“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Very much so,” I answered. “That settled, tell me: Do you cook? Are we going to starve if the storm doesn’t pass for a couple of days?”
“I promise that we won’t go hungry.” He made a dramatic gesture of crossing his heart. “I’m a very good cook, and my pantry is well stocked. Like I’ve already told you, I have four older sisters, and my folks believed we had to learn to do everything. My sisters can change flat tires, check the oil, mow the lawn, and all those things. I can cook and clean. I really can teach you how to get around in the kitchen.”
“Okay, but that might be a big undertaking,” I said, remembering an inspirational quote that I’d read on a plaque when I was in Cloudcroft with Ada Lou and Nancy:Be inspired. There’s always a way to do the impossible.
“Are you saying that you can’t learn to cook or that you don’t want to?” he asked.
When the teakettle whistled, I picked it up and poured hot water into each mug. “Neither. That was for you, not me. I’ll give it my best shot if you want to teach me, but don’t expect miracles. I’m already a pro at making hot chocolate.”
Chapter Twelve
Time stood still. I called 911 and waited in total silence for what seemed like hours. Then everything was chaotic. Only, I was a grown woman, and it was me lying on the floor, not my mother. Jackson ran into the kitchen and gathered me in his arms. Tears rolled down his cheeks and landed on my face. They burned my skin where they landed, but I couldn’t tell him to stop weeping. When I woke up, I was sitting straight up. My chest was so tight that it felt like it might explode. I sucked in big gulps of air. That helped relieve the pain, but I still couldn’t stop trembling. I was dead. I couldn’t console Jackson in his grief.
You are not dead!Ada Lou’s voice screamed at me.
I blinked a few times and scanned the room. Ada Lou was right. I was alive, but was the dream an omen that I would follow in my mother’s footsteps and die at a young age? I pictured the expression I had seen on Jackson’s face in the dream. Tears welled up in my own eyes. I couldn’t bear to cause that kind of pain to anyone I cared about.
Stop being silly. I fell and hit my head. It was my expiration date and could have happened anywhere,my mother said, so clearly that she could have been sitting beside me.
My phone rang, and I almost sent up a prayer of thankfulness for anything to take my mind off the very vivid dream.
“Hello?” I said.
“Well, hello to you,” a man’s voice said cheerfully. “Where are you? I haven’t seen you in weeks. Did you fall off the face of the earth?”
I finally recognized the voice as Isaac’s, one of my poker buddies. “Not quite, but almost. I’m in northern Texas in the middle of a blizzard. I own a café now,” I blurted out.
He laughed so hard that I had to hold the phone away from my ear. “I don’t believe you. First, you’ve hated Texas after that game when you almost lost everything. And second, you are not made to settle down to normal work. So where are you really?”
“In Canada, and ...” I checked the time on my phone. “I’m getting ready to go to a high-stakes game that has a fifty-thousand-dollar buy-in. Wish me luck. Where are you?”
“San Diego, about to go for a walk on the beach,” he answered. “Good luck, darlin’, and maybe I’ll see you soon.”
“Not if I see you first.”
“You always say that,” Isaac said with a snort. “Have a wonderful evening, and think of me sitting across the table from you. I’ll do the same here in sunny California.”
“Sounds good. Goodbye.” I ended the call and realized that, for the first time since I was a little girl, I had not shuffled my lucky deck of cards the night before. No wonder a blizzard had hit the area.
I was so deep in my own thoughts that I didn’t know Jackson was awake until he flipped on the light above the stove. I shoved the throw off me and stood up. “Good afternoon.”
“It looks like it’s about to quit snowing, but I’m guessing we have about eighteen inches on the ground,” he said. “We might not be able to get you out of here today after all. Did you sleep well?”
“I had a nightmare,” I answered.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked as he made a pot of coffee.
“Not really. How did you sleep?”
“I dreamed that we had a big argument about what we were going to name our first child. It was on our eighth date.” He didn’t crack even the faintest hint of a smile.
I was totally speechless for the first time in my life. I prided myself on nothing being able to shock me and never showing anything in my perfect poker face.
“Gotcha!” He chuckled. “I slept like a hibernating bear. If Henry hadn’t woken me up with a phone call, I would still be snoozing.”
I grabbed a handful of popcorn from the table and put a kernel in my mouth. It wasn’t nearly as good as it had been when it was hot, but it kept me from swearing at him for a couple of minutes.
