The Lullaby Sky (11 page)

“You can lie, but it don’t make it the truth,” Elaine said.

Hannah opened her mouth, but no words came out. She swallowed twice and patted the sofa between her and Elaine. “Sit down and let’s talk about this.”

“You know how it is. You lived through it. For me, meeting Elaine has brought it all home to me. If I have Wyatt’s child, he’ll threaten me with it like Marty did you, and I’ll wind up just like both of you. I don’t know how much more I can stand,” Liz whispered.

“What are you going to do?” Hannah asked.

“She’s going to leave him,” Elaine said. “She’s got friends and a place to go, so there’s no reason not to leave.”

Liz inhaled deeply and let it out slowly, as if getting up the courage to even speak the words. “I have to pick my moment.”

“You know I’m here if you need me, and I happen to know a really good shelter over in Gainesville if you want to hide out for a few days. I’ve known for a long time that Wyatt was abusive, but you have to realize you have a problem before you can solve it,” Hannah said.

Liz sat down on the sofa. Tears flowed down her cheeks and left wet circles on her shirt as they dripped from her chin. “You tried and failed, and you are stronger than I am. Always have been. It’s going to get rough. Wyatt doesn’t let go of his possessions easily.”

“Is that what you feel like you are? Just a possession?” Hannah asked.

“It’s not a feeling. It’s a fact. It’s written in stone,” she said simply. “I’ve started making a plan, though, and just that much and telling you makes me feel like there is a future outside of humiliation and bruises.”

“The sooner you put that plan into place, the better,” Hannah said. “And I’m right here any time you need me. We all are.”

“Thank you.” Liz wiped away the tears.

“For?”

“Not pushing me and just being my friend.”

Hannah smiled through the tears that wanted to escape from her eyes. She had to be strong or Liz might take two steps backward. “I had no right to push anyone. I’ve got two good sharp shovels down in the hangar. If bad comes to worst, they’ll never find his body.”

Elaine giggled and then laughed, and then it became a guffaw that not even the universe could contain when they all started laughing. They’d barely gotten it under control when Travis stuck his head in the back door.

“Got a few minutes, Hannah?” Travis asked. “Cal wants you to come down to the hangar.”

“I’ll keep an eye on Sophie if Aunt Birdie brings her home before you get back,” Liz said.

“And maybe me and Liz can visit some more about sorry men.” Elaine nodded.

“Okay, then, but if Gina shows up early, don’t let her take you away before I return, Elaine,” Hannah said.

“I sure won’t leave without telling y’all good-bye, and thanks for letting me talk, Hannah. It did help,” Elaine answered.

Travis held the door for her, and she headed off toward the hangar for the first time in six months. She was at the edge of her yard when her phone rang. She fished it out of the hip pocket of her khaki shorts and frowned when she saw her divorce lawyer’s number pop up under a picture of the front of his building.

Her heart stopped, and her hands went clammy. She didn’t want to answer, but not knowing was worse than facing her greatest fear—that Marty would find a way to get back into her life.

“Hello,” she said cautiously.

“Mrs. Ellis? This is Rayford Dillard, your lawyer for the divorce.”

“No, this is Miss O’Malley, remember. I thought we’d finalized everything,” she said.

“Sorry if I startled you. Everything is finalized and filed at the courthouse, yes. Copies are in the mail to you.”

Part of the stress eased out of her body. “Thank you for letting me know.”

“But we have another problem—or blessing, whichever way you look at it.” He chuckled.

The word that stood out in bold italics was
problem
, not
blessing
, in Hannah’s mind. “Just spit it out.”

The lawyer laughed again. “Your ex forgot that his airplane was parked on your property and now he wants it back. It’s a stupid thing for him to forget something that big, but he did in his haste to get the papers signed. Now it legally belongs to you. What do you want to do about it? This is damned funny.”

She sat down hard on the ground. She was totally stunned. “How in the devil did he forget something as big as an airplane? Rayford, I’ve sold that hangar intact with everything that was in it. If Marty wants his plane, he’ll have to get in touch with Calvin Winters’s lawyers. But as OCD as he is, I’m still in shock that he forgot that his plane was parked here and not in Dallas.”

“I asked his lawyer the same question. Do you remember him saying something about having trouble with the landing gear?”

“Yes, but I thought he’d gotten it fixed. He said he was calling a repairman and that he’d give him the key so I wouldn’t even know when he came and went. He called his driver to come get him that weekend.”

“Well, there was a communication problem. The guy who fixed it was supposed to fly it back to Dallas and put it in the Ellis hangar. He didn’t get that part of the message, so he fixed it and left it right where it sits. All this time, the Ellises have thought the plane was in Dallas. I guess since Martin’s new girlfriend lives right there, he didn’t need to fly the thing. I do think it’s funny as hell that karma has bit him on the ass for the way he treated you in that courtroom,” Rayford said with more laughter.

“The matter is out of my hands.” Hannah giggled. “Winters, Grayson, and Drury out of Denton represent Calvin, if you want to get in touch with them. And before you ask, that’s his father and his two sisters, and they are partners in that firm. I don’t think Marty is going to be happy, and I feel sorry for that redhead who’s now with him. When he gets mad, it’s not a pretty scene.”

Rayford had stopped laughing, but now he had the hiccups. “I will definitely tell him that. Have you had any problems?”

“No, sir. I cleared out all his hidden cameras, listening devices, and GPS trackers and changed my phone number. I did keep all the camera stuff. How did you get my number, anyway?”

“I went through Aunt Birdie. Remember, she’s the one who recommended me to you. But never fear, I would never give the number to anyone. And Hannah, hang on to everything that you found. If he ever makes trouble, it might be helpful. You have a good day. This has certainly made mine better.”

“Thank you and mine, too.” She hit the “End” button and blinked a dozen times to be sure she wasn’t dreaming.

Travis sat down beside her. “I got one side of that conversation and I know there’s an airplane in the hangar. So what are you going to do?”

She fell back on the grass and laughed until tears streamed down her face for the second time in less than an hour. “Not one damn thing,” she said between chortles. “It’s no longer my plane, and Cal can push it off into the Red River if he wants to, or he can sell it to the highest bidder to reclaim some of the money that he paid me for the place. I knew he was overpaying me and now I don’t feel so bad.”

Travis pushed back a strand of her hair stuck to the moisture on her cheek. “I like it when you laugh like that.”

She looked up into his eyes, rimmed with lashes so thick that most women would sell their souls to have them. How had she never realized how pretty his eyes were or how handsome he was? And when in the devil had his touch caused a catch in her chest and a little flutter in her heart?

C
HAPTER
T
EN

A
unt Birdie poured two shots of Pappy Van Winkle into a couple of recycled jelly glasses and held hers up in a toast. “To karma and the future. Both of us old coots are going to live to see our dreams come true before we die. It’s happening before our eyes.”

“Don’t you call me an old coot. I’m a full-fledged bitch, and I got the background to prove it.” Miss Rosie sipped the amber liquid, holding it on her tongue a full minute before she swallowed. “Damn fine stuff. You did well to hang onto it until our victory dance.”

“Oh, honey, this is just the twelve-year-old stuff. I’m hanging onto that prime bottle until we cross the finish line,” Aunt Birdie said. “I told you when that damned old plane sat there a month that he’d forgotten about it. Now we know why. He was out tomcattin’ in a sandbox he didn’t have no right to play in. Well, here’s to you, you rotten sumbitch.” She held up her glass again, then downed the last dregs and poured another shot.

“I wonder if this shit burns?” Miss Rosie asked.

“Why would you want to use something this wonderful to set fire to something? You could buy twenty gallons of gasoline for what this bottle cost me.”

Miss Rosie’s plump shoulders rose a few inches in a shrug. “Might be worth it to take care of Wyatt. I’m so old I remember when God created dirt, so I don’t mind spending the rest of my days in prison for setting a worthless man on fire and roasting marshmallows with the flames.”

“Marshmallows toasted off someone that wicked would poison you,” Aunt Birdie scolded.

“But what a way to go.” Miss Rosie held her glass toward Aunt Birdie. “Hit me one more time.”

Aunt Birdie poured a healthy two fingers into the glass. “To the future, and may it all turn out the way we want before we die or go to prison.”

Miss Rosie giggled. “Now that’s something we can agree on for sure. Just giving you a forewarning that Travis will be spending the nights over there again starting on Saturday.”

“And how do you know that?” Aunt Birdie lowered her chin nearly to her chest and looked up at Miss Rosie. “We agreed not to meddle.”

“It’s not really meddling. Not any more than you do when you make sure they’re sitting beside each other at the dinner table,” Miss Rosie protested. “There’s a new woman at the shelter, and they’ll be another week getting her papers ready. She has a couple of little girls. I think they’d benefit from a kind of halfway house like Hannah’s place before they’re sent to Florida to help run a T-shirt shop on the beach.”

“Darcy and Cal?” Aunt Birdie asked.

“What about them?”

“You don’t have inside connections with anything to help them,” Aunt Birdie said.

“I’ll leave that up to you, and you are welcome.” Miss Rosie giggled again. “Hot damn! This stuff packs a wallop. I’d best be getting on home while I can still walk across our yards.”

Aunt Birdie put the top back on the bottle. “You never could hold your liquor.”

“It’s the Indian blood in me. No, that’s not politically correct. It’s the Native American blood in me. We like the booze, but we don’t do too damn well with holding it. That damned old Irish your mother gave you means you could drink a barrel of cheap whiskey and still dance the jitterbug.” Miss Rosie tossed back the last of what was in her glass.

Aunt Birdie did the same and pushed back her chair. “I’ll walk you home.”

“I ain’t that drunk,” Miss Rosie protested.

“And I ain’t listenin’ to you. If you fell and broke a hip, I’d have to stay with you at the hospital until you got well, and then all our plannin’ would go down the Red River.” She looped her arm into Miss Rosie’s.

When they reached the back door, Aunt Birdie flipped on the porch light. “Only got a sliver of moon tonight, so we’d best have some artificial light.”

“We’ve been across these two yards so many times in our life we could do it blindfolded.”

Aunt Birdie gripped her best friend’s arm tighter. “But not blindfolded and drunk.”

“Is that a skunk or did you . . .” Miss Rosie stopped suddenly and pointed.

Aunt Birdie saw the skunk at the same time she stepped in a gopher hole and stumbled, taking both her and Miss Rosie to the ground. They lay there on their backs, arms still locked together and the skunk parading past their feet, taking his time to stop and check out each blade of grass on the way.

“Be very still. He ain’t got his tail up,” Miss Rosie whispered from the side of her mouth.

“Yet,” Aunt Birdie said softly. “Are you hurt?”

“Hell, no! Drunks are limber as cooked noodles. Lord, that thing stinks. I wonder how in the devil he gets a lady skunk to lift her tail for him,” Miss Rosie said.

“Shhh, he’ll hear you and spray us.”

“Don’t shush me. If he sprays me, I’ll wring his sorry neck right here.”

The skunk tipped his nose up in the air and sniffed for several seconds, then moved on into the darkness. Aunt Birdie waited a little longer and then sat up, unhooked her arm from Miss Rosie and smelled the sleeve of her shirt.

“Dammit! He left his scent on the grass. We’ll have to burn our clothes.”

Miss Rosie pursed her mouth tightly and then huffed. “I guess it’s a small price to pay for not breaking a bone, but I did like this shirt. Oh, well, I don’t expect they’d let me keep it in prison anyway.”

Aunt Birdie giggled and then guffawed. “Ain’t life grand.”

“Even with skunks!” Miss Rosie joined in the laughter. “At least I can strip off naked as a newborn baby and leave my clothes on the back porch. You got to wear yours in the house and smell up the whole place.”

“Not if you loan me a robe. I can strip off mine on your porch, take a shower in your house, and wear one of your robes back home.”

“Better go by the way of the road when you go home. If you bring my robe back smelling like skunk, I’ll never drink with you again,” Miss Rosie told her.

Travis left the computer and pulled back the curtains so he could see across the street. The lights in Hannah’s bedroom cast a yellow glow out into the yard, but then they went out. He went back to the computer and typed in another scene in his newest book.

He’d set out to write mystery, but so much of life and love came through in his voice that his agent told him that he was actually writing romantic suspense. His father was a big, burly carpenter with clear lines about what men and women did with their lives. Writing books was pretty much on the side of a sissy. Writing romance, even suspense, was not in the masculine wheelhouse. So he and his agent created a pseudonym for him at the beginning. He was Teresa Walters on the front of the book, and an actress’s picture graced the back. She also was paid to sign books for him when necessary, although the agent was pretty good at making up excuses for public appearances. Cal was the only person in the whole world who knew that he’d made enough money to retire by the time he was thirty-five.

And yet he was driven to keep writing. He promised himself that when he finished each book he would take a whole week and do nothing but what he wanted to do. The first day went fine, but by the second evening he was pacing the floor, and by the third day he already had his notebook out, plotting the next book.

What would Hannah think of his secret identity? She’d always accepted Cal’s fashion business, so maybe she wouldn’t think he was less of a man because he wrote romance books.

He’d written two pages when he pushed back from the laptop. He needed a break, and Aunt Birdie’s chocolate cake called to him from the kitchen. The light was still on under Cal’s door, so he knocked gently. It swung open immediately.

“Hey, want to join me in the kitchen for chocolate cake?” he asked.

Cal raked his fingers through his hair. “I was just trying to decide if it would be wrong to go raid the refrigerator. I’m having trouble on my next design, and sometimes walking away from it is the only thing that helps. So yes, and besides, I would appreciate the company.”

The light was still on in the kitchen, and there was a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle and two jelly glasses sitting on the table when they arrived. Travis laughed down deep in his chest at the expression on Cal’s face.

“Looks like the two old gals have been celebrating something. Usually if they’re going to have a snort, they get out the Jack Daniel’s. This is only for really special times.” Travis took the cover from the chocolate cake pan.

Cal reached for two plates and a couple of forks and carried them to the table. “So what could be that special? If it was me coming back to Crossing, then they should have at least invited me to have a shot with them. If it was Marty finding out about that airplane in the hangar, they should have invited all of us to have a shot with them.”

“Who knows with those gals? It could be that they were celebrating the fact that they’d lived through another day. Big chunk of cake or just a little one? Milk, tea, or beer?”

Cal pointed to the milk jug. “Milk. We have beer?”

Travis nodded. “Aunt Birdie likes one every so often, and I still love a cold one on a hot night, so there’s always beer in the fridge and liquor behind the doors of the buffet in the dining room. But don’t touch the Pappy.

“So are you going to finally tell Darcy that you’ve been in love with her since grade school?” Travis grinned.

“Darcy deserves a big old he-man type, not a fashion designer. She could never hold her head up in front of her friends with the likes of me. Can’t you just hear all the arguments she’d face? ‘No, he’s not gay. No, I didn’t marry him to give him an alibi. Yes, he really does make a living with a sewing machine.’”

Travis nodded. “I understand. ‘He writes romance novels, so he must not be a real man. He makes his money telling stories about love and life, but he does do some carpentry on the side.’”

“Does that mean you are in love with Darcy, too?” Cal asked.

Travis set two plates of cake and two glasses of milk on the table. “Only as a friend.”

“I can only hope and dream,” Cal said.

“Hope and dream what?” Aunt Birdie brought a blast of hot air with her when she came through the back door.

“Is that skunk I smell?” Cal asked. “I can’t remember the last time I got a whiff of that horrible scent.”

“It is.” Aunt Birdie wrapped a big pale-pink chenille robe tighter around her thin body. “And this is Miss Rosie’s robe. We got a little smell on us when I was walking her home, and I don’t want to hear another word about it. Eat your chocolate cake and drink your milk like good boys. Good night!”

She disappeared in a flash of pink, and then a loud voice filtered back down across the foyer. “And don’t you touch that Pappy Van Winkle. If you want a shot of something, get out Jack or Jim or even Johnnie Walker Red, but that Pappy isn’t for you.”

“And my mouth had begun to water for a taste of Pappy.” Cal laughed.

“Living in Crossing ain’t always easy, but it’s never dull.” Travis forked a chunk of chocolate cake into his mouth.

The clock said it was well past midnight, but Liz continued to pace from one room to the other, from the living room into the kitchen, where she made a U-turn to go through the living room and down the hall to both bedrooms again and again.