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“No need. Just have a seat at the kitchen table. Coffee?”
“No, thank you. Maybe some water?”
“There are bottles in the fridge, and glasses in the cabinet beside it if you want one. I’m a bottle drinker, I’m afraid. Anyway, apologies for not getting it for you, but my hands are covered with chicken.”
“I don’t expect to be waited on,” she assured him. “It’s kind of you to give me shelter from the storm. Honestly, I didn’t want to stay alone at the house, and Earl’s and your description of the motel made me uneasy.”
Tim nodded as he placed the chicken in the roasting pan beside the sink. “You’d probably be okay there, but you aren’t going to want to have to cross the highway in a blizzard this cold just to get to the truck stop to eat something. Anyway, with this weather moving in, they’ll be packed...and so will the truck stop diner.” He flashed her a smile. “My house is so much nicer.”
“It is,” she agreed readily. “Your spare room is beautiful. Your wife?”
“Yeah.”
She watched him oil the chicken then wash his hands again, wondering if mention of his wife was off-limits.
When he was done prepping the chicken, he washed his hands again then leaned back against the counter as he dried them with a towel. “My wife passed six years ago. Pulmonary embolism, if you can believe it. Out of nowhere. Matthew has absolutely no memory of her. I can’t decide if that’s good or bad.”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said carefully. “I am very sorry for your loss.”
He tossed the towel to one side. “You get used to the most incredible things. Anyway, yeah, she decorated most of the house. Your room was her pride, though. It wasn’t often she could find everything she wanted that would match.” He rested his palms on the counter behind him. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“People you’re in a hurry to get back to?”
“I work at a natural history museum, and they told me to take whatever time I needed.” Indeed, they’d been very kind. But she was also acutely aware that she hadn’t answered his questions. He’d been straightforward with her, and she felt she needed to give him something in kind.
“My parents are both dead, and there’s no one else.” And never would be. No risks of that nature. She’d seen the price up close and personal, as they said.
He didn’t press the issue but instead turned to pop the chicken in the oven when something beeped. “We eat early around here. Better for Matthew. Tonight we’ll have broccoli with cheese and boxed stuffing to go with this. I hope that sounds good.”
“It sounds great.”
He got himself a bottle of water from the fridge. She still hadn’t gotten one for herself, so he placed one in front of her with a glass.
“So what do you do at the museum?” he asked.
“I help connect dinosaur bones. Unfortunately, they’re rarely discovered as a complete kit. Weather, erosion, what have you, have scattered and mixed the bones. So my job is to figure out what they are and which ones belong where.”
“Do you assemble them?”
She shook her head. “Not unless there’s an extraordinary find. No, mostly we catalog and put them away for safekeeping and later study. It’s not like we know everything.”
“Matt would probably love a trip to see dinosaur bones.”
She smiled. “I’m sure he would. And this summer there’ll probably be several digs going on around this state. Wyoming is a great place for fossil beds. He could see someone pulling them out of the ground...if he has the patience.”
“I’ve read about that. Just never thought about taking the time. Guess I should.”
A silence fell, and she felt awkward about it. With people she knew, silences could be allowed, but she didn’t know this man that well. “You don’t have to entertain me,” she nearly blurted.
He lifted one corner of his mouth in a half smile. “That goes both ways. Besides, once he finishes his homework, Matthew will take over the entertaining. You’ll probably be begging to go to your room for some solitude.”
A laugh trickled out of her. “I’ve hardly met him, but he seems high energy.”
“I’ve often wished we could tap some of that energy for ourselves as we get older. It’s amazing. He can wear me out sometimes.”
“All kids are like that, right?”
“I would worry if one weren’t.” He glanced at his watch. “Want to move into the living room? I’ve got an hour before I need to start the rest of dinner. We could check in on how bad the storm will be.”
She was agreeable and followed him into another tasteful room. His wife was a living presence here, she realized. In a good way. She had created a comfortable, lovely home.
He flipped on the wide-screen TV to the weather station. Whatever else had been in the programming had given way to a nearly breathless description of the storm that bore down on them, complete with advice not to travel and to stay inside if possible.
“These are going to be killer temperatures,” the woman reciting the weather said. “Not a time to decide to make snowballs, kids, or a snowman. You could leave your fingers behind.”
“Or worse,” Tim said. “Do you remember when you were a kid living on a ranch?”
She looked at him. “Earl’s been talking?”
“Earl knows darn near everything. Like the sheriff. I’m fairly certain he doesn’t share things that are personal. Is it some kind of secret that you lived on a ranch?”
She shook her head but felt the memories jar her again, just as she thought she’d managed to put them away once more. “I just don’t remember very much of it. I was seven when we moved away, so all I have left are snatches. Why?”
“I just wondered how many cold mornings you stood at the end of your road waiting for the bus. Do you remember those?”
“One or two,” she admitted. “It was just me, of course, but when it got really cold my dad would drive me to the stop and we’d wait together. Once the snow was so deep he couldn’t drive me, so he forged ahead of me so I could walk.” She smiled faintly, enjoying the good memory of her father. “I remember how the snow was practically up to his waist. Behind him I was walking through a tunnel.”
Tim smiled. “We don’t often get snow that deep right here. It tends to fall farther east because of the mountains.”
She nodded, not really caring. Her only agenda was to get this house out of her hair and go home. Then she remembered Matthew. “He’s taking a while with his homework. I thought he said it was just a little bit.”
“Compared to what he usually has, it probably is. But he knows I’m going to check it, and he doesn’t want to be sent back to fix his mistakes.”
That drew another smile from her. “He’s a cute kid.” And he was. He could have been included in a Norman Rockwell painting.
“I think so. Of course.” He looked toward the windows, as it sounded as if someone had thrown sand against them. “Ice pellets. It’s begun. I need to go pull the curtains to keep this place warmer.”
He closed the ones in the living room first, a deep burgundy that complimented the dark blues in the furniture and was picked up in the area rug centered on the floor. She sat by herself with the TV weather running at a quiet volume, the forecaster clearly happy to have something interesting to report.
The journey that had brought her here was certainly an odd one. She’d never expected, nor