Angels Fall

and eat."
    "There's enough for two people here."
    "Yeah, if both of them are anorexic."
    "I'm not." She forked up a bite of the eggs as it to prove it.
    "Go take it back in my office and sit. You got twenty"
    She'd seen the office, and room was a very generous term. "Listen, I've got a problem with small spaces."
    "Afraid of the dark, and claustrophobic. You're a bundle of phobias. Sit out at the counter, then. You've still got twenty."'
    She did what she was told, sitting at the end of the counter. A moment later, Linda-gail put a cup of tea beside her, gave her a wink.
    "Hey, Doc." Linda-gail gave the counter a swipe, sent a good-morning smile to the man who slid onto the stool beside Recce. "Usual?"
    "Sunday cholesterol special, Linda-gail. My day to walk on the wild side.
    "You got it. Joanie."she called back without bothering with a ticket. "Doc's here. Doc, this is Reece, our new cook. Recce, meet Doc Wallace. He'll treat anything that ails you. But don't let him pull you into a poker game. He's a slick one."
    "Now, now, how am I going to fleece the newcomers it you talk like that?" He shifted on his stool, gave Reece a nod. "Heard Joanie got herself somebody knew what they were doing in the kitchen. How's it going for you?"
    "So far, so good." She had to make an effort and remind herself it wasn't as if he was wearing a lab coat and coming at her with needles. "I like the work."
    "Best Sunday breakfast in Wyoming at Joanie's. Now the hotel, they put on a big buffet for the tourists, but the smart money's right here." He settled back with the coffee Linda-gail put in front of him. "You go right on and eat that while it's hot."
    Instead of looking at it, he thought, like the food on the plate was a puzzle to be solved. He'd been the town doctor for nearly thirty years, and so he told her. He'd come as a young man, answering an ad the town council had placed in the Laramie paper. And so he told Reece as she played with her food.
    "Looking for adventure," he said in a voice with the barest hint of rural western twang. "Fell in love with the place, and a pretty brown-eyed girl named Susan. Raised three kids here. Oldest is a doctor himself—first-year intern—in Cheyenne. Middle one, our Annie, married a fella takes pictures for the National Geographic magazine. They moved all the way out to Washington, D.C. Got a grandson there, too. Youngest is in California, working on a degree in philosophy. Don't know what the hell he's going to philosophize about, but there you go. Lost my Susan two years back to breast cancer."
    "I'm so sorry."
    "It's a hard, hard thing." He glanced down at his wedding ring. "Still look for her beside me when I wake up in the morning. Expect I always will."
    "Here you go, Doc." Linda-gail set a plate in trout of him, and both of them laughed when Reece goggled at it. "He'll eat every bite, too," Linda-gail said before she headed off.
    There was a stack of pancakes, an omelet, a thick slice of ham, a generous portion of home fries and a trio of link sausages.
    "You really can't eat all that."
    "Watch and learn, little girl. Watch and learn."
    He looked fit, Reece thought, in his plaid shirt and sensible cardigan. Like someone who ate healthy meals and got a reasonable amount of exercise. His face was ruddy and lean, with a pair of clear hazel eves behind wire-rimmed glasses.
    Yet he tucked into the enormous breakfast like a long-haul trucker.
    "You got family back East?" he asked her.
    "Yes, my grandmother in Boston."
    "That where you learned to cook?"
    She couldn't take her eyes off the way the food was disappearing. "Yes, where I started. I went to the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont, then a year in Paris at the Cordon Bleu."
    "Culinary Institute." Doc wiggled his eyebrows. "And Paris. Fancy."
    "Sorry?" She realized abruptly she had said more about her background in two minutes than she normally did to anyone in two weeks. "More intense, actually. I'd better get back to work. It was nice meeting you."
    Reece worked through the lunch shift, and with the rest of the afternoon and evening stretched out in front of her decided to take a long walk. She could circle the lake, maybe explore some of the forests and streams. She could take pictures and e-mail them to her grandmother and, between the fresh air, the exercise, tire herself out.
    She changed into her hiking boots, outfitted her backpack precisely as her guidebook recommended for hikes under ten miles. Outside again, she