Page 64 of The Lonely Road

The cast iron comes off the hook and onto the burner in one motion.

She opens the refrigerator with her hip because her hands are already doing something else.

I sit at the counter, drink the coffee she handed me when I came out of the bedroom, and watch her cook, and say nothing, because I have learned that silence around Taya Morningstar does not need to be filled.

It can just exist.

“There’s bread.” She tilts her head toward the wooden box beside the stove. “If you want toast.”

“Okay.”

She glances at me. “You don’t like what I’m cooking?”

That makes me smile. “Sweetheart, the way this is smelling, I can guarantee you, I’m going to like it.”

“So…what’s with the frown?”

“I…I think I’m surprised you’re making breakfast.”

She grins. “You thought I’d kick you out without food?”

“Well….” I feel gauche.

I, a man of thirty-nine who has had the morning after with plenty of women, am unsure how to react.

Yeah, hell has certainly frozen over.

“How about you do toast?” she suggests.

That gives me something to do, which is better than putting my foot in my mouth, which I seem to be doing with some alacrity this morning.

I cut two slices of bread and put them in the toaster.

She turns back to the eggs.

We eat at the kitchen counter with the mountains in the west window—blue-gray and enormous and utterly unimpressed with everything happening below them.

The creek runs behind the house.

The cottonwood outside the kitchen window has finally, definitely, committed to being green.

It’s the best morning I’ve had in a very long time. It’s not eventful or earth-shattering, just good in the plain, unvarnished sense of the word that I had forgotten applied to mornings…or any other time of day.

Taya Morningstar, what have you done to me that I’m turning completely fucking maudlin at seven in the morning?

Her phone rings just as we start cleaning up. She glances at the screen, straightens slightly, and answers.

“Morningstar.”

I stack the dishes into the dishwasher while I listen to her.

“When did this come in?” A pause. “Mac, I’ll pull everything from the ditch company for those two years and cross-reference with the water commissioner’s quarterly reports.” Another pause, longer. She’s listening to something that requires thought. “No—won’t concede that. The place of use hasn’t changed. The water stayed on the ranch. That’s our argument, and I’m not moving off it.” A beat. “I know what they’re going to say. I know it because I used to say it.” Her voice is flat and certain and entirely without doubt. “I’ll get the records by Thursday. I’ll draft the supplemental before the weekend. Thanks, Mac.”

She hangs up.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

She taps her fingers on the kitchen counter. “It’s the Clara Whitman case. You met her at the barbecue.”