The week before...2

   Ok so where was I....oh yes... He said good-bye and  left our house.  From here some of this is speculation.  Times and days are guestimations but what I know is what happened.  Either that night or the next...( If he was at my house on a Monday, then it was the next, but if he was here Tuesday, then that night.) Tuesday night, Daddy went to his favorite place, Walmart, and purchased some Christmas cookies.  His comment "Christmas cookies, that is a good idea."  came back to me as the story unfolded to us.  He took them around the corner to a diner. A waitress worked there.  A girl from his church, in a halfway house at the church.  He had met her there and felt bad for her situation.  She and another girl from the halfway house had come to his house to clean for him once.  They had come and put up the Christmas tree for him another time.  He would pay them. It was Christmas and they were trying to earn a little extra money.  He took her the cookies.  Probably got a cup of coffee and hung around awhile.  He liked public places and being with people. (thus his like for Walmart, where most others despise a trip there)  Little did he know, another man was there...watching him. Watching his interaction with the waitress and the others there.
   Daddy was a man, everywhere he went, who usually brought light.  He would joke, 'pick', have something interesting to say.  Upbeat was an understatement.  His timing was triplicate mostly.  You didn't have to know him well to know if he was sick or sad.  The person watching him was opposite that.  Let's just say his beat was off.  His jealousy, while normal, (jealousy is a normal human emotion) was extreme.  I am not sure if Daddy knew that this man had given the waitress a large tip. I am not sure if he knew of the man's feeble attempts at flirting with her.  I don't know if the girl had shared that with my dad or only with her pastor.  I do know the man had an obsession and when Daddy left the diner that night he was followed.
   Daddy arrived home...it was night ...he probably looked up the lane and saw headlights.  Wondered who was coming to see him. Our lane there is such, if you were driving down it, you were coming to see us.  You don't just happen upon our house.  A truck drove up, one he didn't recognize.  Maybe the man got out, maybe he talked to Dad from his open window.  I do know they had a conversation and that Dad found it odd.  From the other party's accounts, they talked about everything BUT the waitress.   I guess Dad realized that he had followed him from the diner, maybe not.  I don't know how long they talked but it ended with Daddy going back inside and the man driving away.  I speculate that he made a stop by the field of cabbages next to our house.  He may not have.  There were three or four missing in a row as you go out...I know, I looked....