Widow's Tears (6 page)

Ruby put down the quilt top she was holding and stared at the phone as it kept on ringing. She knew it was Claire, and she knew what Claire was going to say—going to ask, rather. She didn't want to hear it.

Well, she didn't have to listen, did she? She could lift the receiver and break the connection. Or she could let the machine pick up, then (accidentally on purpose) erase the message without replying. But that wasn't fair to Claire, who'd had a hard time of it in the past couple of years. And anyway, Ruby knew with a disquieting certainty that this wasn't going to go away. She could listen now or she could listen later. She reached for the phone.

Claire got straight to the point. Someone in her family had died and left her an unexpected inheritance.

The Blackwood house
, Ruby thought.

“The Blackwood house,” Claire said brightly, too brightly. “Do you remember the place?” She didn't wait for Ruby to answer. “Long story short,” she hurried on, “I have to figure out what to do with it. Maybe turn it into a bed-and-breakfast, or try to sell it, or…something.”

She needs advice.

Claire's voice changed. “Look, Ruby, I need advice. So of course, I thought of you, because you were here with me when we were girls. You know the place, and—”

She broke off. There was a silence, the sound of quick breaths, then a half-despairing whisper: “Come and help me understand what's going on here, Ruby. Please come. I can't do this by myself.”

But even before Claire had finished, Ruby was shouting a silent
No, no,
I can't, I won't, no. Not that house again, please, not that place, no, not even for you, Claire.

But there was a right and a wrong answer here and
No, I can't
was wrong. This was something she couldn't hide from. And even as the gooseflesh crawled across her shoulders and her stomach knotted, she knew she didn't have any choice. She was being directed to go, by whatever force in the universe made these arrangements.

Come and help me understand, Ruby. Please come.

So Ruby had said yes, mostly because she knew that
no
was wrong, but also because Claire sounded so desperate. And also because there was something in her, stubborn and insistent, that wanted to revisit the place and know the truth of what had happened a long time ago. She had been young and inexperienced in handling her gift. She might have misremembered, or been mistaken, or exaggerated, or fabricated. After all, it had been the first time, hadn't it? And it wouldn't be surprising if a first-timer got it wrong. In fact, it might be surprising if she got it
right.

She might have a gift, but that didn't mean she couldn't screw up.

Ruby picked up her coffee cup, propping both elbows on the table. In the background, the café's music system had been playing an old Texas song by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, “Mammas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys.” Now, it switched to Connie Francis' recording of “My Wild Irish Rose.” An interesting coincidence, Ruby thought. But of course it wasn't a coincidence. This was Gram Gifford's all-time favorite song, and Ruby was just this moment thinking of Gram, and of Claire.

Besides China and Ramona, Claire was the only other person in the world who knew about the gift Ruby had inherited from Gram Gifford. Ruby's other friends and the people who took her classes—they understood
that she was psychic (when she wanted to be), and they accepted it as a quirk of her personality. But Claire had been there when it had first happened and they had talked about it later, in whispers, because the idea was so overwhelming that they couldn't say it out loud. Claire knew that Ruby had inherited it from Gram Gifford, who had inherited it from her mother, Colleen, who—

The rest of the story was lost in the mists of time, and Ruby had never traced it further. She had never wanted to know where the gift came from or what it had meant to her ancestors. In fact, it made her so uncomfortable that, early on, she had taught herself how to flick the switch off (as she thought of it to herself) and how to dial it down, and she left it in the off position as much as she could. If she hadn't, she would've been inundated by incoming messages, competing noise, other people's
stuff.
There were some very good reasons, she often thought grimly, not to be entirely grateful to Gram.

Gram's mother had come to America from Dublin when she was a young girl and had bequeathed to her daughter not only her red hair and her gift, but also her sense of Irish fun. Annie (Gram's given name) was soft and round and warm and cheerful, the kind of grandmother any little girl just had to adore. She had lived most of her life in Smithville, a small town about thirty miles west of Round Top, where Ruby and Ramona had spent their summers, wonderful, unforgettable summers, busy with picnics and popcorn and read-alouds at bedtime.

That is, that's where they had spent their summers until the year Ruby was ten, Ramona was seven, and their father and mother divorced. Their father, Gram's only child, had been killed in an automobile accident shortly after that. Gram, too, had died not long after, and from then on, their mother had sent the girls to spend July and August in Lubbock with her sister Dorinda, a strict Bible-believer who had laid down a long list of rules
that little girls had to follow. If they didn't, God would send them straight to hell when they died—and hell was a very unpleasant place. Aunt Dorinda was nothing at all like Gram Gifford, who thought that God loved everybody, even when they didn't manage to do everything just right.

Gram had worked at the Smithville library, just a few blocks down the street, and pretended with some success (because she was easy and comfortable with her gift), that she was just as ordinary as her neighbors and friends. But by that last summer, Ruby had begun to understand how it was that Gram could always tell what she and Ramona were thinking, why she knew when company was coming and who it was, and how she could predict the arrival of a particular cat at the bowl of kitty food she kept on the back porch for the neighborhood's feral cats.

“Just you watch, Ruby,” she would say softly, as they looked out the window. “That big black tom with the torn ear will be jumping over the fence in a jiffy, he will.” And in a jiffy, there he was, as if Gram had conjured him up by naming him.

Years later, after Ruby had more experience with her gift, she wondered whether Gram's gift had been somehow different, and that was why she had been so easy with it. Maybe she'd seen less or
felt
less—or had seen and felt mostly cheerful, comfortable things, like the big black tomcat coming over the fence to get his dinner. Or maybe it was because Gram had been using her gift for such a long time that it had become second nature, and she knew there was nothing to be afraid of.

Claire, who was the same age as Ruby, lived across the street and came over every day. She was cute and energetic and full of ideas for things to do—tomboy ideas, mostly, because that's the kind of girl Claire was—and they became fast friends. They walked over to Burleson Street for ice cream, or climbed trees in the park, or rode bikes out to Shipp Lake to go fishing, although of course Ramona couldn't do that, because she was too little.

And one hot July day, Claire invited her to visit her great-aunt Hazel, who lived all by herself in a large, old Victorian house—the Blackwood house—out in the country, past La Grange. It was the summer of the divorce, the very last of the beautiful summers, when Ruby had learned that she was different, that she was like Gram. That she knew things that other people didn't know, saw and heard—yes, and felt—things that others didn't see or hear or feel. It had been such an awful, overpowering experience that she—

“More coffee, hon? And how about some pie?”

The woman's voice startled Ruby, and she jumped. “Oh,” she said, putting down her cup with a clatter. “Yes, just a little more, thanks. But I think I'll take a pie with me.” She studied the photos on the menu. “The buttermilk pie with chocolate chips, pecans, and coconut looks really good.”

“Tastes good, too.” The woman—Monica, according to her name tag—poured hot coffee from a carafe. Her name tag also bore a red sticker with a skull and crossbones and the words
No Frickin' Frackin'!
“You from 'round here?”

“From Pecan Springs,” Ruby said. “Halfway between Austin and San Antonio, on I-35.”

“Oh, sure. Nice little town. My granddaughter's in college there.” Hand on one ample hip, Monica grinned. “Not as little as little ol' Round Top, o'course. But we're big for our size.” She paused, and Ruby chuckled appreciatively. “You here for one of the Institute programs?”

“No, actually, I'm visiting a friend.” Ruby took a breath. “At the Blackwood house. That's what it used to be called, anyway.”

Monica pulled her brows together. “Yeah, that's it. Widow Blackwood's place.” Her voice had changed, and Ruby, glancing up at her, knew why. “You say your friend
lives
there?”

“She's recently inherited it,” Ruby replied carefully. “I'm not sure whether she's actually living there yet.” Claire hadn't said, either, although Ruby wondered whether she was being forced by financial circumstances—the cost of Brad's long illness—to take on the house. She had just said,
Come…please come.

“Your friend's a braver woman than I am.” Monica leaned over, lowering her voice. “Not tellin' tales, but ever'body in these parts knows the place is haunted.”

“Really?” Ruby shivered. She wasn't surprised that the house had a reputation, just hoping for an explanation or a little more information. “Haunted…how? I mean, how do you know?”

Monica's eyes glinted avidly. She was obviously not unwilling to talk. “The place has been sittin' empty while the estate got sorted out, which is takin' a while. Way I heard it, there was some kinda question about the will.” She took a breath. “Anyhoo, the lawyer for the estate, Mr. Hoover, over in La Grange, he figgered he'd put the place up for rent while things was still up in the air. Like for summers, y'know, bein' as how the house is still full of furniture and all. He and his wife went out there to stay for a week so he could see what'd be involved if he decided to rent it. They lasted three days.”

“Why?” Ruby asked.

Monica leaned over. “Place is
haunted
,” she replied, giving the word a spooky quaver. “That's what Mrs. Hoover told my sister-in-law Betty, who cleans at her house. Said she just flat refused to sleep another night out there, and if Mr. Hoover didn't drive her home, she would start walkin'.”

“Oh dear,” Ruby said.

“You bet yer boots.” Monica nodded vigorously. “So Mr. Hoover, he hired some folks from around here—Sam and Kitty Rawlings, Sam used
to run a gas station over in Ledbetter—to live in the hired man's house and keep an eye on things. Caretakers, y'know.” She paused, eyeing Ruby with a curiosity. “You goin' out there to see yer friend?”

“That's the plan,” Ruby said, summoning a cheerful tone. She smiled. “That's who I'm getting the pie for.”

“Yeah.” Monica picked up the empty dishes. “I'll get it for you, hon. But you wanna be careful, now—d'ya hear? Can't prove it by me if that place is haunted or not, but whatever's goin' on out there, it ain't good.” She cocked her head to one side. “And then there's the drilling.”

“The drilling?” Ruby frowned.

“I guess you ain't heard. Oil shale, is what it is. The oil companies have been coming in here like a flock of buzzards, gobbling up leases like they was roadkill. BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Shell, you name it, they're here. Two hundred an acre for two years with a two-year option and royalties if there's production. Some folks want to cash in, and I guess you can't blame 'em. But where there's drillin', there'll be frackin'.”

“Uh-oh,” Ruby said. She had read enough about fracking to know how environmentally damaging it could be.

“Uh-oh is right,” Monica said darkly. “The lady from the Railroad Commission says it's all hunky-dory, no problemo. Frackin' is money in the bank for Texas, and it won't hurt the water, neither. But most people 'round here feel like we don't have enough water as it is. They don't want the oil companies suckin' up what little we got and pumpin' it down the gas wells. They figure the bad stuff is goin' to start comin' out of our faucets, too.”

“I can see why everybody's upset,” Ruby said.

“Yeah. Anyway, there's a piece about it in the
Record
, if you want to know more.” She nodded toward the red-painted newspaper rack at the
front of the café. “You enjoy your coffee, hon. I'll go'n getcha that pie. Yer friend is gonna
love
it. It'll take her mind off those ghosts, fer sure.”

While she waited for the pie, Ruby bought a copy of the
Fayette County Record
and scanned the front page. The lead story was about the robbery of the Schulenburg branch of the Fayetteville Bank, apparently one of an ongoing series of small-town bank robberies—no indication of how much the robbers got, although the sheriff's office said it was a “substantial amount.”

But what she was looking for was the next story, below the fold. The four-column headline read, “Fracking, Groundwater Issues Explained.” The spokeswoman for the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates drilling, reported that the Eagle Ford Shale formation in Fayette County could be an “economic supernova.” So far, she said, over $3.5 billion in energy investments had been poured into South Texas because of oil companies' interests. There would be increased job opportunities, higher salaries, greater sales tax revenues, higher property tax revenues, and overall increases in local commerce, and all because of the Eagle Ford Shale. “I'm here to assure all of you that fracking is safe for you and your drinking water,” she said. “You have nothing to fear.”