“Yes, we do. I’ll bring an assortment and hot water, if that’s what you want.”
“Make that two,” the guy said, his eyes on his own phone.
Once everyone had their drinks and their orders were turned in, I picked up the coffeepot to do refills. The elderly couple were holding hands across the table, and their mugs were still full.
The young couple with the herbal teas were still scrolling through their phones. “Want a refill? I can get you more hot water.”
“No, thank you. I just want to eat and get out of this place,” the woman answered with half a shrug.
“Bad day?” I asked.
“Not only a day. It’s been a bad long weekend,” the man answered.
“It didn’t have to be. I offered to buy plane tickets,” the lady said.
“I’m tired of you paying for everything, and I thought a bus trip would be romantic,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Just because you are poor and planned a shoestring trip—”
He cut her off with a glare and finally glanced up at me. “We got drunk and married in Vegas.”
“And now,” she sighed, “we are going home to pay for an expensive divorce, since I didn’t have a prenup. My daddy is furious with me.”
“God forbid ifDaddy”—he dragged that last word out—“is upset with the princess. I don’t want your money.”
She shot a dirty look across the table. “You say that now, but I know you. When he offers you a settlement to leave and never come back, you’ll take it.”
Yikes.Of course, not the first Vegas wedding I’d seen. I left them hissing at each other and went back to see if the elderly couple needed a warm-up for their coffee. “Your food should be out in a few minutes. Can I get you anything else?”
“No, we’re good,” the woman said. “Fifty years ago, when this place was kind of new, we also went to Vegas on a bus and got married there. So we are celebrating our anniversary with a redo of those days. That’s why we are so glad that the Tumbleweed is still here. We had breakfast right here at this table on our way back home. It’s been a wonderful trip full of great memories.”
The man reached across the table and took his wife’s hands in his. “Patsy has stood beside me through thick and thin. But this is our last trip. We have made the full circle, and now we are on the final leg of life’s journey.”
“Hey, now.” I smiled down at them. “You might celebrate another anniversary by repeating this same trip next year.”
He patted Patsy’s hand, and his eyes filled with tears. “Several weeks ago, the doctors gave me three months. My expiration date is as soon as next week, but we are not complaining. We had fifty wonderfulyears together, and we got to have this last trip. Patsy knows that I’ll be waiting on the other side for her.”
“Can I grow up and be like y’all?” I asked around the lump in my throat.
“Of course you can,” Patsy answered. “Just be sure your glass is always half full and never half empty.”
“Yes, ma’am, I will try to do that,” I promised, and hurried away so they wouldn’t see me cry.
Today I had seen a half-full cup—no, that wasn’t right. I had experienced an overflowing glass and a totally empty one in the same room. Like Patsy said, how full my proverbial glass was each day would be up to me. If I could have remembered the opening music toGroundhog Day, I would have hummed it in victory, because I had finally gotten past the feeling that every day was the same at the Tumbleweed.
“Well, good morning to everyone,” Ada Lou’s voice echoed through the empty dining room that morning. She hung her coat on the back of a chair and sat down at the table she seemed to favor.
I had just finished busing the last table from the morning rush. “Right back at you. You want the same as always?”
“Nope, I’m changing it up today,” she said. “I need something that will stick to my skinny bones in this cold weather. From what I heard on the radio on the way down here, there’s a blizzard coming our way that will hit us in the middle of next week.”
Tumbleweeds and now snow. What had I fallen into?
I picked up a menu and poured a cup of hot coffee, and dropped both off at her table. “What’s the difference between a blizzard and a snowstorm?”
She took a sip of coffee and pointed to the Supreme Platter on the menu. “I’ll have that. Just leave the coffeepot. To answer your question, compared to a blizzard, a snowstorm is a baby, or maybe a toddler, andit won’t keep us cooped up in the house. Did you ever hear the Bible story of David and Goliath?”
“Yes.” I remembered a few stories from Sunday school class at the church where my grandparents and mother went when I was a little girl. “Wasn’t he the big giant that everyone was afraid of? I pictured him like the Hulk, only maybe not green.”
