Between Heaven and Texas (4 page)

Mary Dell hesitated for a moment, then stood up, picked an open tube of lipstick up off the counter, and applied a coat of ruby red to her lips. When she was finished, she took her father's arm.

“Yes, Daddy. I'm ready.”

C
HAPTER 6

T
he Belmont Motel, a cluster of low-slung stucco cottages perched on a hillside on the west side of the Trinity River, was not an elegant establishment, but it had a nice view of the Dallas skyline. Of course, by the time Donny and Mary Dell, still dressed in their wedding finery, checked in at the motel, it was too dark to see it. Even if it had been otherwise, the newlyweds were too weary to appreciate the scenery.

The day had been long and taxing. After the ceremony Donny joined Uncle Dwayne at the bar, matching the old man's toast to their happiness drink for drink. Mary Dell took the wheel for the drive from Too Much to Dallas and was relieved when, after unloading the suitcases and carrying her over the threshold of the motel room, her groom collapsed on the bed and immediately fell asleep.

Early the next morning, as the first fingers of sunlight slipped through the cracks of the venetian blinds, Mary Dell slipped out of bed and into the bathroom.

A few minutes later the sound of muffled sobbing roused Donny from sleep. He opened his eyes slowly and blinked, confused by the strange surroundings, wondering how he had gotten out of his clothes and who had folded them so neatly on the seat of the orange Naugahyde armchair that sat next to the window.

After a moment, Donny remembered the where and why of his circumstances. He was married now and on his honeymoon; that he understood. What he didn't understand was why his wife was crying in the bathroom.

Groaning as he lifted his hurting head from the pillow, silently cursing his new uncle-in-law and promising himself that his first taste of bourbon would also be his last, Donny got up and slipped a clean T-shirt over his head. He pressed his ear to the door of the bathroom for a moment before knocking tentatively.

“Mary Dell? Honey? It's Donny. Your husband?”

He cleared his throat awkwardly, feeling ridiculous. Of course she knew he was her husband. She could hardly have forgotten. If anything, the sound of her distress led him to believe she remembered only too well.

“Mary Dell, are you all right?”

He heard the sound of bathroom tissue being pulled from the roller, a nose being blown, and sniffling.

“Yes. I'm fine.”

Donny didn't believe her. He tried the door handle, rattling the knob. “Mary Dell? Open up. Please.”

There was no response. He tried another tack.

“Open the door, honey. I need to use the bathroom.”

“All right. Just give me a second.” He heard the sound of movement and more sniffling, the toilet flushing and, finally, a metallic click as she unlocked the door.

“Are you all right?” he asked, taking in her red-rimmed eyes and the gray-black half-moons under them, stains from tear-smeared mascara. “Tell me what's wrong.”

“I'm fine,” she insisted. “I just . . . I mean . . . I might need to see a doctor.”

Her composure crumpled like a tossed-away tissue, and her eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, Donny! I think I lost the baby!”

She was weeping again, and loudly, sobs pouring out like water from a bucket. Mary Dell was big and tall, but Donny was bigger and taller, and much stronger. He scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the orange armchair, kicking aside his carefully folded clothing before sitting down with Mary Dell in his lap, cradling her in his arms, smoothing her blond hair with his hand, murmuring soothing sounds into her ear, using the same tone and vocabulary he used when calming a nervous colt—“hush now” and “all right then”—adding a few endearments to the mix.

Mary Dell leaned close, wrapped her arms around his neck, buried her tear-streaked face into his muscular chest. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

“For what, darlin'?”

“For getting you into this mess. For making it so you had to marry me. And all for no reason!”

Donny frowned and pressed on Mary Dell's shoulders, pushing her face away from his chest so he could see her eyes.

“For no reason? Is that why you think I married you? Just because of the baby?”

Mary Dell sniffled and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her nightgown.

“Isn't it?”

“I married you because I love you. The minute I laid eyes on you, walking across that stage in the beautiful red dress, I said to myself, ‘Donny Bebee, you're either going to get that girl to marry you or die trying.' Of course, I got kind of carried away on that first date. I'm sorry about that. That wasn't fair to you.”

Donny smiled and looked her straight in the eye.

“I promised myself I wouldn't let it happen again, not until the wedding. My plan was to marry you by November, December at the latest, so Graydon could be best man before he shipped out. And when you wouldn't go out with me again or even speak to me, it just about broke my heart.”

“Really?” Mary Dell asked, blinking away her tears.

“Ask Graydon, if you don't believe me. He'll tell you.” Donny shook his head sorrowfully. “Yes, ma'am. I thought I'd blown my chance with you. Happiest day of my life—well, up until yesterday—was when Graydon told me you were pregnant. Boy, I couldn't get myself to that jewelry counter fast enough! Almost drove the truck into a ditch, I was going so fast.

“I knew it wasn't right, what I'd let happen on our date. But I figured that maybe you having a baby was God's way of giving me another chance.”

Mary Dell sighed and dropped her head onto his shoulder, as if the weight of keeping it upright took more energy than she could muster.

“Except now there is no baby,” she said quietly.

He kissed the top of her head. “But there will be. We're going to have lots of babies, Mary Dell. You'll see.”

“Do you think so?”

“Sure do.” He kissed her again, squeezing his arm tight around her shoulders. “I think we ought to take you to a doctor, just to make sure you're fine. Then I think we ought to spend some time making plans, thinking about where we're going to live after we go back to Too Much . . .”

Mary Dell's eyes went wide. “But . . . aren't we going to live on the ranch?”

“Of course we are,” Donny assured her. “It's nice of your folks to let us live with them, but I'd like us to have a place of our own as soon as we can afford it. What if we got a trailer, a double-wide? It'd be the quickest way to get a house of our own. There's some nice ones out now, and those double-wides are roomier than they look.”

“I don't care where we live as long as it's on the ranch and we're together.”

“That's what I thought too,” Donny said. “We don't need anything fancy. Just someplace close to the big house, but not too close, where we can have some privacy but still be close to the barns.”

He stroked her hair with his big, broad hand and said wistfully, “The F-Bar-T might not be the biggest spread in Texas, but I never saw such good grazing land. I think we can really make something of it, honey. I've got some ideas.”

“You do?”

He looked at her and nodded, coming back to himself. “All kinds of ideas. And you're part of them all. And you know something else? After we see that doctor and whenever he says it's all right, whether that's today or tomorrow or next month, I think we ought to spend a whole lot of time trying to make a whole lot of babies. What would you say to that, Mrs. Bebee?”

Mary Dell turned her face toward his shoulder so he wouldn't see her embarrassing eagerness and smiled. “I'd say that sounds like a real good plan. And I'd say I love you, Donny. I'd say I love you something terrible.”

C
HAPTER 7

 

D
r. Eloisa Brownback pulled off her latex gloves and tossed them into the wastebasket before snapping off the goosenecked exam light.

“All right, Mary Dell. You can sit up now.”

Mary Dell took her feet from the stirrups and pushed herself into a sitting position at the end of the table. She didn't ask the doctor if the baby was all right. Eloisa's solemn expression told her everything.

“I'm so sorry.” Dr. Brownback sat down on a rolling stool and sighed as she took Mary Dell's hand. “Did you tell Donny you were pregnant?”

“I didn't want to talk to him until after the first trimester. Didn't want to get his hopes up again.”

“I think you
should
talk to him—about adoption. It's time.”

Mary Dell shook her head. “I've tried. Donny is dead set on us having a child of our own. He says it's up to him to carry on the family name.”

The doctor sniffed. “Look, Mary Dell. Maybe it's not my place to meddle in family affairs, but it's not like the entire future of the Bebee clan rests solely on Donny's shoulders, does it? He does have a brother, after all. Can't
he
be the one to carry on the line?”

Eloisa raised her eyebrows to underscore the question, then turned her back and started scribbling notes on Mary Dell's chart. Mary Dell slid off the exam table, wrapping the white sheet around herself like a sarong.

“Doesn't seem likely,” Mary Dell answered as she stepped behind a privacy screen and started to dress. “Graydon's up in Kansas now, works as a hired man and lives like a hermit. He lives in one room, doesn't have a telephone of his own, doesn't keep company with anybody, never even goes to town unless he has to. I can't see him getting married and making babies anytime soon.”

Mary Dell sighed as she reached around back to hook up her bra. She felt sorry for Graydon. Life in that POW camp must have been unimaginably difficult, but that wasn't what had driven him to his hermitic lifestyle. No, it was coming home to discover the woman he'd pinned his dreams on had married someone else that had done it. Of course, it had to have been a terrible and heartbreaking shock. But it was so sad. Having lived through the misery and isolation of one prison, Graydon had returned home and entered another, but this time he'd done it by choice.

Lydia Dale, on the other hand, was stuck. Mary Dell had tried to talk her out of marrying Jack Benny, but she'd accused Mary Dell of trying to “spoil her last chance at happiness,” unable to see that if anything was going to spoil her chance for happiness, it was marrying Jack Benny. She knew that now, of course.

Mary Dell did up the green rhinestone buttons on her bright blue blouse, thinking back on the vision of happiness that Lydia Dale had conjured all those years ago, the one that had propelled Mary Dell out of the bathroom and down the aisle, a picture of them living next door to each other with passels of towheaded children running back and forth between the houses, stealing cookies and causing havoc, of holidays and birthdays celebrated with a crowd of relatives, of being best friends again and for always.

It hadn't happened.

The sisters lived close, but they weren't close—not like they had been. They talked all the time, and Mary Dell saw the children, nine-year-old Jeb and six-year-old Brocade, known as Cady, at least twice a week. The kids were sweet, and Lydia Dale and Jack Benny's little house was just six miles from the ranch. But Jack Benny was a wedge between the sisters. Lydia Dale refused to discuss her marriage, and because they couldn't talk about that, they couldn't talk about a lot of things.

So many fine plans, but none of it had worked out.

The only thing that had turned out better than she could have hoped was the one thing she'd never planned on at all. She'd never figured on falling in love with her husband on her honeymoon, but that's what had happened.

Donny was not only a handsome man but a good one, and a loving husband, a little incommunicative and hard to unglue from the television during football season, but that was all right. Mary Dell loved football, like any true Texan. She'd grown up going to the high school home games every Friday night during the season and still did, along with everybody else in town. Friday night football was the social highlight of the week in Too Much. And, of course, they watched televised college games on Saturday and professional teams on Sunday after church, especially if the Cowboys were playing. Mary Dell couldn't wait for the start of the new season. Sitting snuggled up next to her husband on the sofa while they watched a game together was just one more pleasure of being married to Donny. But for their inability to have children, Mary Dell would have described her marriage as perfectly happy. Who'd ever have figured that the man she'd “had” to marry thirteen years before would be the ideal man for her? How did she get so lucky?

And Donny wasn't just good to her; he was good to her folks too. She didn't know how the family would have survived without him.

After Dutch developed diabetes and lost part of his left foot to the disease, he wasn't capable of doing as much on the ranch—not that he'd ever been much of a go-getter to start with. When Dutch was running things, the ranch barely broke even. But things changed when Donny joined the family.

Donny worked sunup to sundown, adding a new breed of beef cattle to the mix of livestock, sheep too, putting those ideas he'd talked about on their honeymoon into practice and making the ranch profitable enough to support the whole family—the
whole
family, not just himself and Mary Dell but Dutch and Taffy, Grandma Silky, even Jack Benny and Lydia Dale.

Jack Benny was a Benton, which, in theory, should have made him a wealthy man, at least by Too Much standards. But he and his daddy didn't get on. Noodie kept a tight grip on the family finances, swearing that his worthless son wouldn't get a dime of his money until he was dead and buried. Since Noodie looked to be in pretty good health, that might take some time. Until then, Jack Benny was supposed to be working at the ranch to help support his family. Mary Dell couldn't remember the last time he put in a full week's work, but he had no compunction about taking a full share of the profits.

That was something else they couldn't talk about. Mary Dell knew Lydia Dale was embarrassed by her husband's shiftless ways and hated accepting money that he'd done so little to earn, but what else could she do? She had two little children to support. Mary Dell didn't blame her or resent her. Lydia Dale deserved more from life than she'd been given.

After sucking in her breath and zipping up her jeans, Mary Dell came out from behind the screen and sat down on a metal side chair. The doctor scribbled something on a pad of paper.

“I don't think you're going to need it,” she said, tearing the top sheet off the pad and handing it to Mary Dell, “but here's a prescription just in case. If the pain is severe or the bleeding gets worse, call me. Take it easy for a week or so, and no driving today. Is somebody coming to pick you up?”

“Lydia Dale will be here as soon as her meeting lets out.”

“Good. And tell Donny to keep his hands off you for a few days. Or maybe I should be saying that to you instead?” the doctor asked with a wink. “Your aunt recently gave me a very informative lecture about the Tudmore clan's Fatal Flaw. Velvet is quite a character.”

Mary Dell grinned at the mention of her aunt. “Well, she's got a lot of theories, but I think she's right about the Fatal Flaw. I don't know why, but every now and then, Donny starts looking like Robert Redford and Paul Newman all rolled into one.”

The doctor laughed. “That's no fatal flaw; that's biology, nature's way of making sure the human race goes on. And thank heaven for it, or I'd be out of business.”

She got up from her chair and slipped Mary Dell's file into a rack near the door. “Speaking of business, how is Lydia Dale feeling? She should be over the nausea soon, but if not, tell her to call the office.”

Mary Dell's eyes went wide. “Nausea? You mean Lydia Dale is . . .”

Dr. Brownback covered her mouth with her hand. When she removed it, her smile was replaced by a stricken expression. “She's your sister, so I—I assumed she'd told you by now. I shouldn't have said anything. I'm so sorry.”

“It's all right,” Mary Dell said. “She was probably trying to spare my feelings.” She attempted a smile.

Mary Dell wanted a baby so badly, but three doctors and five miscarriages after her first, no one seemed to be able to explain or solve the problem.

Lydia Dale, on the other hand, could use her husband's toothbrush and get pregnant—at least that's how it seemed. Mary Dell was certain that this baby was a surprise, perhaps even an accident. It was so unfair. Why should Lydia Dale so easily be granted the thing Mary Dell wanted most? But then again, maybe Lydia Dale had the same sort of questions. Maybe she wondered why Mary Dell should have so easily and unexpectedly found what Lydia Dale wanted most: the love of a good man.

Mary Dell got to her feet and slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder. She would not be jealous of her sister.

Dr. Brownback opened the door for Mary Dell. “I'm really very sorry,” she repeated. “It was a stupid mistake. Please tell Lydia Dale that I'm going to call her later. If she wants to find another doctor, I completely understand. And if she wants to file a complaint with the medical board . . .”

Mary Dell rolled her eyes. “Oh, for pity's sake. Stop it. She's not going to file any complaint. Lydia Dale's not the complaining kind. And anyway,” Mary Dell said with a shrug, “I was bound to find out before long. Last time Lydia Dale was pregnant she blew up like a bloated fish. But don't tell her I said so.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” Dr. Brownback said, holding up her hand and then letting it drop on Mary Dell's shoulder. “Are you sure you're all right?”

“Why wouldn't I be? I'm going to be an aunt again. I get a new baby to snuggle and I don't even have to get morning sickness or stretch marks to do it.”

“That's kind of how adoption works too.” Eloisa squeezed her shoulder. “You're going to talk to Donny?”

Mary Dell bobbed her head. “I will. Just as soon as the time is right.”