Since it was Grandpère’s turn to cook, when I came out I was not surprised to see the counter filled with eggs, tomatoes, sliced ham, shredded cheese, green onions, bacon bits, and the like—all the makings for customized omelets. What did surprise me was that Kaylynn and Raye were there helping him cut things up. And chattering away at him like a couple of chipmunks. I got a cursory wave and smile, and then I was quickly forgotten. I sat down to watch. Kaylynn was cutting a tomato into small cubes. Raye was grating cheese. They kept looking at each other; then suddenly they’d break out in peals of giggles.
I couldn’t help but join in the laughter. It was a musical sound, infectious and joyous. They were darling girls. With their long, jet-black hair and their enormous brown eyes, they could have passed for twins, except that Kaylynn was a head taller than Raye. I had always thought of them as being very shy. That impression was gone. They were delightful.
Raye finished filling the bowl with cheese and took it over to Grandpère. “Here you go, Mr. LaRoche,” she said. Grandpère was breaking eggs into a bowl. “Merci beaucoup, my dear,” he said with a slight bow.
Raye wrinkled her nose. “Mercy what?”
He chuckled. “Merci beaucoup. It’s French for ‘thank you very much.’”
“Oh.” She climbed up on a chair beside him. “Are you French?”
“Oui, ma petite fille, which means, ‘Yes, my little one.’”
Kaylynn came over with the tomatoes. “You’re weird,” she said. It was a matter-of-fact statement, not a criticism.
“No,” Grandpère laughed. “Not weird. Just French.”
He picked up the whisk and starting whipping up the eggs.
“What are you making, Mr. LaRoche?” Kaylynn asked.
“Omelette au fromage. The food of the gods.” He said it with great solemnity. Then he winked. “That’s an omelet with cheese to you mere mortals.”
Reaching for the milk, Grandpère poured some into the eggs, then whipped them vigorously.
“Why are you doing that?” Kaylynn wanted to know.
“Because the milk creates air bubbles, and that is what makes an omelet light and fluffy.”
“Really?” I asked.
He sniffed haughtily. “Americans! You are such barbarians when it comes to food.” He turned his back on me. “Pay Danni no attention, girls. It is time to begin. Tell me what you would like in your omelette au fromage.”
Mom was the last one up. For the second day in a row. It was almost nine when she came out, still in her pajamas and slippers. She came to a stop as she was caught in the simultaneous grip of a yawn and a stretch. “Oh my goodness,” she cried as she finished. “That’s the first time I’ve slept clear through the night in almost two weeks.” Then she looked around. “Oh, something smells good. What are we eating?”
Kaylynn turned. “The food of the gods,” she said with reverent awe.
We all laughed.
“Grandpère’s been indoctrinating the girls about French cuisine,” Dad said.
“And French superiority,” I added. “And without shame, I might add.”
“But of course,” Grandpère retorted. “There is no shame in truth.” He waved at the counter behind him. “Come, Angelique. Your omelet awaits you.”
As we did the dishes, Mom seemed thoughtful. She finally glanced at her watch. “If we’re going to church, we’d better get going. Even in the ski boat, it will take us over an hour to get there.”
I whipped around. “If?” I echoed. I looked at Dad. “Did I just hear my mother use the word ‘if’ in the same sentence with the word ‘church’?” We never missed church when we came down here. No matter how far away the houseboat was from Bullfrog. There was no church at the marina itself, but there was one at Ticaboo, a short distance up the road.
She looked around at the chaos in the room—towels, a life jacket, paper cups left from last night’s late-night snacks, Cody’s swimsuit draped over the back of a chair—and sighed. “The thoughts of getting cleaned up and our hair done and getting everyone dressed in Sunday clothes and ...” She let it trail off.
Dad waved a hand. “If you’re looking for an excuse, Don called a bit ago and asked about our plans. I told him that church was a good likelihood, but he counseled against it. He would have to go with us, and in a small church like that, he’d be pretty conspicuous. He talked to Clay, and Clay agrees.”
“Well, then,” Mom said, “if it’s a matter of following the FBI’s counsel, I don’t think there is a choice.”
“Try not to look too devastated, Mom,” I said.
“Me? I’m brokenhearted,” Cody said with a grin.
“So,” Dad said, “I thought we could just hang out this morning. Have some quiet time. Just visit. Maybe have our own little informal worship service.”
“That would be great with us,” Charlie said.
“Yeah,” the girls echoed. “We want Grandpère to tell us about France,” Kaylynn added.
Mom rubbed her hands together. “I think we have a plan. So, I’ll have one of Dad’s divine omelets, then we’ll clean this place up a little. What say we gather back here at eleven? That will give us time to take a shower if we want.” She turned to Charlie. “If we leave here about four, that will put us to Bullfrog by five, and you back home by six or six-thirty. Is that soon enough?”
Charlie agreed with a quick nod. Rick’s Aunt Shauna was in the process of moving to Hanksville to live with Rick’s family. Charlie had to work at the mine tomorrow, so Shauna was taking the girls to Moab for the next several days to help her pack. Rick would stay with us. He had protested that, of course, saying he could help Shauna, but his father had been firm. He was to rest that leg, and that was that.
I could have kissed him right there in front of everybody. I mean his father. Not Rick.
To call what we did just before lunch a “worship service” was probably a little generous. We didn’t get into Sunday clothes or anything—though it definitely wasn’t swim attire, either. We gathered in the main room of the houseboat, some on chairs, some on cushions on the floor. We did open with a prayer, but then Dad kind of looked around and said, “I think it would be a good idea to get to know each other a little better. So, nothing formal, let’s just talk. Tell us about yourself. What you like. What you don’t like. Your talents. Whatever. Charlie, why don’t you start. I know that your parents came here from Guatemala many years ago. Were you born in Guatemala too?”
“I was,” he said. “But I wasn’t even two when they came to California. Shauna was born the following year, so she is a native-born American. My parents and I became citizens when I was fourteen.”
With a little prodding, Dad kept him talking about their early life. It was amazing to learn about him. He had worked as an itinerant laborer for many years, eventually becoming a foreman. He married Rick’s mother when he was twenty-two and she was seventeen. Eventually, he came to Hanksville to work in the coal mine because the wages were much better and it was permanent, year-round work.
The whole discussion was wonderful, actually. Shauna opened up after some initial shyness, and we learned that she had a delightful sense of humor, in spite of having had a tough life. Kaylynn and Raye blushed a lot as we asked them questions, but you could tell they were loving it.
Rick balked when I said, “Okay, your turn.”
“I’d say it’s time to hear something from the McAllisters,” he said. “We can come back to the Ramirez family later.” I tried to protest, but Cody interrupted. “I’ll go,” he said. And then, with his usual shyness—not!—he kept us laughing for the next five or six minutes.
“You’re next, Danni,” Rick said.
Ha! He thought he could get away with that? Dodge it himself, then turn it on me?
“I’ve got a better idea. I think our guests need to hear the story of how Lucas McAllister and Angel
ique LaRoche met and fell in love.”
Both of them started to protest, but they were drowned out by our applause. As they finally agreed, to our surprise, Grandpère stood up. “I shall provide some background information, since I am largely responsible for getting these two together.”
“No,” Mom cried, laughing. “What are you going to say?”
He ignored her. More applause. He did a little half bow, then gestured at my parents. “Feel free to add commentary or correction as you see fit.”
They surrendered with good-natured smiles, and so he began. “All right. To begin with, you have to remember that Lucas McAllister, the man most of us know as Mack, was born in Butte, Montana, where his father was a mining engineer. They lived on a small cattle ranch outside of Butte. Thus Mack grew up with a cowboy heritage as well as mining experience. During his high school years, he worked in the mine with his father. So by the time he graduated, he knew enough about mining that he got a full scholarship to the Colorado School of Mines, in Golden, Colorado. He got a bachelor’s and a master’s degree there, and then went on to Michigan for his doctorate. While he was in Colorado, he supported himself at school by working as a cowboy at a nearby ranch.
“Now,” he said, “let’s go down the road from Golden about twenty miles to the south, to the city of Boulder, Colorado, home of the University of Colorado.”
“Where Grandpère was a professor of French History and Literature,” I called out.
“That is correct,” Grandpère acknowledged. “And where my oldest daughter, Angelique Carruthers McAllister, was a junior in fashion and design. So ...”
I had to smile. He loved to tell a story, and he was a master of the pause, to build suspense.
“So about this time in my career I was getting bored. I have always loved to learn new things, and I like to keep busy. So one day, I decided I wanted to study mining engineering. Where I grew up in France was not far from a large coal-mining area. This had always fascinated me, so I started taking classes at the School of Mines.”
“And met Dad,” Cody supplied, in case any of us had missed that obvious connection.
“Exactly. We met in a metallurgical chemistry class. I think we were both surprised at how well we hit it off, in spite of our age difference. Anyway, the more I got to know this cowboy from Montana, who was getting straight A’s in his college work, the more I started to wonder if he might not be the one for my Angelique.”
“Okay,” Mom said, standing up beside him. “I’m coming in here. I knew none of this, of course. But I did know two things for sure. I wanted to study fashion and interior design in New York City—maybe even do a master’s degree in Europe—“and, I had a strong aversion to cowboys and the so-called Wild West.”
“Strong is an understatement,” Dad murmured. We were all smiling by now. This was great. I loved this story, and to have the three of them telling it together was a first for me and Cody.
“So,” Grandpère came back in, “I knew that no matter what I said, there was no way that Angelique was going to go out with some guy in a cowboy hat and manure on his boots.”
Rick was chuckling. He leaned over to me. “They really are different,” he said.
Mom again: “What my father has neglected to tell you is that he didn’t like the idea of fashion and interior design and had been trying to talk me into studying art, especially oil painting, for quite a while. He thought I was much better at it than I did, so I was kind of resisting him on it. But it did raise questions, and so I started praying about it. I asked God many times what I should do, but I couldn’t seem to get an answer.”
She turned and looked at Dad. “Then one summer day, this handsome-looking guy in a cowboy hat and cowboy boots came walking into the restaurant where I was working. When he saw me, he just stopped and stared at me, like he’d seen a ghost or something.”
She laughed merrily. “I thought he was crazy. He didn’t move. He didn’t say anything. He just stared at me with those huge, green eyes of his.”
We were all looking at Dad now, who was grinning like some love-struck kid. “Well, before we talk about that,” he said, “let me back up a bit. Jean-Henri had said nothing about having a daughter. Especially one so beautiful.”
“Thank you, dear,” she sang out.
“He just kept telling me about this really great burger place down in Boulder that wasn’t too far out of my way when I was headed out to work on the ranch. So finally, one day I had a little extra time, and I stopped in. And Angelique’s right. When I saw her, I was struck dumb. I mean, she was beautiful and all that, but there was something else about her. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.”
Mom chuckled. “Finally, some guy bumped into him and nearly knocked him down. So he finally came out of it and found a table. But it wasn’t one of the tables assigned to me. That didn’t stop him. A few minutes later, one of the other waitresses told me that this cute guy over there wouldn’t let anyone wait on him except me. Well, there was no way I was going over then. I had my friend tell him that either he left now, or she was calling the cops.”
“How’s that for romantic?” Dad said, pulling a face.
“So what did you do?” Kaylynn blurted. Her face was wreathed with genuine concern.
“I thought about it a lot,” Dad said. “That was while I was pacing back and forth outside. Then I called the ranch and told them I wouldn’t be there that day. And I found a bench where I could watch the door, and I settled in to wait.”
Now Mom’s eyes had a faraway look in them and her voice was soft. “When I got off work a couple of hours later, there he was, waiting outside the restaurant. Which seriously freaked me out. I tried to get around him, but he stepped in front of me and asked me one question.” She turned to Dad. “Go ahead, you tell them.” She shook her head. “I still can’t believe this.”
To my amazement, Dad was actually blushing. “I’ll admit, it wasn’t the brightest pickup line a guy has ever used on a girl, but I asked her this: ‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’”
Rick burst out laughing. “You didn’t!”
“I did,” he said. “I was smitten. No doubt about that.”
Incredulous, Rick turned to Mom. “And you bought into a line like that, Mrs. McAllister?”
“Oh, no. I thought it was the stupidest thing I had ever heard. I was taking a marriage and family class at that time, and I remembered something my teacher had recently taught us. So I said to him, ‘No, I don’t believe in love at first sight. But I do I believe in attraction at first sight, which, if it’s strong enough, can keep a relationship going until love develops.’”
“Which was a pretty cold slap in the face, you have to admit,” Dad replied. Then he too went a little mushy in the knees as he looked at her. “All I could of think of to say to her was, ‘Angelique’—I had gotten that off her name tag—‘if that’s the case, then we’d better start spending a lot of time together so this attraction I’m feeling can turn into love.”
“And I was a goner,” she said. “Just like that. There went my aversion to cowboys. There went New York City. There went fashion and design.” She walked over to him, put her arms around him, and kissed him a good one. This time we clapped and whistled and shouted.
When she straightened again, her face was flaming red and she had tears in her eyes. “And we’ve never looked back. It’s almost nineteen years now and we’re still in love as much as we were when we were married.”
Dad took her hand. “More.”
She moved closer, then shook her head. “That’s not possible.”
CHAPTER 10
After hearing that story, I think we all knew there was no way anyone could top it, so our little meeting broke up and we just sat around talking for a few minutes before we started a light lunch. After lunch, Rick and I volunteered to clean up, and, to our surprise, Grandpère came
over to help. Shauna took the girls and Cody outside and started a game of Monopoly under the deck umbrella. Mom decide to lie down for a while, and Dad went in to help Charlie pack up.
Seeing that we were alone, I decided this was my chance to ask Grandpère something that had been bugging me for a couple of days now. Maybe with Rick there, he wouldn’t go through his usual dodging, teasing routine with me.
“I have a question,” I said abruptly. “For you, Grandpère.”
“Fire away.”
“Remember what you said on the phone the other day, about the footmen and the horses?”
He gave me a look. “I know I’m getting old and senile, but I am able to remember what happened two days ago.”
“Good. Then tell me what it means.”
To my surprise, he picked up a dish towel and dried his hands. Then he turned and walked over to the small bookshelf in the corner. When he came back, he had a Bible and was thumbing the pages. “It actually comes from the Old Testament,” he said. “From the book of Jeremiah, chapter twelve, verse five.” He sat down at the table, still looking for his place, then he motioned for us to join him. We did.
When he found what he was looking for, he bent down and read it to himself, his lips barely moving. “Here it is. ‘If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses?’”
“Yeah, that’s it.” I looked at Rick. “He texted me that the other night.” Back to Grandpère. “So, what does it mean?” I asked.
“What do you think it means?”
I pulled a face at him. “No, Grandpère, don’t do that. Just tell me what it means. I want to know why you sent that to me.”
“Because I thought it might be of value.”