Chapter 8 Everett
EVERETT
The cheerful red and white awning over the front door of the diner is a welcome sight for both of us.
Even more welcome is the mechanic’s business sign tucked behind a gas station right across the street.
Things are finally looking up. Some air conditioning and food might be able to salvage the day.
I nod at the door. “Go on over to the diner and get some food. I’ll go across the street and see if I can get the mechanic to tow your car and fix it.”
Mary’s brows furrow, and she shakes her head.
“It’s my car. I’m not going to sit in the diner just because you’re a man.”
I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. I should’ve known that she’d misinterpret me.
“What are you planning on doing over there?” I ask. “You don’t know anything about cars, and they’re going to charge a city girl like you an arm and a leg. Just let me handle it.”
I’m not great with words, but I hope she understands that I’m just trying to be helpful here.
She’s trying to help me, and I’ve done nothing to make that easy on her.
The least I can do is lend a hand with something I’m actually halfway decent at—looking kind of intimidating and not letting people scam me out of money.
She stares at me for another long moment, considering, before finally huffing a sigh out through her nose.
“Fine.” She throws her hands in the air. “I’ll go sit in the diner and be good.”
I roll my eyes as she turns her back on me, but I can’t help watching her hips move beneath her skirt. She looks too damn good for my peace of mind, and I can’t tell if I’m glad for it or not.
The little mechanic shop is tucked behind a gas station boasting a whopping two pumps and a half broken sign. There are about seven trucks parked around it, all of them at least 30 years old. It bodes poorly for the possibility of them stocking parts that will fit Mary’s car.
It smells like oil and metal when I walk in through the front door. I always liked to work with engines, but I don’t get the chance to play around with much of anything anymore.
“Hello?” I call out, leaning against the front counter.
There’s a grunt and the slide of wheels across concrete. A few moments later, a middle-aged man rounds the corner, covered in grease up to his elbows. There’s a smear of oil across his cheek, and he’s holding a wrench that looks older than he is. All good signs.
“Can I help you?” he asks, tucking the wrench in one of his pockets.
“Do you have a tow around here?” I ask. “Broke down just off Exit 4. Computer failed.”
The man looks me up and down before nodding slowly.
“Yeah, I can pick it up and take a look. What kind of car?”
He snags a pen off the desk and wipes his other hand on the leg of his coveralls before pulling a notepad closer to him.
“A Nissan?” I’m pretty sure it’s a Nissan. I didn’t really look. “It’s one of those little electric things. Silver.”
The man scowls, but scrawls a note on the pad about the location and the type of car.
“I ain’t got computer stuff in the shop,” he tells me. “Have to order them.”
“Yeah, I figured.” I sigh, scrubbing my palm over my beard. “How much for the tow?”
He hesitates before he answers, and I brace myself for a ridiculous figure.
“Ninety bucks,” he says with a shrug. “Cash only.”
It’s probably more than he’d charge anyone in town, but ninety bucks isn’t bad. I'm sure Mary’s company will reimburse her. “I’ll find an ATM and get cash for you,” I say. “When can you get it here?”
“A few hours, probably. I’m finishing up a project right now, but I’ll be able to go get it when I’m done.”
“I’ll bring the money over before you leave.”
He nods uneasily, and I head back out to the diner. I’m not particularly excited about the idea of staying longer, but we don’t have much of a choice. We might be able to call someone to come pick us up, but it’d be more reasonable to have someone get us in the morning.
When I step into the diner, my eyes immediately find Mary.
She’s sitting in a booth in the far back corner, sliding her phone back and forth across the table. Her face is turned down, a pout pulling at her lips. Some of the hair she’d left free is dangling down in front of her brow, and she looks absolutely breathtaking.
It’s annoying that I can’t stop finding her so beautiful.
She looks up when I slide into the booth opposite her, and hope lights up her eyes. Her gaze flicks across the street for a second before she meets my eyes again.
“Can he fix it?” she asks, tapping her neatly manicured nails on the tabletop.
“Yeah,” I say.
I don’t get to explain further, because she leans back and exhales a loud sigh of relief.
She raises her hand to smooth over her ponytail and lets out an exhausted chuckle.
When she opens her eyes to meet my gaze again, she looks more relaxed than I’ve seen her in the entire time I’ve known her. It makes her soft around the edges.
It makes me want to feel just how soft she is.
“Thank God,” she says. “I got the Wi-Fi password from the waitress and emailed the client we were supposed to be meeting with. I can see if he can reschedule for later today instead of next week. When do you think the car will be ready?”
She’s already swiping her phone open and tapping away at the start of an email as she speaks. A bark of laughter slips from my lips, and she glances up at me, excitement souring to confusion.
“What?” she asks tersely.
“Did you see that place?” I ask, looking across the street. I can feel the sass oozing from her pores before she even opens her mouth.
“No, as a matter of fact, I didn’t. Someone told me to go sit in the diner while he talked to the mechanic, so I missed out on the sightseeing.”
I grunt out a noise that’s somewhere between an acknowledgement and an apology.
“It ain’t a dealership, Ms. Bryce. He has to finish something before he can tow your car, and then he has to order the parts to fix it.”
“You’re joking,” she says, glancing between my face and the mechanic shop. “What are we supposed to do? How do we even get back?”
I’m sure there’s a landline somewhere in the diner that we could probably use, but I’m not particularly in the mood to put up with her attitude when all I’ve tried to do is help.
Sure, it was my fault we were late, but it wasn’t my fault the car broke down.
And it’s not my fault the mechanic doesn’t have parts for her car.
“Guess we’ll just have to spend the night in town and see what the mechanic can do,” I say blandly.
She can suffer a single night in a shitty motel in the middle of nowhere.
“Fine,” she bites out. “I’ll put it on the company card.”
Before I have the chance to snort out a response, the waitress stops by with two plates of food.
She slides a sandwich and fries over to Mary and a thick burger with a side of onion rings for me.
I look between Mary and the burger in confusion, but she’s busy asking the waitress for a refill on her drink.
When she finally looks at me, she just raises her brow in question and pops a fry into her mouth.
“What?” she asks after swallowing.
“You got me food.” It was supposed to be a question, but I just sound surprised. The last thing I expected was for her to… take care of me. “Thanks.”
She just shrugs.
“I figured a burger would be a safe choice,” she says.
I nod and pick up my burger as an excuse to stop talking and keep from saying something stupid. No one’s bothered to make sure I eat since Laura died. She was the one who did most of the cooking, although I liked to help when I wasn’t busy on the ranch. Since she passed, it’s just been me.
No one worries about me anymore.
Maybe it doesn’t mean anything to Mary, or maybe she’s just being nice, but the act makes my chest go tight. Silence falls between us as we eat, and it feels a little less awkward than usual.
I debate asking if I can use the diner’s phone to call for a ride back to the ranch. Maybe she’ll believe me if I say I just thought of it. Before I get the chance to excuse myself, Mary breaks the silence.
“Would you tell me about how the ranch started?” she asks.
Her voice is soft, almost hesitant, like she’s ready for me to ignore her completely. I suppose I can’t really blame her. I’m not normally the most talkative, no matter who’s trying to rope me into conversation.
Maybe it’s the way she’s still smiling at me, or the hopeful shine in her eyes.
She never seems to stop thinking positively for more than a handful of minutes, and it took a pretty big problem to make her good attitude even falter.
Something about that unwavering faith makes me want to believe in her, too.
“I always wanted to own a ranch when I was a kid,” I say after a long pause.
“I grew up on a horse farm, and my parents were working most of the time. I wanted to spend more time with my dad, so I helped out on the farm a lot. Fell in love with all the land and the work. They left me the farm when they passed.”
Mary hums sympathetically, but doesn’t say anything. I’m grateful, because I don’t reminisce very often. I think about all the things that went wrong, what I could’ve done differently, but I very rarely just sit and take a trip down memory lane without the heavy weight of grief on my shoulders.
“I used the money they left me to buy the rest of the land, get my initial herd, and all the equipment I needed. Then I met this girl at a cattle auction. She was a ranch hand at another farm, and I thought she was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen.
For some reason, she said yes when I asked if she’d come to a bonfire with me that night. ”
Mary is smiling at me softly, a gleam of affection in her eyes. I don’t know if it’s aimed at me or if she’s just a sucker for romance, but I find myself smiling back.
Thoughts of Laura only ever make me smile or cry.
“Black spruce burns long and hot, and someone had a whole truckload of it,” I recall with a grin. “I don’t remember how late Laura and I were up, but at some point, everyone else wound up going home, and it was just us.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about this, and the memories choke me up for a second. I can remember that night so clearly, and the stark reality of her being gone hurts so much that I can hardly stand it.
“What happened with you and her? I haven’t seen her…you know, on the ranch.” Mary says softly, filling the silence as I try to collect myself.
“We never split,” I say, smiling sadly at my ring. “She passed almost ten years ago. Cancer.”
Mary makes a heartbroken little noise, and I see her hand twitch on the table. It's like she wants to reach out to me but doesn't know how. Part of me wishes she would. Another part of me says to reach out to her instead. I ignore both.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I can’t imagine how hard it is to lose someone like that.”
I swallow against the grief that makes it hard to breathe, but it feels a little less oppressive that it usually does. It still aches, but the sharp edge of it has faded just a bit.
“Thanks,” I say, my voice tight. “Anyway. That bonfire was our first date. We got so wrapped up in talking that we didn’t notice how big the fire got, and it almost set the whole forest in flames when the wind came through and blew it back toward the trees.”
Mary’s brows lift in surprise, and she lets out a nervous little laugh as she chews the last of her fries.
“Laura was a lot smarter than me, and she managed to douse the fire before we burned the forest down,” I tell her, with a grin.
“I decided that night that I wanted to marry her, and when I finally got the ranch properly up and running, I named it after the wood we burned that night. I wanted a permanent reminder of that night… and of Laura.”
Mary’s smile is sweet and soft, tears glistening at the corners of her eyes. Al is the only other person I’ve ever told this story to, and back then, I cried the whole way through it. This time, though, I feel a little lighter, like saying it out loud brought some of that joy back into my life.
“Thank you for telling me,” Mary says quietly.
From anyone else, it would’ve sounded rote or awkward, just something to say to fill the silence. But from her it sounds genuine.
Again I ignore the urge to reach for her hand, but I don’t feel guilty about wanting to this time. This time, I feel like maybe the grief is finally starting to fade, and I might just have a chance at actually living again, rather than just surviving.
Who would’ve thought that a city girl from a marketing firm would make me rethink my whole damn outlook on life?
If Laura’s watching from heaven, I bet she’s laughing her ass off at me.