A Handful of Heaven

“Here.” She reached beneath the counter and began dropping packets into the bag. “Let me make sure you’ve got napkins and a few things. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“The pie would be fine. How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing, goodness. After your help tonight, this is on me. Please, you didn’t even get to finish eating.”

“No, forget it. I pay my way.” He pulled out his wallet and she held up her hand.

Men. Paige appreciated Evan’s pride and his ethics, but she had some of her own. “If you insist on paying for this meal, then I’m only going to give you the next one free. In fact, maybe I’ll do that anyway.” She turned toward the mature couple ambling down the aisle. “You, too, Mr. and Mrs. Redmond. I see that twenty you left on the table.”

“Well, dear, we’re not freeloaders, and we were nearly done anyhow,” Mr. Redmond kindly answered as he took a toothpick from the holder near the register. “You have a good night now. You still make the best steak in the state.”

“My mother’s secret spices.” Paige made a mental note to give the Redmonds their next meal free. She had the best customers anyone could wish for—they were so understanding! She grabbed the small white sack containing the baker’s box she’d filled in the kitchen and intercepted them at the front. “A little something for later.”

Mr. Redmond was not opposed to the gift of dessert and held the door carefully for his beloved wife. They disappeared together into the storm.

Sweet. What must it be like to have a bond like that? Paige couldn’t help the pang of regret or the pull of longing in her heart. She was thirty-eight years old, too old to believe in fairy tales, so why was she still wishing for one? The long painful years after her husband’s departure and the following divorce had taken their toll, as had the years of shouldering responsibilities for her family. Working sixteen-hour days seven days a week had worn her to the bone.

What she needed was a vacation.

No, what she needed, she corrected herself, as she waded to the hall closet, was a time machine so she could go back twenty years, grab that naive eighteen-year-old she’d been by the shoulders, and make that foolish, stars-in-her-eyes girl see the truth about life. A truth that the grown woman in her had come to accept as a cold, hard fact.

There was no such thing as true love and no real knights in shining armor. Anything that looked like a fairy tale was either an illusion or simply wishful thinking.

Okay, that sounded bitter, but it really wasn’t, she thought as she hauled out the mop. She sounded cold, but her heart wasn’t that, either. If anything, Paige felt foolish. Think of all the time and heartache she could have saved herself had she understood that truth earlier in her life. Her road would have been so much smoother had she seen the world—and the man she’d married—for what was real instead of what she’d wished them both to be.

If she had, she could have focused on what truly mattered—and only on that. She could have avoided wasting energy on dreams that only faded, on hopes that true love would walk into her life one day.

The hope that she’d find a good man to love had faded over time, bit by bit, shade by shade until it was nothing at all.

That was how she’d been living for a long, long time. She swiped the mop through the water, thinking that she’d been happier this way. Alone was good. She was strong, capable and independent. She was also safe from all the harm a man could bring to a woman. Sad, trying not to remember the long-ago love she’d been unable to save, she wrung the mop, listening to the water tap into the plastic bucket like rain.

As she worked, she listened to the sounds of Evan gathering up the bag and ambling down the aisle. His steps were deliberate and slow, as if he were in no hurry to leave. He drew to a stop in the breezeway between the eating area and the front counter. “Do you want me to hang around until Phil gets here?”

“That’s nice of you, but I’m used to being alone here after dark.” She swiped the mop through the cold water and wrung the sponge head well. “I do appreciate your help tonight. Not everyone would have gotten up to help me.”

“Glad I could make a difference. With my boys gone, I don’t get to do that much anymore.” He cleared his throat as if he had more to say, and could not.

What would it be like to come home to an empty house, she wondered? To open the door and know that her son would not be in his bedroom downstairs with his dog, listening to music or munching on potato chips or sacked-out fast asleep?

It had to be a long stretch of lonely, she thought as she went back to mopping. She didn’t know what to say as Evan walked past to snag his jacket from the coat tree, she couldn’t help noticing that he’d gotten pretty dirty crawling around under the diner. Dust streaked his slacks.

She bent to squeeze water from the mop head. “Uh, are those dry clean only?”

“No way. Don’t even worry about it.” He didn’t look at her as he slid into his black jacket, pulled a baseball cap over his head and leaned against the door.

“Drive safe out there, Evan. The roads have to be a mess.”

“You be safe, too.” He cleared his throat, slid a ten and a five on the counter and took the sack. There was a challenging glint in his dark eyes as he ambled past, as if he were daring her to give the money back.

The bell overhead jangled as he strode into the night. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Uh, yeah, that would be great. I’ll be waitressing.”

“Then I’ll be ordering.”

He stared at her for a beat, as the night began to engulf him. In the moment before the shadows claimed him completely, she saw the essence of him, not the physical, not the expected, but the steady strength of a good man.

The door swung shut, and she was alone. Snow pinged against the windows, driven by a cruel wind, and she swore she felt the echo of it deep in her heart, in a place that had been empty to romantic love since before her son was born.

And how foolish was that, that she was wishing for the impossible now? No, not exactly wishing, but thinking that it was possible again.

I’m more tired than I thought, she told herself with a chuckle as she turned the dead bolt and went back to her mopping.

Chapter Three

The house was dark. He’d forgotten to leave a light on again. Evan fumbled along the kitchen entryway. Cal had gone off to school what? seven, eight months ago, and he still couldn’t get used to him being gone. It hasn’t been so bad when Blake had left, for he and Cal had made the adjustment together. But this…having them both gone, it felt like he’d walked into someone else’s life.

But this was his life now. He was a free man, unencumbered and carefree. Shouldn’t it feel better than this? Evan tossed the keys and his battered gym bag, and slid the sack from the diner onto the counter, pushed the door to the garage shut with his foot and listened to his footsteps thump through the lonely kitchen.

Let there be light. He hit the switch and a flood of brightness shocked his eyes. He’d been outside so long, his eyes had gotten used to the darkness. The drive home had been slow and long and pitch-black. The headlights had been nearly useless in the rapid snowfall. And now, this place seemed too bright and too glaringly empty to feel like a home.

Well, he was just feeling lonely. It was Friday night, after all. Maybe one of the boys had had time to call in. That thought put some bounce in his stride as he left his briefcase on the kitchen table and leaned to check the message light on the phone recorder. Nothing.

Okay, young men had more fun things to do on Friday nights than to give their old dad a call. He was glad for them both. He wanted them to be out there, living their lives and doing well. It’s just that he hadn’t figured on how his own life would stand still when they were gone.

The flier one of his clients had sent him was sitting on the edge of the counter. He’d meant to toss it with the rest of yesterday’s mail, but he hadn’t gotten around to it yet. The apple-green paper seemed to glow neon in the half light and he pulled it out so he could look at it properly.

A Bible study for the rest of us. A bold carton caption stretched above a cartoon-like pen-and-ink drawing of a middle-aged man in his recliner. “The youth have their own lives, and the singles and the seniors have their activities. What about the rest of us? Come join us for Bible study, dessert and fellowship at Field of Beans.”

That was the coffee shop in town—and Evan knew Paige’s relatives owned it. That was a bonus, he suddenly realized. Plus, it was an evening meeting, something he could do after work. Something besides cleaning out the horse barn, that is.

He folded up the flyer and slid it in with the stack of bills needing to be paid. That was something he’d been meaning to do—study his Bible more. Now that he had the time. Maybe this was a solution to one of his lonely evenings. Maybe he would take everyone’s advice—not to date but to get out and do the things he’d been putting off when he’d been so busy raising his sons.

The phone rang while he was on his way through the family room. One of the boys? Hope jolted through him. He snatched up the cordless receiver on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Is this Evan Thornton?”

“Uh…” In his excitement, he’d forgotten to check the caller ID screen. “Yeah. Who is this?”

“This is Michael from First National Bank, how are you this evening? I want to tell you about our new identity theft program—”

At least it wasn’t bad news. “Not interested. Goodbye.”

He hung up the phone, glanced around the room at the TV remote that was on the coffee table where it belonged and not flung and lost somewhere in the room, at the chairs pushed in at the table instead of all shoved around askew. There were no stacks of books or heaps of sports equipment and coats lying around, all needing to be put away.

Would he ever get used to the quiet, to the orderliness, to the emptiness? Standing alone in the family room, which had been put into tidy order by the cleaning lady, he felt at a loss. This didn’t feel like home anymore.

As he headed upstairs to change out of his work clothes and into his barn clothes, he realized this was what it meant to be unencumbered and carefree, a free man again. There was no phone ringing off the hook, no kids traipsing through the house.