A Baby for Dry Creek and A Dry Creek Christmas: A Baby for Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

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      Chrissy looked out the big windows of Pete’s Diner to the busy street outside. Something was making her edgy today, and not even the steady pace of orders from Pete’s regulars could keep her mind focused. It must be because she’d seen that funny cap this morning. The man wearing the cap had told her he was from North Dakota. She smiled, because it was the same kind of cap that Reno wore in Dry Creek, Montana.

      Whatever possessed her to remember that cap she didn’t know. She also didn’t know why the cap was so appealing. She’d always thought a Stetson on the head of a cowboy was the only kind of hat that would make a woman’s heart race; but that farmer’s cap that Reno had worn made her question all she knew about men’s headwear.

      If someone had told her she’d fall for a man in a cap, she would have said they were crazy. Especially a forest-green cap that advertised a yellow tractor, of all things!

      But the cap sat on Reno’s head, and that made all the difference. Reno had the chiseled bone structure of a Greek statue and the smooth grace of a man who was used to working outdoors. He wasn’t just tanned, he was bronzed. He didn’t need a cap to make him look good. He made the cap look good.

      Chrissy caught her reflection in the small mirror the other waitresses kept by the kitchen door. She wished she could say the same for herself. These days she didn’t make anything look good. She wondered if Reno would even recognize her if he saw her again.

      Reno had known her when she still glimmered with her carefully applied Vegas look. Back then, she’d worried about whether her nail polish matched the dress she was wearing that night. She had regular manicures and pedicures and facials. She worried about the bristles in the brush she used to apply just the right shade of blush to just the right area on her cheekbones.

      She always looked as much like a fashion model as an ordinary woman could.

      At Pete’s Diner, she’d stopped wearing blush. The heat from the kitchen gave her cheeks more than enough color. As for nail polish, she’d given up worrying about what color would even go with the fluorescent-orange uniforms Pete insisted his waitresses wear, and so she left her nails unpolished. Instead of a facial, she was lucky to get a good session of soap and water before Justin woke up.

      Now she used lip balm instead of lipstick and kept her hair pulled back. In short, she was a fashion disaster and couldn’t muster up enough energy to even care much about the fact.

      She’d actually debated dyeing her hair to match her natural color and letting it grow back brown just because it would be so much easier to take care of that way.

      Funny how having a baby can change what is important, Chrissy thought as she picked up a salad order for table number eleven. She’d applied for the job at Pete’s because it was close to her mother’s house and she could use her breaks to walk home to nurse Justin. She hadn’t even cringed at the neon-orange uniforms. She’d have worn a chicken suit if it meant she’d be close to her baby.

      Besides, she’d never liked the flash of Vegas all that much. Her whole time in Las Vegas had been spent trying to be the woman Jared wanted her to be. Not that Chrissy blamed Jared. She knew a man liked to have a glamorous woman on his arm, and she had been determined to please Jared. She’d never been a natural beauty, so she knew she had to work at looking good. She’d spent hours at cosmetic counters talking about the latest eye shadows and lip liners.

      Now she didn’t have time to do what it took to be fashionable. It was enough if her slip didn’t show. The important people in her life—her baby and her mother—cared more about her smile than her makeup, anyway.

      Chrissy’s mother had been more supportive throughout Chrissy’s pregnancy than Chrissy had dared to hope. Chrissy knew from the moment she knew she was pregnant that telling her mother about the baby would be harder than telling Jared.

      Chrissy had been a problem to her mother since the day Chrissy was conceived. She was in the first grade when she first heard the word illegitimate. She couldn’t even pronounce the word, and she had no idea what it meant. When she asked her mother about it, her mother had told her it meant Chrissy was a special gift from God and that she shouldn’t worry about that word.

      The next month her mother had decided they should move.

      Until Chrissy was thirteen, she and her mother had moved almost every year. It was small town to small town to small town. In each town her mother talked about going to the church there, but they never did. Chrissy didn’t know how old she was when she sensed her mother was actually afraid of churches.

      Finally her mother decided they’d move back to the Los Angeles area. Big cities, her mother told her, were more forgiving of unmarried mothers on welfare.

      In Los Angeles her mother found the courage to go to a church she’d gone to many years ago, and she was happy. She repeatedly invited Chrissy to come to church with her.

      Chrissy had refused. She’d finally figured out that her mother had been afraid of churches because of the way people had treated her when she was pregnant with Chrissy. Her mother might be ready to forgive church people, but Chrissy wasn’t.

      The closest she’d been to a church recently was the time she’d walked up the steps of the church in Dry Creek looking for a place to sit while she waited for the café to open one morning.

      Ah, Dry Creek.

      Dry Creek had occupied her mind since she’d left there last fall. She supposed it was unfair to fantasize that the place was her real home, but she did nonetheless.

      For some reason, Pete’s Diner had reminded her of Dry Creek. With its worn vinyl booths and fluorescent lights, it looked as solid as the café in Dry Creek. The diner sat squarely between two retirement homes and it had a loyal group of customers. Business here would never be bustling, but it was steady.

      When she got the job, Chrissy felt she’d finally landed on her feet. Her mother could stop worrying about her. Chrissy didn’t need to ask to know the worries that were going through her mother’s mind. Her mother didn’t want her to be a welfare mother. She didn’t want Chrissy to have to accept the pity of others because she needed their charity. So the job at Pete’s was important. It showed she could take care of herself and Justin.

      And then two minutes ago, one of the other waitresses had told Chrissy that Pete wanted to see her in his office.

      Don’t think it’s bad news, Chrissy told herself as she knocked on the door outside the office. Just because she’d been caught in the rush of layoffs at other restaurants lately, it was no reason to panic. There had to be a dozen reasons that Pete might want to talk to her. Maybe the fry cook had told him it had been her idea to offer a shaker of salt substitute on the table along with the regular salt and pepper.

      “Come in.”

      Pete was probably grateful that she was concerned about his customers’ health, Chrissy told herself as she took a deep breath.

      “Please sit,” Pete said as he looked up from some papers. Pete had been a semipro football player before he bought the diner thirty years ago and, even with the gray hairs on his balding head, Chrissy thought he still looked as if he would be more comfortable on a football field than behind a desk.

      “You wanted to see me?” Chrissy sat down on the folding chair opposite Pete’s desk.

      Pete СКАЧАТЬ