Mayfly Melodies

Twenty-Five

Stephen

Horses aren't lazy and they're not greedy and they're not jealous and they're not spiteful, they're not hateful. They're not that way. But the human can sometimes only describe a horse in the way that they view other human beings—Buck Branaman

Annie's Diner was empty when Stephen entered it. It was early in the morning, just as dawn was beginning to highlight the sky over Johnston County. The chirping of crickets and birds sounded throughout the town as its inhabitants began to wake up and prepare themselves for another day.

Stephen was used to rising early. It was just a part of life for a rancher. There was always work to be done and so he often worked from dawn until dusk, making sure everything around both his family's ranch and the Grant's was up to standard. It wasn't often that Stephen was able to take a day off and relax and even when he wasn't working, he was typically doing something for the ranch in some capacity.

Like that morning. He and his brother, Alex, had woken well before the sun began to rise. They'd tended to the horses, fed the chickens, and filled the water troughs in the paddock before they'd departed the Mackey ranch and headed for town. Annie's was their fuel-up spot where they would get sustenance for the hour-and-a-half long drive to Maysville where they were headed for a horse auction.

While Stephen normally didn't bother attending horse auctions—he had no need of a new mount with Blue still in peak condition—it was a special occasion that led him and Alex to head out of town that day. His brother was getting ready to propose and was hoping to gift his future bride with a horse alongside the ring. The horse, if Pauline accepted Alex's proposal, would be her very first as she'd grown up in the heart of Dallas, Texas, and had never had one of her own.

As Alex drove away from the diner, leaving Stephen behind to pick up breakfast while he went to fill the truck up with gas, Stephen found himself unable to contain his weariness. He yawned and leaned against the counter as bored-looking Ginger Lacroix rang up his order.

Stephen knew the girl. They'd gone to high school together but she was a year younger than he was. She was pretty for someone who looked as if she was about to collapse with fatigue. Her shoulder-length dark curls were swept up into a messy ponytail and she had heavy bags under her eyes from pure exhaustion. He hadn't spoken to her in a while. Last he'd heard, she was saving up money to go to college and get out of town for good.

"You pulled the short straw and got the graveyard shift, huh?" he said to her conversationally as he handed over a twenty-dollar bill.

Ginger yawned and handed him back his change. "Yeah. I took these past two weeks off and went to visit some family out in Austin. Meant that I owed Annie and Beth a couple of the real early morning shifts when I got back. I've been here for an hour already and you're only my second customer."

"Second?" Stephen glanced around the diner. There was no one in the restaurant that he could see save for Ginger but the hiss of the grill in the back kitchen told him that there was at least one cook in the diner as well. Still, there were no other customers in sight.

"Old Pete Wilkinson. He's here every morning for opening. Gets his coffee, two sugar, one milk, and a bran muffin and heads out to Pennington Creek to have his breakfast. Same thing every morning."

Stephen knew the man. He was elderly and senile and a local favourite of Stephen's. Old Pete and his wife, Nora, had owned and operated the town bakery, Crumbs, which had been passed down to their son when they'd retired. Stephen could remember walking into the bakery as a child and being given free cookies and other sweets, especially at the end of the day when they were getting rid of old stock.