Between Heaven and Texas (31 page)

C
HAPTER 54

W
hen Mary Dell got home to the trailer and leaned down to unbuckle Howard from his car seat later that morning, she noticed the side mirror of her car was broken.

“Maybe that explains it,” she said to Howard, who was trying, unsuccessfully, to grab hold of her necklace. “Something must have brought on all this bad luck. Mr. Waterson backs out on our deal, the barn burns, and we lose our ranch manager all in the same weekend. And it's not even Sunday yet.”

She was grimy and her hair and clothing smelled like smoke, but Howard's needs came first, so she carried the baby inside, changed his diaper, and nursed him, thinking about Graydon all the while. She'd lost her ranch manager, it was true, but more than that, she'd lost a friend. And Howard had lost an uncle, the man she was hoping would be his role model as he grew up, someone who would show him how to ride and rope and whittle and be a man, someone who would be a father figure to her boy, the way he'd been to Jeb. Poor Jeb. He was such a troubled child. He was going to take the news of Graydon's departure so hard.

In a day or two, Mary Dell figured she'd call those people up in Kansas, the Spreewells, to see if he'd gone back to work for them, but she held out little hope of finding him. Graydon knew how to disappear when he felt like it, as he'd proven before. Those Bebee boys were good at that. It was their fatal flaw, Graydon had said so himself. And he knew how to hold a grudge too. Though, in this instance, she couldn't blame him.

She couldn't believe he'd started the fire, not even accidentally. If he had, he'd have owned up to it. And she didn't care how many empty liquor bottles he'd left behind—if Graydon Bebee said he'd stopped drinking, then he had. He wasn't a perfect man, no man was, but he was honest. Mary Dell understood why her sister had flown off the handle when she discovered those empty bottles in the shed; Jack Benny's drinking had been the cause of so much of her misery. But she wished Lydia Dale had stopped to think before she'd acted, to remember that Graydon Bebee was not Jack Benny Benton.

Well, there was no help for it now. Graydon was long gone, surely never to return. And Lydia Dale was on her way to pick up the kids from their father's, and she'd have to tell them what had happened.

Mary Dell sighed to herself as she tucked Howard into his crib. Graydon's disappearance was going to break Jeb's heart. It had already broken Lydia Dale's. Anybody with eyes in their head could see that Lydia Dale was in love with Graydon.

 

Mary Dell crept out of the nursery and down the hallway toward her room, unbuttoning her blouse on the way, thinking how good it would be to get that smoke smell out of her hair. She pushed open the bedroom door and gasped, finding it was already occupied.

“Jeb!” she exclaimed, clutching at her blouse and buttoning it up as quickly as she could.

“What are you doing here? Oh, honey! What happened to you?”

Jeb's face was streaked with soot and dirt and snot. His clothes were disheveled and his hair was a mess, his cowlick standing up like someone had called it to attention. Upon closer inspection, Mary Dell saw that there were red marks on his face and hands and that one of his eyebrows was singed.

“Oh, Jeb. Were you in the barn? What in the world were you doing there?”

Without waiting for his answer, Mary Dell steered the child into the bathroom and made him sit on the lid of the toilet while she got out her first-aid kit and filled the sink with cold water.

She squatted down in front of him and carefully wiped his face with a cold, wet washcloth. “Does that hurt?”

Jeb winced but shook his head anyway.

Mary Dell pressed her lips together, wondering if she should just take him directly to the doctor. The burns didn't seem too bad, there was no blistering, but still . . .

Mary Dell opened a tube of first-aid cream and dabbed it on his left cheek and eyebrow. “Baby, what were you doing in the barn?”

“Hiding. Daddy got mad and sent me to bed with no supper. I didn't do anything, Aunt Mary Dell,” he said earnestly. “I swear I didn't. Daddy asked me what I'd been doing all week, and when I told him that Uncle Graydon was teaching me how to rope so I could enter the breakaway competition at the fair, Daddy got mad. He called me names, and slapped me, and sent me to bed. I didn't do anything!”

Mary Dell reached up and tenderly tried to smooth his hair. “I know, baby. I believe you.”

“When it got dark,” Jeb went on, “I climbed out the window and came home.”

“But . . . that's six miles. You walked six miles in the dark all by yourself?” She closed her eyes for a moment. Anything could have happened to him; he could have been hit by a car or attacked by a coyote. Clearly, the child had a guardian angel.

“I knew Momma would be mad at me for running away,” Jeb said quietly. “So I snuck into the barn and climbed into the hayloft. I thought I'd sleep there. But . . .”

He hung his head.

“But what, Jeb?”

“I stole a pack of Daddy's cigarettes. When I went to light one up, I accidentally dropped the match. The hay caught fire. I tried to put it out. I stomped on it and used my jacket to cover it, but it got so big, so fast. My hands got burned and I got scared, so I ran off into the field. And then I remembered Uncle Graydon and the stock. I was running back to warn him when I saw him run out of the barn, leading the horses.

“I hid out for a while, watching, to make sure everybody was all right. And then . . . then I didn't know what to do, so I came over here.”

He looked up at her with a miserable, guilt-ridden expression, his eyes swimming with tears and his nose running.

“I'm so sorry,” he gasped, giving way to sobs. “I . . . I didn't mean to do it. I didn't mean to . . .”

Mary Dell wrapped her arms around the boy and pulled him to her big bosom, rocking him like a baby, her own eyes filling with tears. “I know you didn't, honey. I know.”

He buried his head on her shoulder, blubbering, saying he was sorry over and over again.

“It's all my fault. Daddy hates me and now Momma will too.”

“You're wrong,” Mary Dell murmured. “Your momma could never hate you. She loves you. You're her baby. Don't you know that?”

Face still pressed against her shoulder, he shook his head and mumbled, “She's got Rob Lee.”

He sniffled again and looked up at her with pleading eyes. “Graydon is going to be so mad. He said if he ever caught me smoking, he wouldn't let me ride for a month. What am I going to tell him, Aunt Mary Dell? Do you think he's going to hate me too?”

Mary Dell swallowed hard and squeezed him as tight as she could. “Oh, my sweet boy.”

C
HAPTER 55

W
hen she got to Jack Benny's house and discovered that Jeb was missing, Lydia Dale was frantic and furious by turns. Where could he have run off to? And how was it possible that Jack Benny hadn't noticed his son was missing until this morning?

“Didn't you even bother to check on him before you went to bed?” she yelled. “Or were you too drunk for that?” It seemed a distinct possibility; he was wearing the same clothes he'd been in the day before.

A shouting match ensued, so loud that one of the neighbors called the sheriff. Vida Smollet, a capable and calm woman of about thirty-five, was the sheriff on duty. She got Lydia Dale and Jack Benny to settle down and explain what was going on, then quickly interviewed Cady to get her take on what had happened and what might have made her brother run away. Next she radioed in a missing child report and made a phone call to the F-Bar-T. When Dutch told her that Jeb hadn't showed up there, she asked him to go search around the place and said she'd be there in a few minutes to help.

“Jack Benny, you stay here in case Jeb comes back,” she instructed. “If he does, call the sheriff's department and wait for me or another officer to arrive. You're not to yell at him or touch him in any way.”

When Jack Benny started to answer back, Vida pointed right at him.

“Sir, I'd advise you to think before you speak. I'm going to file a report with the children's and family services department about all this, and your attitude will be taken into account. At the moment, I'd say you can count on supervised visitation with your children for a good while to come. If you'd like to lose your visitation rights entirely, then just keep it up. Am I making myself clear?”

Jack Benny glared at her and kicked the dirt with the toe of his boot. Vida turned toward Lydia Dale.

“You and Cady follow me out to the ranch. If Jeb's not there already, chances are he's headed that way.” She placed her hand on Lydia Dale's shoulder. “Don't worry, hon. We'll find him.”

Mary Dell and Jeb arrived on the scene literally seconds after Lydia Dale and Vida. Vida climbed out of the patrol car, saw Jeb, and immediately made a call on her radio to say the missing child had been found.

 

While Jeb, clinging to Mary Dell's hand, tearfully explained why he'd run away, how the fire had started, and all that came after, an emotional tornado churned inside Lydia Dale. She was by turns filled with fury, terror, relief, anguish, gratitude, and confusion, but more than all that, she was filled with self-recrimination.

After she'd given Jeb a stern talking-to and a hug, then sent him off to help Dutch with the cleanup, she let her head flop back onto the headrest of her father's blue velvet recliner.

“I'm a terrible mother,” she said to the ceiling.

“Oh, stop that,” Mary Dell said. “You are not.”

“Yes, I am. If I wasn't, Jeb wouldn't be such a mess. You know, he was such a happy baby. Always smiling, so precious. And now, ten years later, he's angry, he's sad, and he's an arsonist. How did I manage to ruin a perfect child in just ten short years?”

Mary Dell moved from the sofa to the recliner and perched herself on the arm.

“First off, no child is perfect. Second, Jeb isn't an arsonist. The fire was an accident. Jeb
is
sad and angry, but he's not malicious. What with Jack Benny being . . . you know, Jack Benny,” she said, rolling her eyes, “and the new baby, and the divorce, can you blame him? He's been through a lot.”

Lydia Dale nodded. “The divorce . . . it all started with the divorce.”

“No, ma'am,” Mary Dell said firmly. “It all started when you married that good-for-nothing varmint. Jack Benny is lazy, he's a drunk, he chases women, and he's so low he'd have to look up to see hell. I know it's been rough, but divorcing him was the smartest thing you've done in a decade.”

“It wasn't like he left me with a lot of other options,” Lydia Dale said.

“Then why are you blaming yourself?” Mary Dell punched her gently in the shoulder and then followed up with a quick hug. “It's going to be all right in the end. Jeb's a good boy. He's just a little confused.”

“And I ran off the one person who was helping him get unconfused. What's wrong with me? How could I have talked to Graydon like that? Accused him of being a drunk and a liar and kicked him off the place. How?”

“Because,” Mary Dell said, “you've been lied to before. And because the sight of all those liquor bottles scared you something awful—almost as much as the thought of being in love.”

Lydia Dale tipped her head back and looked up at Mary Dell. “How come you know so much?”

“Well, I'm smarter than I look. Also, I'm your sister; I know you pretty well by now. We were wombmates, remember?”

“Guess that explains it,” she said with a little smile, then began chewing at her thumbnail, staring vacantly across the room.

“How am I going to tell Jeb that Graydon is gone and won't be coming back? He's either going to blame himself or blame me.”

She sighed. “I hope it's me.”

C
HAPTER 56

T
he next few days were more than usually busy. Mary Dell went to talk to the manager at First Reliable Bank on Monday and was, as she'd predicted, turned down for a loan. She made her pitch to three other banks in the following days and was encouraged when a loan officer in Waco, a woman and a quilter herself, said she thought Mary Dell's proposal had merit, but was ultimately turned down by the manager. The clock was ticking. By Thursday Mary Dell knew she wasn't going to be able to raise the money to buy Waterson's Dry Goods Emporium.

“It's time to face facts,” she said when the family, including Silky and Velvet, gathered at the big house later that day.

Dutch was outside playing hide-and-seek with the big kids. It was the first time in days that anyone had been able to coax Jeb into doing anything besides moping. Silky stood at the stove, frying chicken, and Velvet at the sink, peeling peaches. Lydia Dale sat in a chair with a receiving blanket over her shoulder, nursing Rob Lee. Mary Dell was setting the table while Taffy sat at the head of it with Howard on her knee, making silly faces at him, trying to get him to smile, which he did readily, to her delight.

“None of the bank managers will give me the time of day,” Mary Dell said despondently as she circled the kitchen table, laying out silverware. “Well, maybe they were right. Maybe it wasn't a good idea.”

Taffy made a buzzing sound with her lips. Howard beamed in response, his blue eyes laughing.

“It
was
a good idea,” she said, looking up at Mary Dell. “If anybody could have made that old dry goods store into a going concern, you and your sister could. Those bank managers just don't have any vision. The odds were against you and so was Marlena Benton, the old she-devil.”

Silky raised her eyebrows and turned over a chicken breast, revealing a crispy, golden-brown skin. “She-devil? I thought you and Marlena were bosom buddies. I thought you wanted to be just like her.”

Taffy stared at her mother as if she'd never heard anything so preposterous. “Where'd you get such an idea? I can't stand Marlena. Never could.”

“Huh. You don't say.” Silky gave Velvet a little wink and turned another piece of chicken. Velvet smiled.

“There's no profit trying to figure out who to blame,” Mary Dell said. “It's over and done with. Best thing to do now is forget about it and get back to work. I need to rebuild the barn and see about hiring a ranch manager. The insurance adjuster said the claim ought to be approved next week.”

Aunt Velvet rinsed the peach juice off her hands and wiped them on her apron. “Mary Dell, just how badly do you want to open this quilt shop?”

Mary Dell stood near the head of the table with a spoon clutched in her hand, considering the question.

The idea of owning a quilt shop had excited her from the first, but initially, it had been the kind of excitement she experienced when creating a new quilt design or discovering a method for making an old design easier to stitch, the thrill that comes from imagining a new adventure, facing a new challenge. Later, when she began to consider the example she might be setting for Howard by overcoming the obstacles in her path and opening the shop, the thrill of adventure took on a deeper purpose.

But it was her journey to Dallas that really sealed the deal. C. J. Evard had helped her see what it might be like to soar beyond the narrow boundaries she'd set for herself, to push herself cognitively and creatively. Suddenly, she felt like a new car out for a test drive; she longed to be out on the highway with the gas pedal pushed to the floor, to use all her gears and leave the pack behind, to show everybody, her family, her child, herself, and the world what she had under the hood.

And now . . . now that the door was shut and the boundaries were closing in . . .

Mary Dell blinked a few times. “Pretty bad, Aunt Velvet. There's only one thing I've ever wanted more, and that was Howard.”

She bent down over Taffy's shoulder to kiss Howard on the head, burying her face in his downy hair, and chided herself. If she could only have had one answered prayer in her life and that prayer was Howard, she'd never have right or reason to complain. And she wasn't complaining, but having stood on the threshold of a new world, it was hard to close the door without feeling a pang of regret for what might have been.

Velvet looked at Silky and raised her brows, as if to say she'd thought as much. Silky lowered the flame under the skillet and turned her back to the stove so she could see her granddaughter.

“If you want it so much, why are you giving up?”

Mary Dell frowned, wondering if her grandmother was starting to lose her hearing. “I told you, Granny,” she said, speaking loudly and distinctly, “I just can't raise the money. I've tried everything.”

“There's no need to holler at me,” Silky replied with a scowl. “I heard you. I just don't believe you. You've tried some things, the easy things, but you haven't tried everything.”

“Like what?”

Silky glanced at Velvet, a question in her eyes. Velvet gave a brief nod, as if granting her permission to speak.

“Velvet and I were talking it over. Mary Dell, when it comes to quilting, you've got a gift, a special and remarkable gift. We always thought so, but on the other hand, what do we know? We're just a couple of old ladies from Too Much, and of course, we're not exactly impartial judges. But when a man like C. J. Evard sees what we see within five minutes of meeting you, then that is something you need to pay attention to, that and your heart. And since it means so much to you . . .” She paused a moment, took in a deep breath, and let it out quickly.

“We think you ought to sell off some land.”

Mary Dell stared at her grandmother, wondering if her own hearing was going bad.

“Excuse me? Are you telling me to sell land so I can raise the money to buy a quilt shop? Flagadine's land? Our land?”

She looked at her mother and sister, then back to her grandmother and aunt.

“Are you crazy?”

“Well, I think that's a question that was settled a long time ago,” Silky replied, “but yes. We're telling you to sell off some land. Not a lot, just as much as you'd need to buy and stock the shop and then fix up the building proper. If you're going to do it, honey, you should do it right. Selling a hundred acres ought to cover it, a hundred and fifty at the most.”

Mary Dell turned her face to the wall. “I am not listening to this,” she said. “And even if I was, who'd be willing to buy just a hundred acres of our land? For cash and by Monday morning? Nobody in Too Much has that kind of money on hand.”

Velvet stepped forward. “The Bentons do,” she said. “Marlena would buy a piece of our land in a heartbeat, any piece we'd offer, just so she could say she'd done it.”

Mary Dell threw up her hands. “You are crazy! The both of you! No, Aunt Velvet. Absolutely not. I am not going to sell even one acre of the F-Bar-T. Especially not to Marlena Benton!” she shouted.

Silky, who didn't appreciate being called crazy, shouted back. Velvet stepped between the two to try and calm them down, but had to raise her voice to be heard. Lydia Dale took Rob Lee off her breast, set him on her shoulder, and got up to put in her two cents, arguing that they weren't going to miss one little piece of ground. Taffy weighed in too, but felt conflicted by the proposition and argued both sides of the question at once—she loved the idea of Mary Dell and Lydia Dale owning a quilt shop, but hated to think of how Marlena would gloat if she got hold of even a little of their land. The sound of five female voices raised in conflict upset Howard, and he began to howl in protest. Then Rob Lee, distressed at being taken from his mother's breast before his stomach was full, added his cries to his cousin's.

The din of women arguing and infants crying was so great that nobody heard the sound of a truck pulling up outside, and the childish shouts of joy that greeted the driver, or noticed when the door from the porch to the kitchen opened and someone stepped inside, carrying a shopping bag.

In fact, the commotion was so deafening that not one of the women stopped for so much as a breath until Graydon Bebee, who tried once or twice to announce his presence using a more modulated tone, finally waded into the middle of the fracas, stuck his pinkie fingers into each side of his mouth, blasted out an earsplitting whistle, and hollered louder than all of them.

“What in the hubs of hell is going on here!”