“So… speaking of Collie…” Laura's tone told me she and Collie had been talking, concocting a 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 palm-up. “I know, it sounds kind of strange, but here's the thing. One of the big attractions on the ranch has always been the dinosaur trackways in the riverbed. In fact, that area of the river has always been called Big Lizard Bottoms because of all the fossils. People come from miles around to see the dinosaur footprints. School kids 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, 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 head 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 they're coming back for them after they get the first ones sold.” Which was what often happened. Thieves who sold fossils and other antiquities often pillaged sites a bit at a time.

Laura grimaced. “I hope not. The old fellow 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 me 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 perfectly nonchalant. “All right, Laura. Out with it. What's going on?”