Between Heaven and Texas (5 page)

C
HAPTER 8

M
ary Dell paced up and down in front of the clinic, waiting for Lydia Dale. She was late. Mary Dell supposed she must have been held up at the meeting. Taffy was always going on breathlessly about this “crisis” or that involving the Women's Club.

Honestly, Mary Dell didn't see what could be so difficult about putting on a Christmas ball or organizing a charity turkey shoot, but to listen to Taffy, these activities were as complicated to stage as the Normandy invasion and just as critical to the continuance of truth, justice, and the American way of life.

Now that Lydia Dale's pageant career was finished, the Women's Club was the main focus of Taffy's life. She poured all her energy into it, thrilled that she'd finally been accepted as a member. Mary Dell didn't understand how Taffy could be so blind. Those women still treated her like a redheaded stepchild. They only let her into their cursed club because they had to; there was no way on earth they could blackball the mother of Marlena Benton's daughter-in-law.

Marlena hadn't been any happier about admitting Taffy to the club than she'd been about seeing her son marry a Tudmore. But she could never refuse her baby boy anything he truly wanted, and Jack Benny had wanted Lydia Dale in the worst way. As far as Mary Dell was concerned, he'd courted her in the worst way too, when she was vulnerable and grieving. Her sister would never have married him if she'd been in her right mind.

Where
was
Lydia Dale? She was just about to go back into the doctor's office to call the house when Lydia Dale's blue pickup came speeding around the corner. Mary Dell opened the door and climbed into the passenger seat.

“I am
so
sorry.” Lydia Dale clapped her hand over her heart, looking genuinely distressed. Her eyes were red.

“It's all right,” Mary Dell replied. “Are you coming down with a cold?”

Lydia Dale gave her head a quick shake and pressed her lips together. “No. I'm fine. It's just that . . . It doesn't matter. How are you? What did the doctor say?”

Mary Dell swallowed hard. “It was like I thought. I lost the baby.”

Lydia Dale's eyes filled. She laid her head on the steering wheel and started to sob for all she was worth, her shoulders convulsing.

Mary Dell was stunned. Lydia Dale was never much of a crier. Maybe the pregnancy was making her emotional. Mary Dell twisted sideways in the seat, leaned closer to her sister, moved her hand in slow circles over Lydia Dale's back.

“It's all right, sis. I know you're pregnant, and I'm happy for you. Really, I am. I'll have a baby of my own someday,” she said. “I'm going to talk to Donny about adopting. Don't cry. It's not your fault I lost the baby.”

Lydia Dale lifted her head. Her face was red, and her nose was running. She tried to say something but couldn't, tried again, closing her eyes and taking in three big, ragged breaths before finding her voice.

“I'm sorry, Mary Dell. I'm so sorry about the baby. But that's not why . . .”

She covered her mouth with her hand, pressing so hard that when she removed her hand, her lips were almost white.

“I didn't go to the meeting. After I dropped you off, I realized I'd forgotten my notes about caterers for the Christmas Ball at home, so I swung back by the house to get them. Jack Benny's truck was idling in the driveway. He didn't go to work.”

“Somebody was sitting in the truck waiting for him. A woman. Carla Jean Nesbitt.”

Mary Dell gasped. “That two-bit tart who tends bar at the Ice House? Are you kidding? She's as loose as ashes in the wind, and everybody knows it. I can't believe Jack Benny's stupid enough to be seen with that sorry piece of goods.”

Lydia Dale let out a short, sharp laugh. “Oh, he's doing more than being seen with her; he's moving in with her. And divorcing me.”

Mary Dell's jaw went slack. How could Jack Benny consider leaving his children and beautiful former beauty queen bride for a cheap tramp like Carla Jean Nesbitt? Why, Carla Jean wasn't even a natural blonde!

“He's leaving you for
her?
Has he lost his mind? He must have. Either that or he was blind and stupid drunk!”

“No,” Lydia Dale replied with a quick shake of her head, “he wasn't drunk. Not today. He's been seeing her for months now.”

“And you knew?”

Lydia Dale nodded. Mary Dell was speechless, but not for long.

“I can't . . . I just can't believe you'd let him treat you this way. Why did you? Why aren't
you
the one who's leaving him?”

Lydia Dale snapped her head around.

“Because it isn't just about me! I have two children to think of, Mary Dell. Jeb loves his daddy. I don't know why; Jack Benny hardly gives him the time of day, but he does. He's just a little boy, and he wants his daddy. Cady isn't so attached to him, maybe because she's a girl and she has me. I don't know . . . but I'm just trying to hold my family together. Children need a daddy.”

Mary Dell felt terrible. Her sister had been carrying this burden for months, and she'd been too wrapped up in herself to notice.

“I'm sorry. Don't listen to me. What do I know about raising kids? I guess any daddy is better than none. Did you tell Jack Benny about the baby?”

Lydia Dale frowned. “How did you know about that?”

“Dr. Brownback accidentally let it slip. You could have told me, you know. I'd never be jealous of your happiness.”

“Oh, Mary Dell . . .” Lydia Dale's voice quavered. “That's not why I kept it from you. I just . . . I felt stupid. Because I am. How stupid do you have to be to let yourself get pregnant when you know your husband is sleeping with another woman? It was right after I figured out what was going on. I confronted Jack Benny, and he told me I was imagining things.

“You know, he can be very convincing when he wants to. It helps that I wanted to believe him. Anyway, he got me drunk, and I left my diaphragm in the drawer, and now . . .”

Mary Dell leaned across the gearshift to fold her sister into an awkward embrace. “Hush now,” she ordered. “No more of that.”

“I didn't tell you because to tell you the truth, I wasn't happy about the baby. I know how terrible that must sound to you.” Lydia Dale closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “I am such a fool. You warned me about him. But would I listen? No. I just got mad and told you to mind your own business. What am I going to do, Mary Dell? What am I going to do?”

“Quit beating yourself up, for a start,” Mary Dell said. “You're going to figure this out. And I'm going to help you. Donny will too. And Daddy and Momma. And Grandma and Aunt Velvet. Jack Benny might be leaving you, but we never will. We're your family and we're not going anywhere.”

She squeezed her as tight as she could.

Lydia Dale buried her head in her sister's shoulder, muffling the sound of her voice. “You don't understand. Jack Benny isn't just going to go away, not without a fight. He wants everything.”

“The house?” Mary Dell puffed. “Let him have it. It's a shack anyway. You and the children can move back to the ranch. It'll be a little tight, but Momma and Daddy will be thrilled to have you back. We'll make do.”

“No, it's not that. I mean . . . he
does
want the house, but that's not all he wants.”

Mary Dell frowned. “You mean the kids? He's going to fight for custody?”

“No. He's not interested enough in the children to sue for custody. I almost wish he would.”

Lydia Dale lifted her head and looked at her sister, her blue eyes streaming tears and regret. “He doesn't want the kids, Mary Dell. He wants the ranch, the F-Bar-T. Part of it, anyway. And he's willing to go to court to get it.”

C
HAPTER 9

M
ary Dell stood with her feet resting on the bottom rung of the gate, watching her husband stride across the paddock with a bucket of oats for Georgeann, the Appaloosa mare he'd ridden back in his rodeo days. Georgeann nickered when he approached, greeting him. She was still a handsome horse, sleek of coat and straight-legged, but starting to show her age.

Glad I'm not the only one,
Mary Dell thought as she watched Donny stroke the mare's neck while Georgeann lowered her head and munched contentedly.

Other than a slight paunch around his middle, evidence of his fondness for Tex-Mex and pork rinds, and a few lines around his eyes that made him look rugged and experienced, Donny didn't look a day older than he had on their honeymoon, at least in Mary Dell's estimation. All these years later, the sight of him on horseback, sitting tall in the saddle and scanning the horizon for signs of danger or rain, or bent over the engine of their old Ford pickup, his Wranglers stretched as tight as a second skin, or hefting a bale of hay up onto his shoulder as easily as if it were a bale of feathers, still melted her butter, made her feel fortunate and breathless, even a little faint.

But this was no time to let herself get distracted. They had serious matters to discuss, though Donny didn't seem to agree.

“Donny? Did you hear what I said?”

“I heard.”

“Well. Aren't you worried?”

“Nope.”

“Why in heaven's name not?”

“Because he doesn't own one square inch of this ranch. Taffy signed the deed over to you and your sister—”

“When we got married,” Mary Dell interrupted. “I know. Just like Grandma Velvet signed it over to Momma when she married Daddy. The ranch has always passed from daughter to daughter.”

“Well, that's my point,” Donny said. “I don't own the land; I just get to work it and live off what we make from it. And,” he said under his breath, addressing himself to the horse, “support the entire extended family while I'm at it. Heckuva deal.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing. I'm just sayin' that the land doesn't belong to me or to Jack Benny. We don't figure into it. It goes from daughter to daughter, like you said.”

“But that's just our tradition. Nobody's ever questioned it before. We've never had a divorce in the family. It could change everything. A judge might say we have to split the ranch up or buy Jack Benny out or I don't know what all. Jack Benny went to Waco last week and hired himself some fancy lawyer. Doesn't handle a blessed thing but divorces.”

Donny tipped the bucket forward, then shook it so Georgeann could get at the last of the oats.

“Don't go getting your bloomers in a twist. Jack Benny's just trying to get your sister riled up. Divorce makes men meanspirited, even when it was their idea in the first place. Maybe he just needs to pick a fight so he'll feel like the whole thing was Lydia Dale's fault.

“Anyway, I think he's bluffing. Why would he want this place? Jack Benny's too lazy for ranch work. He's too lazy for any work, if you ask me.”

The oats finished, Georgeann jerked her head out of the bucket and nudged Donny with her nose, hoping for more. “Sorry, girl. That's all for now. How about I bring you a fresh bale of hay, huh? Be back in a minute.”

Donny walked across the paddock carrying the empty bucket. When he got closer he gave the gate a good shove with his boot, making it swing wide. Mary Dell, still perched on the bottom rung, went along for the ride like a little girl swinging on a garden gate, smiling in spite of herself. Donny smiled too. He liked seeing his wife happy.

Mary Dell held on as Donny closed and relatched the gate, then hopped down and followed him toward the barn.

“Good riddance is what I say. Don't know why she ever married him in the first place. If she'd have just waited a little longer . . .”

“Now, don't start in,” Mary Dell said. “You can't go laying all the blame at Lydia Dale's feet. Graydon owns some of this too, you know. He's not the first person who's had his heart broken. Nobody forced him to go hide out like a hermit, cutting himself off from the family. That was his doing.”

“Nobody is saying it wasn't,” Donny groused. “I just wish Lydia Dale had waited a little longer, that's all.”

“But how was she to know? The war department said he was dead, and she believed it. We all did. And she did wait, Donny. She waited a whole year.”

“Let's talk about something else. It's too hot to fight.”

Donny stepped up to the water trough by the barn, took off his hat, doused his head with two ladles full of cool water, then shook off the excess moisture from his head before lowering the dipper back into the water and offering Mary Dell a drink.

“I'm not fighting,” she said, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. “I'm just saying I wish you'd let the past be past. Lydia Dale needs us now. She's got nobody.”

“Suppose so,” he said with a shrug and dipped out a drink for himself.

Donny didn't resent his sister-in-law, not exactly. Any mistakes Lydia Dale made, she'd surely paid for ten times over being married to Jack Benny. But he felt bad for Graydon. Life had not treated him fairly, but ten years had passed since the war department had declared Graydon dead, nine since he'd come home.

About three years before, Donny drove up to Kansas and told Graydon it was time he got on with his life. His advice had not been well received. In fact, they'd come to blows, just like they had when they were boys, except this time their mother wasn't there to douse them with a bucket of cold water and pull them apart. He and Graydon didn't speak for more than a year. They were both stubborn. But to Donny's mind, Graydon was worse.

“Anyway,” Mary Dell continued, handing him his hat from the fence post where he'd hung it, “maybe we can figure out some way to wind back the clock now that Jack Benny is going to be out of the picture.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe we can get them together, like they were always meant to be.”

Donny frowned deeply and shoved his hat low onto his brow. “Mary Dell, you're not to go messing with those two, you hear me? Every time you go poking your beak into other people's love lives, it turns out bad.”

“It does not!”

“No?” Donny raised his hand and started counting off couples, digit by digit. “Cathy Mae Carradine and Randy Smith, Grace and Gordon Williams, Lila Tyrell and that traveling salesman . . .”

“Now that's not fair! Grace and Gordon were very happy together. Until the gunfight. And how was I supposed to know that salesman was already married?”

“To three different women in two different states.” Donny shook his head and grinned. “You're no matchmaker, honey. Even if you were, my brother hates your sister now, almost as much as he loved her before. Let's you just leave bad enough alone.”

Mary Dell shifted her shoulders with a grudging resignation. “Doesn't matter anyway. Lydia Dale has no more use for Graydon than he has for her.”

Donny frowned, the complicated hackles of brotherly loyalty raised again. “What do you mean? She has no right to—”

Mary Dell raised her hands. “Calm down. I don't mean that she hates him or anything like that. It's just that when I brought up the idea of her maybe getting back in contact with Graydon, Lydia Dale said she's got no interest in him or anyone else. She is through with men forever.”

Donny rolled his eyes. Lydia Dale was always so dramatic. He walked into the barn with Mary Dell still dogging his heels. She climbed onto the grain bin and sat with her legs dangling over the edge, watching him silently as he hefted a few fallen hay bales and put them back on top of the stack.

She looked pretty sitting up there, like a redbird on a perch, bright and perky in the scarlet sateen blouse she'd made herself, studded with purple buttons rimmed in gold and fitted as tight as could be over all God gave her.

After a few minutes he stopped to wipe the sweat from his brow and said, “Something on your mind?”

The sound of his voice brought her back to herself. “Well, yes. I wanted to talk to you about something. Something besides Lydia Dale. I went to see Dr. Brownback last week . . .”

Donny grinned and pushed his Stetson to the back of his head. “You did? Honey, does that mean you're . . .”

Mary Dell shook her head. She didn't have the heart to tell him that she had been pregnant, briefly. His face had already fallen like an undercooked cake.

“I just went in for a checkup. The doctor said . . . that is, I'd been thinking and she agreed, that it's time we look into adopting.”

“We've been over this before. I want us to have a child of our own. A son. A Bebee.”

“I know,” Mary Dell said, trying to keep her tone understanding even though she really didn't understand, “but we've been trying for so long. I'm already thirty-one.”

“So what? That's not so old. My momma had me when she was thirty-five.”

“But she'd already had Graydon. If I haven't had a baby by now, after we've tried so hard . . .” Recognizing that stubborn glint in her husband's eye, Mary Dell tried another tack.

“You know, if we adopted, there's no reason we still couldn't keep trying for a baby of our own. If that didn't work, we'd still have our adopted baby. And it would be a Bebee, honey. It would still carry your name. And you could teach him everything you know—how to ride a horse, and rope a steer, and run a ranch.”

“Wouldn't be the same,” Donny replied, grunting as he pressed a bale over his shoulders and onto the top of the stack. “And how do you know what kind of child you'd be getting? How do you know he'd be healthy? That the mother or father weren't drug addicts, or criminals, or carried some kind of disease?”

“Those adoption agencies check on that kind of thing,” she reasoned, though she didn't know this for a fact. “They'd tell you if the baby was likely to have any problems.”

“Maybe. But you'd never know for sure, and by the time you found out, it'd be too late. You couldn't just send it back, you know.”

“No, of course not. But there's no guarantees with any child, is there? You take what you get and love them just the same. I mean, if we were to have a baby of our own . . .”

“He'd come out perfect—with your blue eyes, I hope. And my horse sense. The best of the Bebee line, because he'd have the best of both of us in him.

“The way I figure it,” Donny said philosophically, taking a seat on a nearby bale of hay, “breeding a baby is a lot like breeding livestock. If you put good lines together, you're bound to come up with a good result, an even stronger bloodline than the two you started with. If it works with cattle, it oughta work with people. Just stands to reason.”

Mary Dell wasn't about to argue with Donny when it came to livestock. He'd bred some of the best cattle in the county. But she couldn't help but feel that it was a mistake to apply those principles to people.

And anyway, Mary Dell didn't want a bull, she wanted a baby. Her baby. Whether born of her body or not. A child to love just because it was in her to do so, because babies were not created for what they gave to their families but because of what their families could give to them.

Mary Dell had never been very good at putting her feelings into words. Donny didn't have much patience for speeches or long explanations anyway, and as he'd said, it was too hot to fight. So she said, “Momma is planning a baby shower for Lydia Dale. I was thinking I'd give her that layette I made a while back. No point in letting it sit in a drawer and collect dust.”

Donny reached out for her and buried his face in her hair, breathed in the scent of it, like strawberries and peaches, then moved his head lower, tracing a line of kisses from her ear to the soft flesh just above her collarbone.

“You smell so good.”

“It's the shampoo. It's new.”

He moved her knees apart and she wrapped her legs around the small of his back, locked her ankles one over the other, pulling him close. “What are you doing?” she teased. “I thought you said it was too hot.”

“It is. Too hot to fight,” he said, unbuttoning the top button of her red sateen blouse with one hand. “I've got a better plan.”

She laughed. “I can tell.”

He lifted his head, paused a moment, stared into her blue eyes. “Uh-huh. A much better plan. I say we try one more time to have a baby of our own, just one more. And if it doesn't work this time . . . we'll adopt. How does that sound?”

A slow smile spread across Mary Dell's face. “Like the best plan you've had in a real long time.”

“Thought you'd say that.”

He shifted her weight forward onto his hips, reached low with his hands to intertwine his fingers to create a cradle beneath her backside, and carried her toward the rickety wooden staircase that led to the haymow. Mary Dell squealed and wrapped her legs tighter around him to keep from falling.

“Donny! What are you doing?”

He grinned. “Well, now that we've got ourselves a plan, we might as well put it into action.”

“Here?” She laughed. “Now? In the barn?”

“Sure, honey. Don't you know what haylofts are for? What kind of farmer's daughter are you?”