There was no room in Elmer’s life for a woman.
Not with 200 head of cattle, a mile of fence to mend, and winter bearing down.
And, especially, not with what the last woman did to him.
When Elmer and Harriet said their “I Do’s,” she promised to love him ‘til death did them part. She kept her end of the bargain for fifty years, too.
Elmer just always figured their parting would come with him six feet under instead of the other way around.
The heartache had just about crippled him, and now his daughter wanted him to go on a “date” with some widow from town?
Hell, Elmer had never been on a date in his whole life. He and Harriet met through their daddies, who worked on a ranch together, and were married by the time they were 16.
Before that, there had been just one little girl, a Sunday school crush named Margaret.
Elmer would get up early every week before church to pick wildflowers from the field behind his family’s prairie house. Margaret’s favorite was tickseed, and she’d pull her chestnut hair behind her left ear and slip one of the golden blooms overtop.
Elmer smiled at those memories as he clopped onto the wooden porch of Caroline’s Cafe in downtown Colton. He could see Mary through the front window, and she waved him in.
He grimaced but knew he couldn’t resist his youngest child. He took off his dusty hat and stepped through the door, where Mary greeted him with a hug.
“Daddy,” she said. “This is Meg.”
“Good to see you again, Elmer.”
Meg was about his age, with smiling eyes and gray hair streaked with chestnut. From behind her left ear, a golden tickseed winked at Elmer.
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