Liz filled a mug with coffee and picked up a biscuit. “I hate to cook. I may be your waitress until my dying day.”

A young woman, not as old as Liz, rushed through the door and into the dining room. She poured a cup of coffee, then added two heaping scoops of sugar and enough cream to turn it pale tan. Then she picked up a sausage biscuit and wolfed it down before grabbing another one.

While she nibbled at the second one, she dug in her jeans pocket and handed Liz a piece of paper. “I’m sorry. I was hungry and thought I was late. I’m Amber. I made a list of the way I do things to help you out. Before I leave in the evenings, I put out the breakfast menus and make sure the tables are ready for the next day. That’d be full salt and pepper shakers, ketchup bottle, and pepper sauce. I get the coffee pots ready so all we have to do is turn them on. Breakfast rush is from about six to eight thirty, and then there’s a few drifters up to eleven when lunch starts. Then it’s a madhouse until two.”

“Pleased to meet you, and thank you for the notes,” Liz said.

“I hate to leave. I’ve loved working here, but Mama is ailin’ and I need to go home,” Amber said.

“Whatever brought you to Texas anyway?” Liz asked.

“Worthless sumbitch I met in a café up in Rogers, Arkansas. He was a truck driver, and I was doin’ waitress work. I’d just got out of a bad marriage and got right back into one even worse than the first one. Mama told me, but I wouldn’t listen,” Amber said.

“I’m sorry,” Liz said.

“Me too. Could’ve saved myself a lot of pain and misery,” Amber said. “But that’s all behind me now and I got a grip on life. I won’t make the same mistake a third time, thanks to Lucy over at the Longhorn Inn. That woman is a saint, let me tell you. She gives talks at the shelters around here and finds jobs for those of us who need them. I’ve been livin’ in the motel and helpin’ her out some in the evenin’s to pay for my room for the last six months. A saint, I tell you, and Jasmine here ain’t far behind her.”

“You worked hard for every dime you made here,” Jasmine said.

When Amber smiled her whole face lit up. “Yep, I did, and I learned more than how to fill up saltshakers. What’s your story, Liz?”

“My Uncle Haskell gave me his house and twenty acres if I want it,” she said.

“Haskell Hanson? Love that old feller. Wondered why we hadn’t seen him in the café the last week. Is he sickly?” Amber asked.

“No, but my grandpa is, so Uncle Haskell moved out to west Texas to take care of Grandpa,” Liz answered.

“That where you are from—out there in west Texas?” Amber asked.