Iron Cowboy

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Book: Read Iron Cowboy for Free Online
Authors: Diana Palmer
impulse she drove back to her church, parked her car and walked out into the cemetery. She wanted to see her grandfather’s grave and make sure the silk flowers she’d put there for Father’s Day—today—were still in place. Sometimes the wind blew them around. She liked talking to him as well; catching him up on all the latest news around town. It would probably look as if she were crazy if anyone overheard her. But she didn’t care. If she wanted to think her grandfather could hear her at his grave, that was nobody else’s business.
    She paused at his headstone and stooped down to remove a weed that was trying to grow just beside the tombstone. Her grandmother was buried beside him, but Sara had never known her. She’d been a very small child when she died.
    She patted the tombstone. “Hello, Grandad,” she said softly. “I hope you’re in a happy place with Granny. I sure do miss you. Especially in the summer. Remember how much fun we had going fishing together? You caught that big bass the last time, and fell in the river trying to get him reeled in.” She laughed softly. “You said he was the tastiest fish you’d ever eaten.”
    She tugged at another weed. “There’s this new guy in town. You’d like him. He loves to read and he owns a big ranch. He’s sort of like an ogre, though. Very antisocial. He thinks I look like a bag lady…”
    She stopped talking when she realized she wasn’t alone in the cemetery. Toward the far corner, a familiar figure was tugging weeds away from a tombstone, patting it with his hand. Talking to it. She hadn’t even heard him drive up.
    Without thinking of the consequences, she went toward him. Here, among the tombstones, there was no thought of causing trouble. It was a place people came to remember, to honor their dead.
    She stopped just behind him and read the tombstone. “Ellen Marist Cameron,” it said. She would have been nine years old, today.
    He felt her there and turned. His eyes were cold, full of pain, full of hurt.
    â€œYour daughter,” she guessed softly.
    â€œKilled in a wreck,” he replied tonelessly. “She’d gone to the zoo with a girlfriend and her parents. On the way back, a drunk driver crossed the median and t-boned them on the side my daughter was occupying. She died instantly.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    He cocked his head. “Why are you here?”
    â€œI come to talk to my grandad,” she confessed, avoiding his eyes. “He died recently of a massive coronary. He was all the family I had left.”
    He nodded slowly. “She—” he indicated the tombstone “—was all the family I had left. My parents are long dead. My wife died of a drug overdose a week after Ellen was killed.” He looked out across the crop of tombstones with blank eyes. “My grandfather used to live here. I thought it was a good place to put her, next to him.”
    So that was the funeral he’d come here to attend. His child. No wonder he was bitter. “What was she like?” she asked.
    He looked down at her curiously. “Most people try to avoid the subject. They know it’s painful, so they say nothing.”
    â€œIt hurts more not to talk about them,” she said simply. “I miss my grandfather every day. He was my best friend. He taught history at the local college. We went fishing together on weekends.”
    â€œShe liked to swim,” he said, indicating the tombstone. “She was on a swim team at her elementary school. She was a whiz at computers,” he added, laughing softly. “I’d be floundering around trying to find a Web site, and she’d make two keystrokes and bring it up on the screen. She was…a child…of great promise.” His voice broke.
    Without counting the cost, Sara stepped right up against him and put her arms around him. She held on tight.
    She felt the

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