Writing Free

Chapter 30

     When the Danford police arrested Uncle Geoff, I wasn’t surprised. Nor was I surprised when a grand jury wasted no time indicting him for bashing his brother-in-law over the head with an expensive bust of some Confederate general which had sat on Dan Kroll’s home desk for as long as I could remember.

     As soon as the trial was scheduled, I packed up Button and drove to Danford despite Bix’s objections. Edward and Valerie were staying in the house with Mother—not that she was distraught over having buried her husband—and I stayed at the ranch where Miss Grace and Dutch once again cleared out their dining room to make a space for me downstairs.

     Uncle Geoff’s conviction seemed a slam-dunk. While Edward and Valerie sat in a front row with Mother, I stuck close to the back by the door. Dutch had offered to go with me, but I’d told him I didn’t want to involve him. I could tell he didn’t approve, but he didn’t argue with me either.

     On the second day, Mother testified that Uncle Geoff had come into the house after dark one night and that she’d heard him arguing with Dan Kroll in the study. Then she’d heard a dull thud, watched Uncle Geoff flee the house, and had subsequently found her husband lying on the floor with his head and face shattered.

     A murmur of shock ran through the courtroom when Uncle Geoff’s attorney put him on the stand in his own defense. I watched Mother sit forward between Edward and Valerie as Uncle Geoff began to speak.

     It all came out then—how he had threatened his brother-in-law with exposure of a college fraternity prank gone wrong, resulting in the death of a fellow student, if he divorced Mother for having an illegitimate child. Then he began to detail how he knew Dan Kroll had framed Bix’s father for embezzlement, so cleverly that even the bank auditors were fooled, and how he’d engineered his conviction by paying off two members of the jury—both now deceased.

     Finally, he looked at Mother and asked, “Do you want me to go on?"

     Much later, in the dreams that pursued me for years afterwards, I remembered my mother leaping to her feet. I saw the gleam of the gun in her hand and saw Uncle Geoff’s face shatter as the judge raised his arms to shield himself from the blood and brain matter that covered the front of the courtroom. Before anyone could react to stop her, she scurried to the witness stand, pumped two more bullets into her brother, and then turned the gun on herself.

     As it was happening, however, I was only aware of Edward pulling me roughly to my feet and shoving me ahead of him out of the courtroom. For one brief moment I glimpsed his horrified face, gray and perspiring profusely. Then, without warning, he clutched his chest and fell heavily to the polished floor.

     Peggy appeared out of nowhere and sank to her knees beside him. Her small fingers stripped away his coat and shirt, and brought her small fist down swiftly on his chest. I actually heard Doc’s knees creak as he got down on the floor with her and pulled his ancient stethoscope from his pocket to listen. Another violent blow from Peggy’s fist made Edward’s still body shudder, but then Doc shook his head and caught her wrist in midair as it poised for another assault. “He was dead before he hit the ground,” his gravelly voice said. “That’s enough.”

     I was aware of Valerie gliding through the gathering crowd, her soft, precise voice repeating, “Please excuse me” with deliberate courtesy as she made her way to where Edward was lying. Dropping to the floor beside him, she cradled his head in her lap. “Edward,” she murmured. “Oh, my love.”

     Peggy sat back on her heels and stared at Doc, then up at me, her eyes filling with tears. Vic lifted her to her feet, then helped Doc up. As Doc started toward me, I backed away. “Don’t touch me,” I whispered. “Don’t touch me.”

     “Somebody call Friedman’s,” he growled to no one in particular. “And tell somebody there’s a bloody mess in that courtroom!”

     I heard someone screaming then and, when Francie’s fingers closed around my arm, realized that it was me. “Shut up!” she screamed back. “Shut up!”

     “Stop it, Francie,” Tank said with unaccustomed sharpness.

     I felt the wall against my back and tried to dig my fingers into it as the hall swirled around me. “Oh, god!” The breath went out of me. “Oh, god!”

     When I woke up, I was lying on a sagging leather sofa somewhere. Peggy was taking my blood pressure. She frowned. “One-ninety over one-twenty,” she said.

     Aaron turned around and spoke to someone else. “I’m going to bring my car around and take her on to the hospital.”

     “Where’s Valerie?” I managed to say. Peggy’s face was blurred.

     “Tank and Francie took her to the ranch,” Peggy said. “She’s all right.”

     “I need to be with her.” I tried to sit up, but my body wouldn’t move. Even the unremitting pain seemed to belong to someone else. I tried to push Peggy’s hands away, but someone lifted me from the sofa and carried me toward the door. It was Bix.

     Bix was still there when I woke up again. His shirt was open at the neck, and he needed a shave. “What time is it?” I asked. “And what are you doing here?”

     He came to the bed. “Almost eleven. I arrived last night when I heard things were wrapping up.”

     “Am I in the hospital?”

     “Yes.”

     I closed my eyes. “Edward’s dead.”

     “I’m sorry, Mari. I’m so very sorry.”

     “He was the only person who ever loved me for what he believed I was.” My lips felt dry, and I licked them. “No. . .no. . .there was one more. . .”

     Bix spooned some crushed ice into my mouth. I had trouble holding it.

     “Did I have another stroke?”

     “No, but your blood pressure went dangerously high. Have you been taking your medicine?”

     “I don’t remember. I guess so.”

     He wiped my mouth and offered me more ice. I shook my head.

     “Is it over?”

     “The trial, you mean? Yes, it’s over.”

     “Did it really happen? Did she kill Uncle Geoff and then blow her own brains out?”

     Bix winced. “Don’t think about that right now.”

     “She killed all of us,” I said.

     “You’re all right, Mari,” Bix said quickly, assuming I was hallucinating.

     “No. She killed us all, even me. I’m still walking around, that’s all.”

     Bix stayed with me all night. In the morning, when Peggy came, he said he was going to the Spur to clean up and would be back. “Tank’s gone to see Milt,” Peggy said to him. “You might want to go by there, too.”

     Bix picked up his coat. “Yes, of course. Did Valerie say. . .”

     “She said to make arrangements for Mrs. Kroll first.”

     “Just put her in the ground and be done with it!” I said.

     Bix came back to the bed and looked down at me. “I’ll do whatever you want, Mari.”

     “I don’t want anything. Not for her.”

     Bix hesitated. “You may be right,” he said suddenly. “Any service would only draw the curious.”

     “You can tell Milt to cart her out to the city dump and let the buzzards have her for all I care!”

“I’ll take care of things, Mari,” he said distractedly. “Just rest.”

     “Valerie’s at the ranch,” Peggy assured me as Bix left. “Miss Grace stayed with her and said she slept some. I checked on her before I came to town. Francie had taken her a breakfast tray.”

     “I want to get out of here.”

     “You were that close to another stroke yesterday. You need to stay here for another twenty-four hours anyway.”

     “What’s in that?” I asked, noticing the IV that was running.

     “Something to thin your blood a little, and I expect Aaron ordered a sedative last night.”

     I closed my eyes. “It should have been me, not Edward.”

     “Peaches, Valerie said he’d been on borrowed time for years.”

     “I didn’t want to see it.”

     “None of us did."

     “It’s my fault.”

     “Did you hear what I said? His heart. . .”

     “I broke it so many times with everything I did.”

     “What I knew I kept to myself,” she said. “You know that.”

     “I’ve hurt you, too. I hurt everyone I touch, everyone I love.”

     “That’s not true.”

     “I want to die. Why didn’t you just let it happen the first time years ago?”

     She didn’t say anything.

     “Why are you always there to pull me back? What did I ever do to you?”

     She wrapped the cuff around my arm and pumped up the bulb. “One hundred fifty over ninety-five,” she said to someone.

     I opened my eyes and saw Aaron standing there. “Better but not good enough,” he muttered. He wrote something down on my chart and handed it to Peggy. “Go tell Ruby to pull all this.” Peggy hurried out, and Aaron turned to me. “How much are you drinking, Marian?”

     I turned my face to the wall.

     “I did a blood alcohol on you yesterday when you came in. You were legally drunk in that courtroom yesterday, though nobody seemed to recognize it.” He came closer. “You’re going to kill yourself. You know that, don’t you?”

“The sooner the better,” I said.

     “Bix said he didn’t know if you were taking your medicine or not, but you may as well flush it rather than wash it down with whatever’s your poison of choice.”

     “Scotch,” I spat.

     “How long have you been at it?”

“Since thirty-nine.”

     He reacted visibly. “You drank while you were pregnant?”

     “No, not then. I can quit anytime I want to, and I did.”

     “You’ve got to quit now.”

     “Why?”

     “Because you’re going to die if you don’t.”

     “Good.”

     He became suddenly angry. “You disgust me, Marian! You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, and you’ve had everything all your life! You never had to scratch like the rest of us. And while the rest of us have made something of our lives despite poorer circumstances.”

     “Is that what you think?”

     “Why did you have Button if you don’t want her?”

     “I want her!” He’d stung me with the mention of my daughter.

     “Apparently not. How do you manage to take care of her when you’re drinking? Who’d take care of her if you died? And don’t tell me that Bix would. I know that song and dance.”

     The stream of invectives from my mouth had barely died away when Peggy came back. If she’d heard me, she gave no indication and set about hanging a new bottle from the IV pole. Finally she injected something into the tubing, and I felt myself spiraling down a long dark tunnel. I couldn’t open my eyes, but I could still hear.

     “Did you know about her drinking?” Aaron asked.

     “I’m not going to discuss her with you, Aaron,” Peggy said.

     “You know what’s going to happen.”

     “I pray every night that it won’t.”

     “Better pray for a miracle then. She’s as good as dead in six months if she keeps this up.”

     Then their voices faded, and I saw the judge raising his arms in horror as blood spattered his robe.

     Bix came back in the afternoon and told me that he’d arranged for my mother to be buried privately just at dusk to keep the news media and the curious at bay. “Valerie has scheduled Edward’s service for day after tomorrow. Aaron says he’ll release you.”

     “Is Valerie all right?”

     “She’s holding up. She wanted to come to see you, but I suggested it might be better for both your sakes if she waited another day.”

     For once, I had to agree with him. Looking at Valerie could do nothing but exacerbate my already crushing sense of guilt.

    “I’m going to stay with you again tonight,” Bix said. “Ruby’s getting a cot for me.”

     “You don’t have to.”

     “I’d like to, Mari.”

     “Suit yourself.”

     He helped me with my supper, for which I had no appetite, and then went out for a little while to get his own. I lay there feeling chained by the IV and my missing brace. How easy it would be to walk out of the hospital and keep going. Where I’d go and how I’d get there didn’t come into my thoughts, however.

     I looked around for the water on the table by the bed. My supper tray was still sitting there, and on it was the nearly empty tea glass. I reached for it and held it carefully. One sharp crack against the bed rail would do it. Somewhere I’d heard that bleeding to death was relatively painless. I gathered my courage and brought it down against the metal bar, and it shattered in my hand.

     “Mari!”

     Bix was beside me in an instant, wrapping my bleeding fingers in a washcloth.

     “I couldn’t hold onto the glass,” I lied urgently. “My hand wouldn’t work!”

     He rang for Ruby and began to pick the shards of glass from the blanket that covered me. “She broke the glass trying to get something to drink,” he said. “Her hand’s cut up.”

     Ruby unwrapped my hand and inspected it. “Just a superficial cut on the palm,” she said. “I’ll clean it up and put something on it. Marian, you should’ve rung for me. I’d have gotten you a drink.”

     “I didn’t want to be any trouble,” I mumbled.

     When she’d cleaned and dressed the cut, Bix brought me a fresh glass of tea and held it for me. “Does your hand hurt?”

     “Not much.”

     “You said it wouldn’t work.”

     “It felt numb,” I said. “It still does a little.”

     “Well, if you need anything during the night, call me. Don’t try to get it yourself.”

     “I will,” I said obediently. “Thank you, Bix.”

     Aaron came in the next morning and said he was going to release me. “But you’re to go home and go to bed until time for the service tomorrow, and when it’s over, you go back to bed and stay there.”

     “I’ll look after her,” Bix said.

     Aaron didn’t even try to hide his disgust. “I wish I believed that.”

     Bix’s eyes grew steely. “You can believe anything you want to.”

     “Take her back to Houston and get her some help,” Aaron said. “If you don’t, you’re going to be burying the last of the Krolls in another six months.”

     Then he turned on me. “It’s been over twenty-four hours since you had your last drink unless someone’s slipped you a bottle. I don’t know why withdrawal hasn’t kicked in yet. But I hope to hell it’s a doozy when it comes!”

     Bix stepped between us. “Leave her alone, Aaron.”

     Aaron opened his mouth, then closed it, and left.

     I waited for Bix to start on me, but all he said was, “Are you warm enough, Mari?”

     I nodded, waiting.

     “I brought you some fresh clothes for tomorrow unless you’d prefer to wear your robe home. That might be best since you’ll need to go straight to bed.”

     “Why did you defend me?” I asked.

     His jaw tightened. “Aaron overstepped his professional responsibilities.”

     “Is that all?”

     He pulled a chair close to the bed. “There are places that can help you stop drinking.”

     “I can stop. It’s not like that.”

     “Then I wish you would.” There was no condemnation in his voice, but there was no real tenderness either.

     “Would you love me then?” I asked. “If I stopped drinking, would you love me?”
     He looked down at his hands in his lap. “I’m not sure. . .I’m not sure I know how,” he said without expression.

     “That’s the first honest thing you’ve ever said to me since I’ve known you.”

     I turned on my side. “I’m very tired, Bix. You don’t have to stay.”

     “I’ll just sit over by the window and read the paper,” he said.

     Bix drove me to Jo’s house late the next afternoon and put me to bed. The short trip had exhausted me, and I fell asleep immediately. Later he came back with a tray, and after he’d helped me to the bathroom, he sat beside me while I tried to force down some of Miss Grace’s chicken pie. What I really wanted was a drink, but I’d finished off the bottle the last morning of the trial.

     As if he’d read my mind, he said, “There’s some wine in the kitchen. Would you like a glass?” When I didn’t reply, he said, “I’d like one myself.” He took my tray and came back with two glasses of wine. “Aaron sent something to help you sleep, but this might do it.”

     “Thank you,” I said grudgingly.

     “Visitation is tonight,” he began carefully as I sipped the wine. “The service at the church is set for ten in the morning. I’ll take you by Friedman’s before if you like.”

     “I don’t want to see him.”

     “I think you should.”

     “Why? I watched him die, Bix. I don’t need to prove to myself he’s dead!”

     “That’s not why. . .” He stopped. “The first night at the hospital you said something about his being the only one to ever love you for what he believed you to be, and then you said there was one more. Mother told me about the boy you were engaged to in college.”

     “He was a man, not a boy.”

     “What was his name?”

     “Tom. Tom Seward. Actually, he’d just earned the right to be called Dr. Tom Seward, but he never got to do it.”

      “Mother said it was a car accident.”

     “Two weeks before the wedding. He was bringing me back to the ranch to get ready.”

     “Did you love him?”

     “More than my life. Why are you asking about him now?”

     “I just thought maybe knowing would help me understand.”

     “Understand what?”

     “Who you are. Why you. . .”

     “Why I drink? I’ll tell you why I drink, Bix. I drink because it stops the pain in this wretched body of mine and lets me forget that I’m who I am!”

     “My wife?”

     “Don’t make yourself more important than you are. Our marriage was a bargain, and I knew exactly what I was doing.”

     “But you wouldn’t have come back if I hadn’t threatened to take Button away from you.”

     “No.”

     "I'm...sorry. It was a filthy thing..."

     “How you ignore her is filthy! She’s your daughter, Bix, no matter what you’d like to think!” I gulped the last of my wine and set the glass down hard. “Goodnight, Bix. Thank you for what you’ve done for me today.”

     In the morning, Bix was there with coffee and toast. He was there when I got out of the shower and helped me dress. I hated needing help, especially his, but I took it. “You haven’t changed your mind about going by Friedman’s first?”

     “Have you seen him?”

     “Yes.”

     “How does he look?”

     “Milt. . .Milt’s very talented.”

     “I don’t want to go, Bix. I couldn’t stand it.”

     The church was packed with all of Danford and what seemed like most of San Angelo. There were people standing in the aisles and along the back and in the foyer. Valerie was in a back room with Tank and Vic when Bix brought me in. She put her arms around me. “Oh, Marian,” she murmured, “Edward was so glad that we loved each other. Now we need each other more than ever.”

     When everything was over, Valerie asked me to stay with her at the graveside. It was unbearably painful to remain sitting there in front of the gleaming mahogany casket poised over the discreetly hidden abyss. For a few moments we just sat there listening to the shrill call of a lone mockingbird somewhere in the trees. Then she said, “Marian, I’m pregnant with Edward’s child.”

     I struggled to understand.

     “When I told you once that it just never happened, I didn’t say that we’d given up hoping. Edward’s health was against it, of course. We’d been married only four years when he was diagnosed with heart disease. The doctor told him then that he’d be lucky to live until he was forty.”

     “He was forty-one,” I said.

     “We had nineteen good years. He was such an incredibly good man, so gentle and loving, so tender towards me everyday of our marriage. Three months ago, when the doctor told me that I was pregnant, I already knew that Edward would never live to see his son grow up. . .and it will be a son, Marian. But I’d hoped that he’d hold him in his arms.” She stopped to take control of her voice again.

     “I’d have died in his place,” I choked, beginning to sob.

     She put her arms around me. “Miss Grace has asked me to stay on at the ranch, and I think I’d like that. To be close to Edward, you see. Stay with me, Marian. I need you. We need each other. Edward would like for us to comfort each other now.”

     “I’ll do anything you want,” I said. “Anything.” I leaned my head in my hands. “Oh, god, why. . .why . . .he had so much to live for, and I don’t! Why couldn’t it have been me?”

Chapter 29

      I’d never heard from Bix directly, nor had I written to him. Jo said she’d told him about Button and sent a few snapshots, none of which he’d commented on. I supposed I should have felt hurt, but I felt only an odd sense of detached relief. Button and I had settled in comfortably at the ranch, and even though I planned to move to town eventually and go to work, I wasn’t in any hurry to leave.

     The effects of the stroke were almost unnoticeable now. Thanks to Miss Grace’s own brand of therapy, which was simply keeping me very busy in the kitchen, I had the full use of my arm and hand again. I’d had a few close calls with the paring knife in the process, and I’d developed a strong dislike for the carpet sweeper, but I had to admit that they’d contributed to my recovery. The corner of my mouth still turned down when I was tired, but I could live with that.

     At almost eight months, Button was a happy, healthy baby who could scoot across the kitchen floor in six seconds flat. The other children doted on her, not because of her handicap as I’d feared they might, but because it had been awhile since there had been a baby in the house.

     Grace Ann and Jake were two now. Peggy and Vic were still one short of Francie’s and Tank’s brood, but I knew they’d catch up.

     Will and Ruthie toted Button with them when they went out to do their chores after school. We soon figured out that Will was doing the chores while Ruthie played with Button, but they seemed happy with the arrangement, so no one said anything.

     She was a beautiful baby, too. Everyone said so. Her hair was as auburn as mine, and when her eyes turned, they were tiger-gold, too. The first time I was able to go to town, Miss Grace put Button in a little one-piece suit she’d made with the left sleeve long enough to cover her missing hand. She wore it once. “She’s going to have to learn to live with it,” I said, not altogether convinced, “and people are going to stare, and she’s going to have to learn to live with that, too.”

     Most people were curious but not unkind. Those who knew me simply said they were sorry and went on to express their relief that we were both healthy. Once when Anna Lee came out to the ranch to see us, she commented, “It’s too bad, but you’ll see that she lands on her feet.”

     “You think so?”

     “I’d put money on it, Peaches. We’re survivors, you and me.”

     “We don’t have any choice, do we?”

     She laughed a little. “No, I guess we don’t.”

     Edward and Valerie were besotted with Button the way they’d been with Mary Nelle, and they were frequent visitors. They didn’t ask any questions, but I knew they were concerned about Bix coming home. “Bix isn’t coming for me,” I said. “He didn’t want the baby, and he doesn’t want me now.”

     “Sister, I’ve spoken with my attorney, and he feels that a permanent solution. . .”

     “You mean a divorce.”

     “I’m afraid so. He’s agreed to represent you and ask for full custody.”

     “Bix won’t argue with that. He doesn’t think she’s his anyway.”

     Edward winced. “He spoke in anger.”

     “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “He doesn’t want her.”

     It was a shock to learn that he did. On his second day in Danford, he telephoned the ranch and asked if he could come out. I said he could and told Francie to stay out of sight. “I have to settle this myself,” I said. “It’s none of your business anyway.” She tossed her head and looked injured, but she took herself off to her chicken houses and left me alone.

     I dressed carefully, paying particular attention to my hair and makeup, and put Button into the green velvet dress that Valerie had brought from San Angelo. I tied a matching ribbon into her curly topknot and took her into the parlor to the playpen. “Sit there and look beautiful,” I said. “And don’t expect to be picked up because. . .”

     I heard Bix at the door then. He looked tanned and fit and more handsome than ever in his uniform. “Hello, Mari,” he said politely.

     “Hello, Bix,” I said, pushing open the screen door. “Come in.”

     He followed me into the parlor and stood looking at Button. “She looks like you.”

     “Everyone says so.”

     He sat down on the sofa and waited for me to unlatch my brace and sit down, too. “How are you?”

     “Much better, thank you. The stroke wasn’t serious.”

     “Mother said it was.”

     “She was very concerned.”

     “I’m going back to Houston day after tomorrow. I want you to come with me.”

     I couldn’t conceal my surprise, but I said, “No, it’s over.”

     “I won’t give you a divorce.”

     “Suit yourself.”

     “You owe me something.”

     “What do I owe you? I kept my part of the bargain. I was the perfect hostess and said the right things to the right people. You don’t need me anymore, Bix.”

     “I have my reputation to consider.”

     “Even the best people divorce these days.”

     “I told you that wasn’t an option.”

     “What do you want from me?”

     “Loyalty.”

     I stared at him.

     “I suppose I shouldn’t expect you to understand. You weren’t loyal to your own parents. They gave you everything, just like I did, and you walked out on them. But I won’t let you do that to me.”

     “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, you’re the one who told me to get out, so I did.”

     He flushed angrily. “I know what I’m talking about. I know you’re responsible for her deformity.”

     “Her name is Button,” I said, lacing my fingers together to stop their trembling.

     “You drink too much, take too many pills. . .you tried to commit suicide three years ago. . .you’re unstable, Mari. I could have you put away.”

     “That wouldn’t look very good for you.” I could feel the corner of my mouth drooping.

     “You’re right, it wouldn’t, but I could make things look worse for you. I’ll take that baby away from you and. . .”

     The breath went out of my body, “Oh, god, Bix, no!”

     He stood up. “I’ll do it, Mari. No judge is going to give custody of a baby to someone like you.” He walked to the door and stopped. “I expect you to be ready to go to Houston on Wednesday.”

     Francie followed me around the dining room as I packed. “Don’t do it, Peaches,” she begged me. “Please don’t!”

     “I have to,” I snapped.

     “Why? Why do you have to? Why did you change your mind? This morning you were going to divorce Bix and stay here, and now you’re going back to Houston with him!”

     “If you’re not going to help me, leave me alone.”

     She took my arm, but I jerked away from her and almost lost my balance. “Dammit, Francie, leave me the hell alone!”

     She ran out of the room in tears.

     Pam called a few days after we returned to Houston. “Why, Marian?” she asked.

     “I’m back,” I said. “Let it go at that.”

     “I’d like to see you and the baby.”

     “Come over whenever you want to.”

     “Is there anything in particular I can do for you?”

     “No,” I said. “There’s nothing anyone can do.”

     For the first three months we were in Houston, Bix slept in the guestroom, and Button slept in a new crib in my room. I’d left all of Mary Nelle’s things in storage where Pam had put them, and if Bix noticed they were gone, he didn’t say so.

     Bix ignored Button, which I’d expected, and I arranged her schedule so that he didn’t have to see her often—and vice-versa. But she clearly missed the bustle of the ranch and all the attention lavished on her. I spent as much time with her as I could, but Bix insisted on hiring another live-in housekeeper so that I could resume our social schedule.

     We didn’t go to Danford for Christmas. Instead, Edward and Valerie came to Houston, and Button seemed to remember them. Valerie suggested that Button and I come home with them for a visit, but Bix had scheduled several social events for January and said he couldn’t spare me. “They could take her,” he said.

     “Her as in Button?”

     “Yes. You’re going to be very busy, and you said you didn’t like leaving her with Bettina so often.”

     “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I flared. I’d had two glasses of wine with dinner, and alcohol always made me bolder. “Then you wouldn’t have to acknowledge that she was even here.”

     He looked at me scornfully. “You’re overreacting—-as usual. I thought it might be nice for her.”

     “She has a name.”

     “Button is a ridiculous nickname,” he said, “and Margaret Francesca wouldn’t have been my choice.”

     “You didn’t want a choice.”

     “Do as you please,” he said impatiently. “You always do.”

     I didn’t send Button to San Angelo with Edward and Valerie, and I didn’t leave the house without her for the entire month of January. That meant no Junior League, no bridge parties, and no luncheons with the wives of the other members of Fordham and Fordham. I went to the evening functions on Bix’s arm, dressed to the nines and full of sparkling repartee, so he couldn’t fault me for that.

     Bix always had a glass of wine in the evenings when he came home, and I had one with him. I also had at least one before he came home and several after dinner before going to bed. The latter I took in my bathroom since Bix had moved back into the bedroom. But I was never really drunk, I told myself, and I was always available to take perfect care of Button.

     At Christmas in 1954, when Button was two, I insisted on going to Danford. Vic and Peggy had adopted number four, a fragile baby girl with an inoperable heart defect and most likely, cerebral palsy, and Button and I fell in love with her at first sight. Bix only visited the ranch once, and I knew that Vic, at least, resented the fact that he hardly looked at Robbie. Everyone on the ranch was involved with her care and with keeping her alive. It felt good to be part of that even for a week, and for a week, I didn’t drink anything stronger than Dutch’s apple cider.

     Back in Houston, I fell into the same social routine Bix demanded, and I began to drink again. This time I added pills to the mix because I was in almost constant pain. My back was twisting more and more, and I had to have all my clothes tailored to hide the curve.

     Whether Bix knew about the pills or how much I was drinking, I didn’t know. I did what he asked of me socially, and other than that he ignored me.

     Button was four and in preschool when Valerie telephoned to tell me that Dan Kroll had been found murdered in his study at home. “Edward and I are going to Danford as soon as possible. We felt you should know, but Edward doesn’t want you to come.”

     “How? How was he killed?”

     Edward’s voice replaced Valerie’s. “Sister, we don’t know much, and I don’t want you to be upset.”

     “Upset? I’m thrilled!”

     “Oh, Marian.”

     “I’m sorry, Edward. Really.”

     “Valerie and I are driving to San Angelo this afternoon. There’s no need for you to come.”

      “Will you keep me informed?”

     “Yes. Yes, I promise if you’ll promise to stay in Houston.”

     “All right then.”

     I heard Valerie’s voice again. “We love you, Marian.”

     “Yes. Yes, I know.”

      When I told Bix that night, he didn’t react, but I knew he felt Dan Kroll had finally gotten justice. It was too late for his father, of course. For a moment I saw a flicker of that lost little eight-year-old boy watching his adored father taken out of jail in handcuffs and getting into a car for the long ride to prison in Gatesville, and I wanted to put my arms around him and comfort him. But then Bix the man was back, and the wall between us as well.

     In the days to come, Edward tried to soften the facts, but I wouldn’t let him. “Mother has been ruled out as a suspect,” he told me, “but the police are investigating Uncle Geoff.”

     “What was he doing in Danford?”

     “Apparently, he had business with Father.”

     “Dan Kroll would’ve divorced Mother when I was born,but I got the idea that her family was holding something over his head.”

     “I don’t know.”

     “Yes, you do, Edward, but I won’t press you. I don’t care anyway. I’m glad he’s dead.”

     I heard him sigh deeply.

Chapter 28

     Tank put Francie on a plane for Houston, and she helped Pam Fordham pack up the things I wanted to take with me. Pam said she’d see to moving Mary Nelle’s things to a storage unit out of Bix’s reach.

     They made a bed for me in the back of Pam’s station wagon and drove me home to Danford where Miss Grace took charge. The dining room had been cleared out to make a bedroom for me so that I could avoid the stairs.

     Aaron Barnes came out the next day and, with Peggy standing by, examined me. “Everything looks all right,” he said, “but you know the risk you’re taking.”

     “I want this baby, Aaron.”

     “I’ll do my damnedest to help you keep it,” he said in an oddly gentle voice. “But I’m not making any promises.”

     Edward and Valerie came to see me often and called several times a week. Edward was still thinner than I thought he should be, and one day I told Valerie I wanted to know the truth. “He’s like you,” she said lightly. “He eats, but it doesn’t show.”

     She put her hand on the bulge under my skirt. “How does it feel, Marian?” she asked softly.

     “Like a little butterfly,” I said. “You and Edward would be such good parents, Valerie. Why. . .”

     “It just never happened,” she said quickly.

     “Did you ever think of adopting a baby?”

     “Oh,” she said, taking her hand away slowly, “we discussed it once or twice, but. . .”

The sound of Edward’s footsteps in the hall ended the conversation.

     To everyone’s surprise, I carried the baby almost to term. Miss Grace’s firm belief that it would happen didn’t hurt. My blood pressure, always a problem, stayed high, and then one night it ballooned to the danger point. Tank carried me out to the truck, and Peggy crawled in beside me. The last thing I heard was, “Hurry, Tank, I think she’s stroking out!”

     When I woke up four days later, I knew I was no longer pregnant, but my mouth wouldn’t work to ask anyone about the baby. Peggy came in that afternoon. “Jo called you were awake, so I had to come in and see for myself,” she said cheerfully.

     I tried to move my left arm to point to my now flat midsection, but it was tethered to an IV pole, and the right arm didn’t seem to work. But Peggy understood me. She always did.

     “You have a beautiful baby girl, Peaches.” I didn’t miss that she didn’t say she was perfect.

     Unfortunately, your BP hit the ceiling, and you had a small stroke, but you’re going to be all right.”

     I turned my head toward the door, then back to look at her. “You want to see the baby, don’t you? I’ll go get her.”

     She was back in a few minutes carrying a tightly swaddled bundle which she placed in the crook of my left arm. “She’s going to look just like you. Look at that hair and those eyes!”

     I couldn’t say that I wouldn’t wish my so-called beauty on a child of mine, but I couldn’t deny she was beautiful.

          “Do you want to try nursing her?”

     I nodded.

         “It’ll take a while for your milk supply to catch up after four days, but she’ll be supplemented in the nursery until then.” She raised my gown and turned the baby’s mouth toward my nipple. She latched on almost immediately.

     About that time, Aaron burst in. “What the hell is going on here?” The baby startled and wailed as she lost the nipple.

      “Lower your voice,” Peggy said, giving him a look. At the same time, she guided the baby’s mouth back.

     “She can’t nurse that baby!”

     Peggy turned to face him. “Of course, she can.”

     “She can’t do anything for herself right now, much less for a baby!”

     I realized what Peggy had called a slight stroke was more serious than that, but I tried to concentrate on the baby at my breast.

     Aaron reached for the baby. “I’m taking her back to the nursery!”

     Peggy stepped between us. “Leave her alone, Aaron.”

          “I’m the doctor, remember!”

         “No one is denying the fact that your skill saved Peaches and this baby, but you know nothing about being a mother.”

       “And you do?”

   I couldn’t believe he’d said that to her.

     “Yes, I do. Maybe I never gave birth or nursed an infant, but I know about these things better than you do. So you need to leave this room, leave Peaches alone, and we’ll get on with what needs to be done.”

  He stared at her in disbelief, but he left.

     “Don’t mind him, Peaches,” Peggy said. “He did save your life and the baby’s, but he’s done his job, and now you’re going to do yours, which is feeding her.”

  I managed to get out a garbled thank you.

  After that, Aaron never came near me for the three weeks I was in the hospital, but Edward, Valerie, Francie, Peggy, and Miss Grace were regular visitors. Edward assured me I’d be back to myself in no time—but he looked worse than I did, and it frightened me. The baby, still nameless, nursed regularly and gained weight on schedule. After a week, Jo told me she didn’t need formula in the nursery anymore. One day she told me she’d heard from Bix.

    “He flew fifteen missions before they put him behind a desk. He didn’t say so, but I think he’d reached his limit, and his superiors knew it. I’ll be honest, Marian. He didn’t mention you or the baby.”

  I shrugged.

    “You’re home to stay this time, and we’re all glad.”

  My right arm wasn’t one hundred percent, but I was talking better. Occasionally there would be some hesitation in my words, but I kept at it.

  The night before I was due to be released, Peggy came in with the baby. I hadn’t been able to unwrap her and count fingers and toes as I’d done before, but now Peggy loosened the blankets and sat down on the edge of my bed. “Peaches, you have a totally healthy little girl, but there was one problem, and it’s time for you to know.” She pushed the blanket back exposing a tiny, perfectly formed right hand. But the left arm ended at the wrist. My baby had no left hand.

  I heard myself trying to scream.

    “These things happen, Peaches. It’s no one’s fault.”

  But I knew she was wrong. Those pills I’d taken trying to end her life in the womb had done this to her. Even if she never knew, I’d never forgive myself until the day I died.

  Jo came in later while Button was nursing, and, with my right arm working better, I was holding the little hand that wasn’t there. I saw the look that passed between Peggy and her.

   “Now you know,” Jo said softly. “But she’ll adapt and grow up like every other little girl.”

  I shook my head.

    “You know about being different, Marian. You’ll know how to help her accept herself. You’re the only one who can.”

  Later, I cried myself to sleep, but this time I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live for my baby, to make up for what I’d done to her.

  The next morning before Vic and Tank came to drive us to the ranch, Ruby Bullock appeared in my room. I’d heard she’d tried to retire a few years back, but the hospital needed her experience, so she’d agreed to work part-time. She carried a clipboard. “I have a birth certificate here,” she said. “Let’s get it filled out together. Jo gave me all the pertinent information, but the baby needs a name.”

  I didn’t hesitate. “Margaret. Margaret Francesca.”

  Ruby smiled. “That’s a big name for such a little baby” She started to write it down. “How do you want to spell Francesca? The way Francie does?”

  I shook my head. “English,” I said. “I won’t saddle her with the other.”

  Ruby spelled it out, and when I nodded, she wrote it down. “We could use a dozen more Peggys, but I’m not sure about another Francie. She’s a firecracker.”

  We laughed together.

  Vic carried the baby out of the hospital, while Tank pushed my wheelchair. “I’ve never gotten to do this before,” Vic said. “Carry a baby home from the hospital, I mean.”

  They told me that all the children knew about my stroke and about the baby’s arm. “Kids accept things pretty easy,” Tank said. “They’re all anxious to see you and the baby.”

  But there was no one in sight, except for Francie, Peggy, and Miss Grace when we got there. They put me to bed and the baby into the Tankersley cradle and said I should take a nap before supper.    “The girls will help you dress to come to the table,” Miss Grace said briskly. “I expect you’re tired of gowns and robes.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was eat supper in the kitchen with everyone. My mouth didn’t always work, and sometimes I could feel food dribbling from the corner. It had been humiliating enough in the hospital. That and the fact that my right arm and hand were still not completely dependable made me dread the prospect.

  Francie came in about four and handed me my baby to be changed. I was slow and clumsy, but I got the job done and then opened my gown to feed her. Francie watched me almost enviously. “I miss that,” she said. “But I guess four kids are enough.”

  Button nursed ravenously, and when she’d finally finished, I handed her back to Francie. “If Miss Grace expects me to be dressed for supper, I’d better get started. You saw how long it took me to change a damned diaper.”

  Francie frowned. “I barely escaped a lifetime of detention in high school because of your mouth,” she said, “and I don’t want any of Miss Grace’s lye soap!”

  “How many mouths has she ever washed out with lye soap?”

  “Tank’s for one, and Will came close the other day.”

  “What did he say?”

  Francie lowered her voice. “It wasn’t his fault. He’d been over to the McShanes’ place and heard the old man call one of the Mexican hands a greaser. He didn’t know it wasn’t right.

Tank talked to him, and he apologized at breakfast the next morning, and then Dutch said for him to always ask him or his daddy about anything he heard before he said it in front of anybody.”

She looked over her shoulder guiltily as if she expected Miss Grace to appear bearing the jar of lye soap from beneath the sink. “What do you want to wear?”

  Supper wasn’t the ordeal I’d anticipated, even with the whole family there. What are you going to call her?” Miss Grace asked as she placed the cradle by my chair.

   “I hadn’t thought about it.”

   “Well, if you ask me, she doesn’t look like a Margaret Francesca, but she’s cute as a button.”

    “Button,” I said. “We’ll call her Button.”

    “Do we need to put it to a vote?” Dutch asked, taking his place at the head of the table.

All the children raised their hands. Dutch grinned. “Let’s bless this food then.”

  When it was time to feed her again, Ruthie and Rosie crawled up on the daybed with me. I started to say something to them but bit my tongue. “I liked to watch Mamma feed Grace Ann,” Ruthie volunteered.

  “I fed Jake myself with a bottle,” Rosie countered.

  I put Button to my breast and covered myself discreetly, knowing Dutch, Tank, and Vic would be back from smoking on the porch before long. Button’s blanket had loosened, and her arms waved a little as she settled down to eat. Ruthie put her finger against the right hand, and I watched Button’s fingers curl around it. Rosie circled the end of Button’s left arm where her hand should’ve been and bent to kiss it. My tears came without warning.

  Rosie snuggled against me quickly. “It’s okay, Aunt Peaches. We’ll just have to teach her how to do twice as much with one hand.”

  I buried my face against her silky blonde braids and sobbed, and she and Ruthie wept with me.

Seven months later

  Grace Tankersley side-stepped the crawling infant as she carried the vegetables from the refrigerator to the sink. “You wear out the knees of those overalls faster than I can patch them,” she said affectionately. Button plopped over on her bottom and grinned, showing several small white teeth. “Does Granny’s baby want a carrot?” She cut a long piece and handed it down. Button began to gnaw on it happily.
  “She’s going to turn orange from all those carrots,” I said.

  “Not tomorrow.”

  “What can I do?”

  “You can come over here and cut up these carrots. The morning’s gotten by me. Dutch and the boys’ll be in for lunch before we know it.”

  I limped toward the sink and took the pan of vegetables and the cutting board to the table and sat down. Button pulled up at my knee and presented an orange face for a kiss. “You’re a mess, sweet baby. A real mess.”

  The phone rang, and Grace went to answer it. When she came back, her smile had vanished. “That was Jo,” she said. “Bix is in Tokyo. He’ll be home in four days.”

  I didn’t look up. “Is he coming here or going to Houston?”

  “Jo said he’s coming here.”

  I shrugged. “He won’t stay long.”

Chapter 27

     Jo told me that Bix had gone back to Houston. “He said he had to be in court and that he’d be in touch.”

     I held out my hand to her. “It’s all right, Jo. I did a stupid thing, and I’m sorry. Bix doesn’t deal well with things like that.”

     “Grace Tankersley suggested you come to the ranch. You’re welcome to stay with me, too, of course, but you’d be alone a great deal with me working such crazy shifts.”

     “I know. I’ll go back to the ranch.”

     She squeezed my hand. “I’m so sorry, Marian. None of this is your fault.”

     But, of course, I knew it was all my fault.

     Dutch and Miss Grace came to drive me to the ranch. He disappeared as soon as he’d helped me into the house, and Miss Grace put me to bed and sat with me until I fell asleep. She was still sitting there when I woke up. “Would you like some lemonade?” she asked.

     “That sounds all right.” She brought it back and helped me sit up to drink it. “You must loathe me,” I said. “Everyone must loathe me now.”

     “You’d like to think that,” she said.

     “What do you mean?”

     “If everyone hated you, you’d have an excuse to do as you pleased. No one else’s feelings would matter.” She sat down on the bed beside me. “Marian, you are loved,” she said slowly and deliberately. “I won’t tell you that I know how you feel, because I can’t know. The little girls I lost before Tank came were stillborn. You had Mary Nelle for four years. But I do understand grief and what it can do to you. If I hadn’t had Dutch, I might well have drowned in despair.”

    “I never meant to hurt you, Miss Grace. . .or anybody at the ranch.”

     “Only yourself. And Bix.”

     “You can’t hurt Bix. He has what he wants.”

     “Mary Nelle was his daughter, too.”

     “He didn’t love, not like I did.”

     “What about this baby?”

     “I never expected to be pregnant again.” Feeling light-headed again, I lay back against the pillows. “Aaron says I won’t carry it.”

     “Aaron Barnes isn’t God.”

     “I don’t believe in God, only fate.”

     Miss Grace put her lips together. “Do you want the baby, Marian?”

     “I don’t know. I want my little girl back. . .” I covered my face with my hands and began to sob. “Oh, god, my little girl. . .my precious little girl. . .”

     Miss Grace put her arms around me and held me silently.

     Edward and Valerie came straight to the ranch as soon as they returned from Europe. Just their quiet, nonjudgmental presence calmed me. “Aaron says I won’t carry this baby to term,” I told them.

     “You were told the same thing before, and you did,” Valerie said. “Would you like to come to San Angelo and see another doctor?”

     I shook my head. “It won’t change the outcome, whatever it is.”

     But despite Aaron’s predictions, the baby held on. Its little heart beat steadily, and eventually I could feel the baby moving strongly. At times like that I felt afraid. I wanted the baby—but I didn’t want a repeat of Mary Nelle. Bix said her death was my fault, and I believed it.

     Aaron or Doc came out everyday, and Jo was there almost as often. Edward and Valerie phoned nightly and drove down every other weekend. The only person missing was Bix, and I was relieved that he stayed in Houston.

     As the weeks turned into months, I began to believe that I’d have a second chance, but then one afternoon I collapsed bleeding on the bathroom floor. At the hospital, I delivered a perfectly formed baby stillborn baby boy.

     Peggy and Aaron were standing by my bed when I woke up. “I tried,” Aaron said. “The placenta separated. That rarely has a good outcome.” He patted my arm and left.

     “I want to see my baby,” I said to Peggy.”

     She hesitated. “All right,” she said finally, “I’ll bring him to you.”

     There was an unfinished look about the baby. I was too weak to unwrap him, but I could imagine his tiny hands and feet and thought of how he’d felt moving inside of me. Jo came in while I was holding him. “Did I kill him?” I asked. “I wouldn’t have taken those pills if I’d known. . .”

     She repeated what Aaron had said. “It happens sometimes. It wasn’t your fault, Marian.”

     “I was a good mother to Mary Nelle, wasn’t I, Jo?”

     “You were a wonderful mother. She was a happy, loving little girl because of you.”

     “I tried to carry this baby. Bix would’ve liked a son.”

     “It’s time you thought about yourself. What you want.”

     “I want my little girl back. I want this baby to wake up and cry to be fed.”

     She put her face in her hands.

     “Would you ask Miss Grace to make him a blue sleeper and a cap? And I crocheted a blanket for him. I’d like him wrapped in that.”

     “I’ll call her tonight.”

     “And some white rosebuds and baby’s breath for. . .”

     “That would be lovely.”

     “Maybe Francie would take a picture.”

     “I’m sure she would.”

     “Thank you, Jo. Would you like to hold him now?”

     “I’d like that very much.”

     She lifted the baby from my arms and cradled him against her. “You’re so good to me, Jo. I don’t deserve you.”

     “You deserve so much more than you’ve ever had,” Jo said, her voice breaking. “I’m so sorry that my son doesn’t know that!”

     “He wants things to be perfect,” I said. “Like they were when his father was alive. Only. . .only I’m not perfect. . .and I can’t fix things for him.”

     “Fix things for yourself now,” she said. “Don’t go back to Houston.”

     I felt suddenly sleepily. “I have to, Jo,” I murmured. “Don’t you see? Bix is alone again.”

     Bix didn’t come from Houston for the funeral. Later, Francie said Tank carried the tiny casket to the space beside Mary Nelle. Brother Baxter prayed, and everyone sang Safe in the Arms of Jesus. She brought the pictures she’d taken of the baby. “Everything was just the way you wanted it,” she assured me. “Miss Grace found some blue flannel left over from some of John Gordon’s pajamas, and she trimmed the cap with some white ribbon. I took everything to Friedman’s myself. And I…” She started to cry. “I dressed him myself and wrapped him in the blanket you made, and Sue brought the basket Rebecca used to sleep in, and…”

     “Thank you, Francie. It helps to know that.”

     “Sue brought in some extra lamps so there’d be plenty of lightand Dutch bought him a little bear at Birnbaum;s. . .you know, just like the one he gave all the kids. . .”

     “Grampa Bear,” I whispered.

     “Yes. It was as big as he was when we put them both in the basket to take the pictures.”

     I slipped the pictures out of the envelope she handed me. “Oh, Francie. . .oh, they’re wonderful!”

     She ran out of the room sobbing.

     Before I left the hospital, I called Friedman’s and ordered a marker for the baby.

     “Just a flat stone, very plain, with his name. . .”

     “His name?”

     “Yes, James Bixford Matthews III, and the date.”

     “All right, honey.”

     “I’ll send you a check when I get back to Houston.”

     “You know there’s no hurry.”

     “And would you tell Sue that I appreciate what she did. . .the basket and all.”

     “She wanted to help any way she could.”

     “I’ll talk to her before I leave.”

     Milt cleared his throat nervously. “We’d thought maybe. . .”

     “That I’d stay here. That Bix and I would go our separate ways now.”

     “Yes.”

     “He doesn’t have anyone but me, Milt, and I’m not much, but I’m all her has.”

     Tank came to drive me back to the ranch as soon as Aaron released me. “I’ll go back to Houston as soon as I’m able to travel,” I told him.

     “You don’t have to, Peaches.”

     “Yes, I do.”

     He didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Then, “We’re always here for you. You know that.”

     Francie didn’t try to talk me into staying, and neither did anyone else. I knew Dutch had laid down the law to everyone. Even Miss Grace was oddly silent. It was fall before I could travel, and Edward and Valerie came to drive me to the airport in San Angelo. Even they didn’t try to talk me into staying, but I knew they wanted to.

     Bix kissed my cheek dutifully when I got off the plane. “How was your trip?”

     “I had to wait in Dallas, so I’m a little tired.”

     “The Fordhams want us to meet them for dinner at the Club.”

     “All right.”

     “Pam’s anxious to see you,” he amended hastily.

    . “That will be nice.”

     It was almost ten o’clock before we got home. I went immediately to Mary Nelle’s room and opened the door. “I cleared everything out,” Bix said quickly. “I didn’t want you to have to do it.”

     “What did you do with her things?”

     “They’re packed away in the garage. They’re all there,” he said defensively.

     I nodded. “I’m going to bed now.”

     Bix didn’t sleep in our room for almost two months after I came home. I slept better alone though, tucking all the pillows around me like a cocoon. My emotions were still unstable, and I often woke crying in the night after dreaming about Mary Nelle or my tiny baby boy. Bix never liked any display of emotion. Even when we had sex—making love didn’t describe what we did—it was quick and businesslike.

     I rejoined my bridge group at the Country Club, and the Junior League took up several days a week. There was little time during the busy days to think about the loss of my children or consider the sham of my marriage. Several times I thought of going out to the garage to find some of Mary Nelle’s things, but something held me back. Bix had even taken her portrait down from the wall in the living room. He never mentioned her.

     At Christmas. Bix wanted me to put up a tree as part of the décor for the company cocktail party he’d decided to host. When I said I didn’t think I was up to decorating for Christmas, he said he’d hire someone, and he did.

     We exchanged the obligatory gifts before going to dinner at the senior Fordhams’. Bix gave me a diamond bracelet and matching earrings. I gave him a new monogrammed briefcase.

     The day had a strange air of unreality to it. About four o’clock in the afternoon, I thought of the ranch and how Dutch would be roasting pecans in the parlor fireplace about now. In fact, I could almost smell them, and the odor haunted me long after we returned home. Around midnight, unable to sleep, I got up and poured myself a large glass of wine from Bix’s well-stocked liquor bar. It became a nightly habit, and often I didn’t stop at a single glass.

     One evening in April, Bix came out of his study with an official-looking envelope in his hand. “I’m being recalled to active duty because of the trouble in Korea,” he said in disbelief. “If I’d ever dreamed this would happen, I wouldn’t have stayed in the reserves!”

     I poured him a glass of wine and one for myself. “Sit down, Bix,” I said. “Tell me about it.”

     “I have to report for duty in thirty days, and I have at least two cases going to court before then. This is the worse possible timing!”

     “I’m sorry,” I said.

     “I’ll have to go through flight training again. All the planes are different now.”

     “I see.”

     “This is just the worst possible time!” he repeated and stormed back into his study.

     I lay awake thinking about the expected turn of events. He’d be flying again, and he’d probably see active duty. That meant he could be shot down and killed. The thought of his death didn’t horrify me, but the thought of being left alone again did.

Aaron had been blunt about another pregnancy. “You should see your doctor in Houston about a hysterectomy,” he’d said. “That’s the only way to be sure.”

     I’d put it off, and now I knew why. With Bix, I had a function in life, even if it was just decorating his arm at all the required social events and charming his clients and associates. But with him gone, perhaps permanently, what was left?

     Before I slept, my mind was made up. I’d try one more time. If it killed me, I hadn’t lost anything.

     When Bix came home on leave again, I told him  I was pregnant.

     “For the love of god, Mari, why?”

     “I want a child,.”

     “You can’t! Didn’t you hear anything Aaron said?”

     “I’m willing to take the risk.”

     “This isn’t the time. I’m being sent to Japan next month and then to Korea.”

     “I didn’t expect you to be happy about it, Bix, but it doesn’t matter. I want this baby.”

     “How far along are you?”

     “About eight or nine weeks.”

     “I’ve been gone for three months!”

     “You’ve been home twice. As infrequently as you touch me, I’m not surprised that you don’t remember.”

     He slammed the wall with his hand. “For all I know, it’s not even mine!”

     I’d expected him to be angry but not to accused me of being unfaithful. “You know it’s your baby.”

     “No, I don’t. And it’s as good as dead anyway. Get rid of it now before you die, too.”

     “Would you think that was such a bad thing?”

     “I’ll divorce you on the grounds of adultery.”

     “No, you won’t. Even if it were true, you wouldn’t want to come off as taking second place to anyone.”

     He slept in the guestroom for the remainder of his leave and left without speaking to me

     While Bix’s reaction to the news of this pregnancy hadn’t surprised me, but his suggestion that the baby wasn’t his had come as a shock. I didn’t hear from him after he went back to Kelly. Three weeks later, he appeared unexpectedly and gave me an ultimatum: get rid of the baby or get out. “I’ve already changed my will. There’s no provision for you or the child.”

     I was speechless.

     “You’re unstable, Mari. You couldn’t even take care of Mary Nelle, and now she’s dead. You tried to kill yourself and killed my son instead. Now you’re asking me to accept a child that isn’t even mine.”

     Suddenly I was back in my mother’s bedroom on graduation night. How he hated to give the precious Kroll name to a bastard! The terrible nausea I’d experienced with all my pregnancies had set in, and I stumbled out of the den with Bix’s words ringing in my ears and barely made it to the bathroom before I lost my supper.

     The first thing I did the next morning was go into the bathroom and throw up again. Then I went to see if Bix was still at home. He wasn’t. The cold, cloying black cloud began to envelop me. My palms grew clammy, and I could feel perspiration beading my forehead. I was alone and afraid, and there was nowhere to run. So I walked instead to the bar and reached for a new bottle of wine. It was gone before noon.

     I was drunk, but not too drunk to find and dial the number of a woman I’d met a few months earlier at one of those endless Country Club parties.        “This is Marian Matthews,” I said quickly. “You told me once that you’d had a problem. . .and that you took care of it.”

     There was a long silence. “I’ll call you back.” She hung up.

     It was midnight when the phone rang. I’d thrown up the wine hours ago and was completely sober. “Six hundred dollars,” she sad. “Cash.”

     “When?”

     “Tomorrow night. Ten o’clock. How far. . .”

     “Two months,” I said.

     “All right.” She hung up again.

     I had to stop the car twice on the way to the bank the next morning so I could throw up in the paper bag I’d brought along for that purpose. Back home, I put the cash in an envelope, sealed it, and set it on the table by the front door.

     She arrived promptly at ten and thrust a bottle of pills at me before I could close the door. “Where’s the money?”

     I nodded at the table and watched her stuff the envelope into her purse. “You take four of these now, and if nothing happens, take two every couple of hours until it does.”

     “How long. . .”

     She shrugged. “I was almost five months. It took me most of one day to finally get rid of it. But yours shouldn’t be so bad, and it’ll be so small you can flush it.”

     I locked the door behind her and turned off all the lights before I went into the bedroom. With a large glass of wine, I swallowed four of the small white tablets and lay down to wait. By three o’clock, nothing had happened, so I took two more. At six, in desperation, I swallowed all eight remaining, and almost immediately, I was in agony. In the bathroom, I alternately retched futilely into the toilet and lay on the cold tile, writhing in pain.

     By noon, the pain was gone, and I was still pregnant and filled with more shame and self-loathing than I'd ever known. Too weak to pull myself up, I managed to crawl back to the bed where I lay weeping and caressing my belly. “I don’t want to live, but I guess you do,” I murmured. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. . .so sorry. . .” Then I fell asleep.

     Midnight had come again when I woke up in my own waste. Weak as I still was, it took a long time to clean myself up and get the fouled sheets into the washer. Then I sat down and forced myself to eat a piece of dry toast and was surprised when it stayed down. I slept the rest of the night on the sofa, and in the morning, I reached for the phone and called the ranch.

     “I want to come home, Miss Grace,” I said.

     “Are you all right, Marian? I woke up in the night thinking about you.”

     “I’m pregnant.”

     “Oh, Marian!”

     “I want this baby, Miss Grace. It’s my last chance.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

     We lived in an apartment for a year. Bix was rarely home, and that suited me. I got to know Phil Fordham’s wife Pam who had a seven-year-old son John, and we spent pleasant afternoons at the park or in her back yard. Phil’s father had read law with the attorney whose Victorian home still housed their offices. He and his wife Violet lived modestly as did Phil and Pam, although Bix said when he had the money they did, he’d lived like it.

     By the time Mary Nelle was almost four, we’d moved into a very large home in River Oaks and hired a housekeeper who doubled as a nanny for our daughter when I was busy with all the social functions Bix said would further his career. Everyone at the ranch had kept in touch with me, but I hadn’t been back for a visit until Mary Nelle’s fourth summer when I insisted on going at long last.

     Bix didn’t like it, and he let me know it. “Your mother hasn’t seen her granddaughter in over two years,” I said.

     “She can come visit.”

     “She works, Bix. She can’t just take off whenever she wants to.”

     “Then go if you have to, but I need you back the first of August.”

     “I’ll be back.”

     Nothing had changed at the ranch. The twins were eight and growing like weeds. Rosie would start to school in the fall. John Gordon and Randy were, as Peggy had written, true partners in crime even at the tender age of two. And Francie was pregnant again.

     Mary Nelle settled in like she’d never been gone, and I wondered how she could possibly remember everyone and everything, but she did. Miss Grace gave her chores to do like the others, and Francie outfitted her in Ruthie’s old overalls that had been through Rosie. She was polite and affectionate. Once I heard her say to Miss Grace “I’m so happy I’m home, Granny, and I’m going to stay forever and ever and ever!”

     From the time each of the children could walk, Dutch had laid down the law about where they could go on the ranch and what they could do. Vic and Tank had enclosed a portion of the lower section of the loft in the barn with rails and chicken wire and built a four-rung ladder leading up to it. Will always went up first to help the younger ones, while Ruthie stayed below until last to make sure no one missed his footing.

     In the heat of the day, the little ones napped, and Will, Ruthie, and Rosie were allowed to take their books under the front porch where it was cool. If Vic and Tank didn’t get in early enough to take everyone swimming in the creek, Miss Grace let them fill the washtubs in the back yard.

     The older children had been impressed with the fact that they were responsible for the younger ones, and they took that responsibility seriously. Only Randy and John Gordon were too little to be turned loose out of sight, but we never worried about them because Will and Ruthie kept them corraled. The worst infraction of the rules was sliding down the bannister in the hall, and Francie could be counted on to snatch the offender off at the bottom and administer several sound smacks that sounded worse than they were.

     So the morning that Rosie burst into the kitchen shrieking that someone was hurt, we all dropped what we were doing and ran. Peggy got to the barn first. Mary Nelle was sprawled at the foot of the ladder like a carelessly-dropped rag doll. Will, kneeling beside her, looked up with fear in his eyes.

     “Don’t pick her up Peaches,” Peggy said when I finally reached them. “We’ve got to get her into town.

     “Go ring the bell, Will,” Miss Grace said quietly. “Ring it good and loud so your daddy’ll hear it.”

     Peggy brought the truck around, and told Francie how to help life Mary Nelle without hurting either of them. I was still standing helpless when Tank rode in and jumped off Nub.

     “Oh, Daddy, Mary Nelle’s hurt bad,” Ruthie sobbed, wiping her face on her arm.

     “We’ve got to hurry,” Peggy said to Tank.

     Tank drove the truck, and Peggy drove her car with me beside her. Miss Grace had phoned ahead, and Aaron was waiting for us at the emergency entrance with a gurney. He pulled her eyelids back. “Christ!” he swore softly. “Get a line started, and we’ll get her to x-ray.”

     It seemed forever before Peggy came out of the examining room. “The fall fractured her skull,” she said.

     “She’s going to die, isn’t she?” I felt as cold and empty as I had when Tom died.

     She put her arms around me. “We’re taking her upstairs to a room.”

     Jo called Bix after she spoke with Aaron and then came to Mary Nelle’s room. “Bix is in court for the rest of the day. He said he’d start for Danford in the morning.”

     “Did you tell him how serious it is?” I heard Peggy ask her.

     Her eyes filled with tears. “My son doesn’t hear anything he doesn’t want to hear.”

     Jo said she’d stay the night, so Peggy went back to the ranch with Tank. Sitting by Mary Nelle’s bed, alternately stroking her hair and kissing her bruised face, I lost all track of time. At some point Aaron came in and said, “Peaches, I’m going to let you hold her.”

     “She’s better?”

     He began to unhook all the tubes and lines, and I found myself sitting in a rocking chair from the hospital nursery with my little girl nestled in my lap. Aaron draped a blanket over both of us, and I began to rock.

     As Mary Nelle’s breath grew more raspy and uneven, I realized that Aaron was allowing me to hold her while she died.

     Somehow, even as the room grew silent, I was aware of everything going on around me. From the hall I heard Aaron say, “She’s dead,” and Bix’s surprised, “Dead?”

     “What took you so long to get here?”

     “I was in court. Mother said…
   “I know she told you how bad it was.”

     “Where is she?” Bix demanded.

  I heard Peggy’s nurse voice. “Don’t start on her, Bix. She can’t stand it now.”

     “Do you think I’m some sort of monster?”

     “If she doesn’t, I do,” Aaron snapped.

     “How did it happen?” Bix asked.

     “She fell off a ladder in the barn,” Peggy said, her voice breaking.

  “Mari should have had better sense than to let her go out there!” Then he was in the room standing over me.. “For god’s sake, Mari, she’s dead! Put her down!”

   I met his cold eyes. “Don’t touch her. Don’t touch my baby.”

   “She’s my daughter, too!”

   “She’s your possession. We both are.”

   We were each holding our ground in a sort of stand-off when Milt Friedman materialized out of nowhere. “Let me do this,” he murmured. He put a hand on Bix’s shoulder and moved him away, then hunkered down by the rocker.

   “Hello, Peaches,” he said gently. “I came to see Mary Nelle.”

   I pulled the blanket back from her face. “She’s so beautiful, Milt. Isn’t she so beautiful?” I felt myself beginning to lose touch with reality.

   “She sure is, honey.”

   There was a long silence. “She’s dead, Milt. My baby’s dead.”

   “I know, honey. My heart’s like to broken for you.”

   “Maybe I don’t have a heart to break,” I said. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t.” Milt didn’t say anything. “You have to take her, don’t you?”

   “Not until you’re ready.”

   I adjusted the blanket around Mary Nelle’s limp form. “She’s getting cold. Will you keep her wrapped up?”

   “Sure, I will.”

   “And you won’t leave her by herself? She’s never really been by herself before.”

   “Someone will be with her every minute. Dad or Mom or Sue or me.”

   “And leave a light on at night. She always slept with a little night-light in her room.”

   “I’ll make sure of it.”

   Milt gently shifted Mary Nelle to his shoulder as if she were just sleeping against it, and he was taking her home to bed. I followed him to his car parked just outside the service entrance of the hospital.

   “You send me what you want for her,” he said softly. Then he laid her on the back seat and snuggled the blanket around her.

   “Thank you, Milt.”

 He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You bet, honey.”

 I didn’t argue with Bix about staying at Jo’s. Francie brought my suitcases to town and offered to take Mary Nelle’s dress to Friedman’s. “The one Miss Grace made her at Easter,” I said immediately. “The pink one with the smocking. . .she called it her wosebuddy dress. And her bear. Put GrampaBear in with her.”

 Francie was leaving when a vaguely-familiar figure paused at the end of the walk and then started up. I held onto Francie’s arm for support and went down the steps. “Pauline?”

 She stopped a few feet away. “I came. . .I brought my things with me,” she said hesitantly. “I thought maybe I could fix her hair.”

 “My god,” I breathed in disbelief. “You came all this way from Oklahoma to fix my baby’s hair?”

 She looked uncertainly at Francie and then back at me. “You’re the reason I have my daughter,” she said softly. “I know I can’t ever pay you back for her, but I wanted to do something. . .”

 Only the fact that I was holding onto Francie kept me on my feet as I stared at Pauline. “I’d be grateful to you,” I said when I could speak. “I’d be very grateful.”

 Milt and Mr. Friedman managed to cover most of the bruises on the side of Mary Nelle’s face, and Pauline curled her beautiful blonde hair to hide the rest. Dutch came tp see me alone and said he’d told everyone the other children should see her. we should take the children in to see her. “They need to understand what death is,” he said. “And they need to say goodbye.”

 Pauline had to take the bus back to Oklahoma on the morning of the funeral. Peggy came to drive her to the station, and I insisted on going with them. I was barely holding myself together, but I managed to thank Pauline. “You did a beautiful job.”

 “I wanted to do it.”

 “I don’t know anyone else who’d do what you’ve done, Pauline,” I said. “Thank you from all of us.”

 Pauline bit her lip. “I landed on my feet, Peaches, but it could’ve been different if it hadn’t been for you. And you can bet Marian Lee knows the whole story. . .my husband, too. He’s adopted  Marian Lee, you know. Loves her like she’s his own.”

 “I’m so glad, Pauline.”

 She straightened her shoulders. “Well, I better get going.” She touched my cheek. “Take care of yourself, Peaches.” Then she waved and disappeared onto the bus.

 The blessedly numbing shock was wearing off at the cemetery, and all I wanted to do was get back to Jo’s and fall into bed and cry forever. But the sight of Will’s tear-stained face peering at me from the circle of Tank’s arms as we left the grave site, bought me a little more time.

 I pulled Will into the car with me and cradled his curly head against my shoulder. “It’s all right to cry, Will,” I said, my own tears starting again. “It’s all right.”

 Bix stood impatiently beside the door, but I ignored him. “It’s my fault,” Will sobbed. “I’m the oldest! I was in charge!”

 I took his face between my hands. “Listen to me, Will Tankersley,” I said. “Listen to me very well. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was a terrible accident, and it could have happened to any one of you.”

 “I wish it’d been me!” he wept.

 “You’re going to grow up to be a good man like your daddy and your Grampa Dutch,” I said. “Yes, you are, Will, don’t you forget that. I want you to promise me that every morning when you look in the mirror, you’ll say to yourself I did the best I could. That’s all any of us can do. Bad things happen to people, but at least we know we did the best we could.”

 “I held onto her!” he said, looking up at me with his mother’s big, soft eyes. “I told her to go slow! I didn’t let go! She pulled her arm away, and I thought Ruthie had her, but then she was on the floor! I wouldn’t have let go, Aunt Peaches, I wouldn’t have!”

 Bix cleared his throat, but I ignored him again. “I know you wouldn’t have, Will. Mary Nelle was so excited about being back on the ranch. She just missed her step, that’s all.” I pulled him close to me again and began to cry. “Oh, Will, we’ve lost her, but if we lost you, too. . .if you stop living because you feel guilty. . .there are a lot of ways to die, Will. You can die like Mary Nelle and go to a better place, or you can die inside and just keep walking around in a world of misery. I don’t want that for you, so promise me you’ll go home and tell yourself everyday that it wasn’t your fault! Promise me that, Will!”

 His arms tightened around my neck. “I promise, Aunt Peaches. I’d do anything for you!”

He drew a long, hoarse breath and raised his face. “I love you, Aunt Peaches.”

 Tank reached into the car and lifted Will out. His face was expressionless, as it always was when he felt something deeply, but I knew he’d heard what I’d said to Will, and I was satisfied. He set Will on his feet and leaned in to kiss my cheek. “Thanks, Peaches,” he whispered. “We love you.”

 Bix got in and slammed the door. I moved to the other side of the seat and sat with my head against the window until we were back at Jo’s.

 I went straight to bed when we got back to Jo’s, and Aaron Barnes and Doc showed up almost immediately. Doc gave me a shot and mumbled something about leaving a bottle of sleeping pills if I needed them. “Did Bix manage to get word to Edward and Valerie in London?”

 “Second honeymoon,” I mumbled, feeling the darkness closing in. “Back next week.”

 I was still lucid enough to heard Bix and Jo talking in the hall. “Why didn’t you come when I called you?” she asked.

 “I couldn’t,” he said. “And it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway.”

 “It might have made a difference to her.”

 I became aware of daylight again and Bix standing by my bed. “Do you need anything before I go to Friedman’s to settle the bill?”

 “No.”

 “Mother is next door. Will you be all right by yourself?”

 “Yes.”

 As soon as I heard the front door close, I sat up. The sedative Doc had given me yesterday had worn out, and the unopened bottle of sleeping pills was still on the bedside table. I threw on some clothes, grabbed Jo’s car keys from the rack beside the back door, and, moving faster than I’d known I could, was out the door knowing exactly where I was going and what I was going to do.

I stopped first at the package store on the highway. Danford was still dry, but the outlying liquor stores did a booming business. I bought a bottle of Scotch and headed for the old stadium. No one would be around this time of day, and I’d have all the time and the privacy I needed.

 I never knew how Bix and Peggy found me, but I felt Peggy slapping my face and heard her telling me to open my eyes. Finally she turned me over, stuck her finger down my throat, and I vomited violently with the remains of the pills and the bottle of whiskey covering the front of my body.

 “Put her in the car!” she screamed at Bix.

 “She’s filthy!”

 “I can’t carry her! Are you just going to let her lie there and die?”

 When I woke up, Aaron Barnes was standing beside me. “Well,” he said bitingly, “you almost did it.”

 I had to think for a minute about what I’d almost done, and then I remembered. At the same time, I remembered that my baby girl was in the ground, and tears ran out of the corner of my eyes onto the pillow.

 Aaron bent over me. “Why in god’s name would you do a damn fool thing like that?” he demanded.

I couldn’t answer him.

 He began to berate me, and all I could do was close my eyes and try to shut him out. The muscles in my back began to knot, and nausea came on the heels of the pain, but there was nothing left in my stomach. “Leave me alone,” I moaned weakly. “Leave me the hell alone.”

 “Leave her alone.” Bix’s voice cut the air icily, and Aaron’s stopped. “Get out.”

 I watched them eye each other warily until Aaron turned on his heel and left, slamming the door behind him. Bix walked over to the bed and stood looking down at me.

 “I hurt,” I moaned. “My back. . .”

 His hands were oddly gentle as they turned me on my side and began to massage my back. The muscle spasms lessened and then were gone. I buried my face in the pillow and wept.

 I wanted desperately to weep in the warmth of his arms, but he moved away from me. “If Peggy hadn’t happened to come to town, you’d be dead,” he said dispassionately. “I ran into her on the street, and when I mentioned the pills Doc left, she panicked. You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

 “I want to die,” I sobbed. “Oh, god, there’s nothing left. My baby’s gone, and there’s nothing left.”

 “What was there before?” he asked.

 I rolled over and looked at him. “You married me for your own reasons,” I said. “And I married you for mine.”

 “You wanted a child.”

 “You wanted an entrée into society.”

 He let out his breath tiredly. “We both got what we wanted, didn’t we?”

 “You have your dream,” I said, “and I have nothing. Nothing.” He turned around and was gone.

Chapter Twenty-Five

     Edward and Valerie finally had to go back to San Angelo, and the next morning Vic limped in using a cane. “Edward told Peg he didn’t want you to be by yourself, so I’m taking over like you sat with Peg.” He flopped into the chair next to my bed. “But not all day everyday. I figure you’re ready for some time to yourself.”

     “I’m ready to get out of here.”

     “My next mission,” he said. “Dutch, Miss Grace, and Jo Matthews have been plotting to get you out to the ranch, at least for a while. The hospital is still short-staffed, and she doesn’t want you staying by yourself until you’re ready.”

     “So you’re here to convince me to move to the ranch.”

     “Right.” He patted his right leg. “I’m still working on getting used to this.” He pulled up his pants leg. “I was lucky to keep my knee. Makes it easier.”

     I examined his prosthesis with interest. “I hope that wonderful contraption is more comfortable than my brace.”

     “It’s not bad. I’m even doing some riding with Dutch.”

     “You can get up on a horse?”

     “The first time I almost fell on my you-know-what, but I’ve figured it out. To get off, I just ride up close to the back porch and slide down. First time she saw me out the kitchen window, Miss Grace nearly fell over.” He chuckled.

     “Clever. But it will be easier riding a desk back in Santa Fe, won’t it?”

     “I guess it will, but I’ll be here until Tank gets home.”

     “That could be a long time. I’ve heard the Japanese will fight to the death.”

     “Mr. Jacobson came out for a visit and thought it would be a good idea.”

     “Why?”

    Vic shrugged. “Here’s the deal. If I can convince you to move to the ranch, I’ll come back tomorrow with Sanchez and get your things from Jo’s house. Then you’ll be all set up.”

     “Why didn’t Dutch and Miss Grace send Peggy to do their dirty work? Or even come themselves?”

     Vic looked at me for what seemed like a long time. “I volunteered.”

     “Why?”

     “It’s payback time, Peaches. What you did for Peg when she was up here in this hospital...what you did by sharing the Bates place those years, especially when I went missing...I owe you for taking care of her.”

     “She took care of me, too, you know.” You have no idea how she’s taken care of me.

     “Listen, Peaches, you belong with all of us.”

     “I don’t belong with Bix, you mean.”

     He got to his feet with some difficulty and leaned over to kiss the top of my head. “We love you, Peaches. Come home.”

     Miss Grace promptly tore up the formula Doc had written out and declared I was doing just fine nursing the baby on my own. I spent a lot of time on the daybed in the kitchen doing just that.

     I’d insisted on paying for room and board, but Dutch put an end to that. “You’re a daughter of this house the same as Francie and Peggy,” he told me in that firm voice that brooked no argument.

     Francie still worked outside even though Vic was riding out longer and longer everyday. Peggy drove back and forth to town whenever Doc needed her. While Mary Nelle slept in the Tankersley cradle, I helped Miss Grace in the kitchen and kept an eye on the twins and Rosie.

     Letters from Bix were few and far between and full of himself. He rarely mentioned Mary Nelle who was almost seven months old when Japan finally surrendered in August. Tank made it home by early October. He and Francie wasted no time adding to their family. But before John Gordon was born, all of us loaded up and went to San Angelo where a judge formally approved Vic’s adoption as a Tankersley.

     He singled out Tank and Vic and said, “Listen, I don’t want you two back in here fighting over an inheritance.”

     His words shocked all of us, but then Dutch said easily, “I plan to be around for a while longer.”

     Then Tank grinned. “No problem, sir. He knows I’m bigger than he is.”

     “Meaner, too,” Vic muttered, failing to keep his smile in check.

     We all laughed then. The judge slammed his gavel and said, “Well, congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Tankersley, it’s a man.”

     Dutch rose, picked up his hat, and said, “Thanks, Judge. Now let’s this family go eat.”

     As Miss Grace said, the blessings kept coming. Anna Lee had been liberated from a Japanese POW camp and came home to Danford a walking skeleton, full of bugs—and haunted by seeing her wounded fiance bayoneted by a Japanese soldier when the field hospital was overrun.

Her grandmother lived long enough to know she was alive but died before she was able to be released from the hospital in San Antonio. The Friedmans insisted she stay with them to recuperate further, and Milt—who had made it back as Harry hadn’t—and Sue were there for her, too.

      Then, two days after John Gordon was born, Aaron Barnes, Doc’s nephew who had survived the Bulge and other brutal encounters with the Germans before coming to Danford to work with Doc, arrived at the ranch one evening with a wicker basket. “From the stork,” he said to all of us sitting at the supper table. He handed the basket to Vic. “Congratulations, Pop. It’s a boy.”

Randall Victor Tankersley now shared the Tankersley cradle with his official cousin, John Gordon.

     Jo came out to the ranch as often as she could, and Edward and Valerie visited every other weekend. “It seems you’re home to stay,” Edward said to me one evening as we shared the front porch swing with Mary Nelle sleeping in his arms.

     “Bix will be home eventually, you know.”

     “Sister…”

     “Edward, I made a promise. I have what I want—my beautiful baby girl—and now it’s my turn to help Bix get what he wants. That’s how it works.”

     I heard his deep sigh and knew he was right, and I was wrong.

     In the fall of 1947, the twins, Will and Ruthie, started first grade. Mary Nelle was eighteen months old when Bix came home from Germany, swooped onto the ranch, and insisted we pack up and come back to town to Jo’s immediately. Mary Nelle, clutching Grampa Bear, the small brown teddy which Dutch bought for each grandchild’s first Christmas, wailed as if her heart was breaking and futilely held out her arms to Miss Grace and Dutch standing on the porch as Bix stuffed us into the car.

     After she’d cried herself to sleep that night, Bix told me that he’d had the offer of his dreams. A law school classmate, Phil Fordham, and his father had written to say they wanted him to come on board with their firm. “It’s small, exclusive, and considered one of the best in Houston. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”

     “It’s what you’ve worked for, Bix,” I said, still hearing Mary Nelle’s sobs as she was ripped from the only life she’d ever known. “I look forward to helping however I can.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

     I had to resign from teaching, of course. Mr. Nunnally said he was sorry to see me go and that he’d rehire me in a heartbeat if I ever wanted to come back. After Bix left, I declined Jo’s invitation to live with her and also Miss Grace’s to come to the ranch. I safe with Peggy around to keep an eye on me as my pregnancy progressed.

     Then, one July afternoon, another telegram came for Peggy while she was at work. After signing for it, I deposited it on the lamp table by Peggy’s chair and went back to reading to Rosie. Half an hour later, the postman delivered a special delivery letter addressed to Peggy. The return address, a military APO, bore Vic’s name at the top. Now I knew what the telegram said. Rosie couldn’t understand why I burst into tears and clutched her to me so tightly she could hardly breathe.

     Peggy came home, ripped open the telegram, and began to scream. “Vic’s alive! He’s alive! He’s alive, Peaches!” She picked up Rosie and began to whirl around the room. “Daddy’s coming home, Rosie-Posie! Your Daddy’s coming home!”

     The letter, a long one detailing how he’d been left for dead by the Germans and taken in by a doctor in a nearby village, told the rest of the story. The doctor and his family had hidden him at the risk of their own lives—and saved his in more ways than one.

     “He had to take my right leg just above the knee,” Peggy read aloud stoically,”I’m headed stateside where I’ll get a prosthesis, and we’ll go on from there. All that’s important is that I’m coming home to you and Rosie, and we’ll have the rest of our lives together.”

     I was genuinely happy for Peggy, but I felt somehow unsettled that our years together were coming to an end. I’d had a good friend, almost a sister, and I’d watched Rosie grow. Now, with the baby on the way, I felt myself beginning to let go of her. Maybe it just time for both of us to move on.

     “Jo wants me to move in with her when Vic gets home and the two of you move out to the ranch," I said one night while we were drinking cocoa.

     “I guess we’ll go back to Santa Fe,” she said. “But now with the money from Aunt Min’s house, we can buy one of our own and maybe adopt a little brother or sister for Rosie.”

     “Of course, you will. It’s going to be perfect.”

     She unfolded the latest letter from Vic which she’d only read a dozen times. “Vic says the military hospital is short-staffed. He talked to someone about me coming up there and volunteering.”

     “Do it!”

     “I guess I could leave Rosie at the ranch, but I’m not sure it would be the right thing to do.”

     I gestured toward the phone. “Call Miss Grace right now and get packing. Then I’ll call Jo and pack up, too. We don’t have a lease on this place. We can pay for another month or so until we can find someone to empty it out. I’ll bet Mr. Birnbaum would take back what we bought from him.”

     Peggy sat up straight. “Do you really think so, Peaches?

     “Have I ever steered you wrong?”

     She laughed. “Only a hundred times in high school.” She got up and hugged me before going to the phone.

     Almost before I realized it, Peggy was headed for Washington, and I was settled at Jo’s. I’d been concerned about living with Bix’s mother because she’d disapproved of our marriage, but with Laura away in nursing school, we settled into a companionable existence and became close in ways I’d never expected. When my pregnancy progressed without incident, I told her that I thought Doc was disappointed.

     “He’s just worried, Marian. In fact, he wanted me to talk with you about a possible C-section if it becomes necessary.”

     “I just want a healthy baby,” I said. “I don’t care how I get it.”

     When I went into labor two weeks early in January, I begged Jo to call Peggy. She and Vic were still at the ranch, and it was beginning to look like they were going to stay despite the job waiting for Vic in Santa Fe.

     She came to town immediately and stayed with me for every minute of that very long day. Nothing Doc gave me even touched the pain, and I heard him telling Peggy and anyone else who would listen that my blood pressure was too high, and I might stroke out any minute.

     Peggy said that Edward and Valerie had arrived from San Angelo, but I didn’t want them to see me the way I was. Finally, about ten o’clock that night, Doc did what Peggy called a high forceps delivery and brought my beautiful baby girl into the world.

     When I was finally back in my room, she said that Edward and Valerie had been to the nursery to see the baby, and then she’d told them to go home for the night. “All of you need some rest,” she soothed me. “Tomorrow I’ll bring your baby. She’s perfect, Peaches.”

     Unwillingly, I closed my eyes and slept.

     Doc kept me for two weeks. Edward spent a good part of every day just sitting with me, and Valerie sat with me the rest of the time. “I’m all right,” I told her when I began getting stronger. “I don’t need someone with me every minute.”

     “Edward wants it,” she said.

     “He looks so tired, Valerie. And I’ve worried him again. I’m sorry.”

     “Actually, being here with you is restful for him,” she said.

     “I’ve caused so much trouble for everyone.”

     “You had no idea that your delivery would be so difficult,” she said quickly. “No one did. But the important thing is that you’re getting better everyday, and you have a beautiful, healthy baby girl.”

     “She is beautiful, isn’t she?”

     “Have you decided on a name yet?”

     “Jo and I discussed it last night. We settled on Mary Nelle.”

     “Mary Nelle Matthews. I like that.”

     “We also decided that I’d go to the ranch when Doc releases me. Jo feels I shouldn’t be alone with the baby for awhile.”

     “We were going to suggest that you come to San Angelo.”

     “I will as soon as I can travel.”

     Valerie started to say something, then stopped, but I knew what she was thinking.

     “I haven’t heard from Bix in two months. Jo cabled him about the baby, but he hasn’t replied yet. He didn’t want her, you know. He said it wasn’t the right time.”

     “I see.”

     “It’s all right, Valerie. Bix and I had our own reasons for getting married. We never pretended we were in love.”

     “Loving Edward so much, I can’t imagine marrying anyone I didn’t love.”

     “I wanted a baby, and now I have one.”

     “That baby needs a secure home.”

     “She’ll have one. I’ll be a good mother. Bix will be himself, but he’ll provide well for us.”

     “That’s not exactly what I meant.”

     “Bix needs me, Valerie. I’m his ticket to social acceptance while he gets his career started. We’ll be civil to each other. We’ll even share the same bedroom. Mary Nelle will never know things aren’t exactly what they should be until she’s old enough to understand.”

     “I hope so, Marian. For both your sakes, I hope so.”

     Whenever Edward came in the mornings, he brought coffee and sweet rolls, and Ruby Bullock brought Mary Nelle in her bassinet. Edward held her until she cried to be fed and then always offered to leave while I nursed her. It amused me that he always moved his chair a discreet distance from the bed.

     One morning I asked if he’d known my biological father.

     “I met him on two occasions.”

     “Is he still in Richmond?”

     “No. He died in ’38.”

     “What did he die of?”

     “Liver failure,” he said. “He. . .he drank rather heavily.”

     I considered that. “Did he ever marry?”

     “Twice.”

     “Were there children?”

     “No. No, there were no children.”

     “But he knew about me.”

     “He came to Holly Hill one day when you were about three. He’d been drinking, and I remember he stood in the front hall calling to Mother to bring you downstairs. . to bring his daughter downstairs. Grandfather Fancher went into his study and came out with his Confederate pistol and threatened to shoot him if he didn’t leave.”

     “You saw all that?”

     “I’d been playing on the porch, and no one noticed me.” He laughed ruefully. “I wasn’t noticed very often anyway.”

     “Did you understand any of it?”

     “Not really, but by the time I was eleven or twelve, I’d been unnoticed enough to have picked up the information.”

     “What was he like?”

     “Earl Clifton was much like our cousin Kip, I think. Bright but overindulged. His mother died when he was five, and his father gave him whatever he wanted. He wasn’t a bad person, actually, from what I can gather. Kip wasn’t either, you know. It was just that he’d always had what he wanted and expected it.”

     “If you’d turned out to be the one without the Kroll blood, I wouldn’t have been surprised,” I said. “You’re so different from both of them.. .kind, compassionate." .

     “Perhaps I have you to thank for any positive character traits.”

     “Me? Oh, Edward, I’m selfish and impatient and hot-tempered. Half the time I don’t even like myself!”

     He frowned. “Don’t, Sister.” He got up and walked to the window. “When you were born, I loved you immediately. No one paid any attention to me, and you filled a void in my life. . .in my heart. We shared a nursery for the first few years, and I’d slip out of bed at night and sleep beside your crib. I supposed I thought I was taking care of you, even though the nurse was just in the next room. When you were old enough to walk and talk, we became great companions. Then you had polio..”

     “Mrs. Flowers told me that you were the one who insisted that Mother telephone Dr. Barnes.”

     “I think Mrs. Flowers forgot herself that summer you were in Danford alone.”

     “She was good to me. . .and honest with me. No one else ever was.”

     “You’d sick for several days. Nurse wouldn’t let me near you, but I stayed in the hall and listened to you cry with the fever and pain. They. . .Mother and Father never went near you. Finally I told them that if they didn’t telephone for the doctor, I would.” He turned around to look at me. “Perhaps it was the shock of my standing up to them., but Mother called Sam Barnes. He confirmed that you had infantile paralysis. When they took you to Temple two weeks later, they refused to let me go along. Then in the fall, I was sent away to school, and you and Mother went to live in Dallas.”

     “You wrote to me every week. I lived for those letters.”

     “I lived for yours.”

     “Edward, you. . .” I stopped.

     “Yes?”

     “You always seemed so sad when we were growing up.”

     “I suppose I was. As I said, no one paid particular attention to me until you came along. I always felt very. . .inadequate.”

     “Do you still feel that way?”

     “I don’t know. I suppose not. Valerie says. . .”

     “She thinks you’re wonderful.”

     “I know. I keep hoping she never finds out that I have feet of clay.” He laughed a little.

     “You are wonderful, Edward. You’ve been so good to me all my life. I feel like I’ve caused you nothing but worry.”

     “Of course, I’ve been concerned for you, Sister, but none of the circumstances occasioning my concern have been your doing.”

     “You’ve felt inadequate, and I’ve felt tainted.”

     “Both of us need to put all that behind us. I’ve certainly tried. “He turned his face as I shifted Mary Nelle to my other breast. “What made you ask about Earl Clifton now?”

     “Because whether I like it or not, his blood flows in Mary Nelle’s veins as well as in mine.”

     “When I learned you were expecting a baby, I thought about the same thing. So I made some discreet inquiries."

     “What do you means?”

     “I wanted to be sure there was nothing in the family that might be a potential problem for you or for your baby.”

     “What did you find out?”

     “Nothing remarkable. Mrs. Clifton died of complications from a miscarriage. It was unexpected. She’d always been healthy. Mr. Clifton senior had a small stroke when he was fifty-five and used that to tie his son to the mills. Apparently he lived for twenty more years without any apparent problems. Then he had another small stroke and fell down a flight of stairs. The fall broke his neck.”

     “And Earl Clifton?”

     “He hated running the mills and began drinking, I suppose, to forget his dissatisfaction with his life. He was in and out of several institutions for short-lived cures. When his father died, he let the mills go and eventually had to sell out. He’d been married and divorced once by then. He went to New York in ’35 and remarried, but she left him after a few months. It took him two more years to finally drink himself to death.”

     “Does Mother still drink?”

     He looked pained. “Yes.”

     “How long had she been drinking before I found out?”

     “For as long as I can remember. I suppose I was first aware of it when I was eight or nine.”

     “I’m surprise he puts up with it.”

     “I’ve always thought there was some reason why they stayed married, even though I think Father would prefer not to.”

     “Do you have any idea what it is?”

     “I. . .yes, I do, but I’d rather not discuss it.”

     “All right then.”

     I put Mary Nelle over my shoulder, and she burped daintily. Edward walked to the bed and stood looking down at us. “I’m so happy for you, Sister.”

“I’m happy, too,” I said quickly. “Truly, I am, Edward. I don’t want you to worry about me any more.”

     He bent and kissed me, then the baby, and I noticed again the pallor of his complexion and the tired lines around his eyes and mouth. 

Chapter Twenty-Three

     For a minute, the old Peggy was back: the frightened timid little bunny from high school. “There’s an explanation,” I said, trying to be reasonable.      “Look in that box of papers.

     She shook her head wildly. “No! No, I don’t want to know.”

     “Your mamma was your mamma, krolik,” I said. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

     She began to toss things back into the trunk, and I replaced all the contents of the purse from my lap. “I’ll wait until Vic gets home. We’ll talk about it then.”

     “Sure, that’s the thing to do.” I felt frozen in place. Only Peggy believed that Vic was coming home.

     She slammed the lid on the trunk and turned on me almost in fury. “Don’t tell anyone. Not even Dutch and Miss Grace.”

     “Of course not.”

     “Not a word.”

     “You didn’t tell anyone anything about me,” I reminded her.

     She nodded. “You’re a good friend, Peaches. I’m glad you came home.”

     When Bix came home in March, he brought me a ring and asked me to marry him. I said yes. “Sister, are you sure?” Edward asked me carefully when I announced our plans to marry on Bix’s next leave.

     “Very sure,” I said. “I know what I’m doing, Edward.”

     Peggy hugged me and told me how happy she was for me, but she wasn’t thinking very clearly these days. Francie was livid. “You’re crazy!” she said. “Bix Matthews won’t do anything but make you miserable, just the way he did in high school!”

     This time Peggy wasn’t around, and I did slap Francie. She stared at me in disbelief and huffed off.

     When I went to see Jo Matthews to talk about the wedding, she didn’t mince words. “I don’t approve of this,” she said. “And not for the reasons you think. You’re a victim of your parents as much as I am.”

     I felt myself flush hotly. “I know Mr. Matthews didn’t take that money. Dutch says everybody in Danford knows it and that Dan Kroll rigged things to get him convicted. But that’s not my fault.”

     “Of course, it’s not. You’re a beautiful, talented young woman, Marian, and a gifted teacher from what I hear. You don’t have to rush into a marriage for convenience.”

     “That’s not what I’m doing,” I protested.

     “Isn’t it? All your friends are married and have babies, and that’s what you want, too. If your fiance hadn’t been killed. . .”

     “I’d rather not discuss that,” I said.

     “Grace Tankersley tells me that he was an exceptionally fine young man who loved you deeply. To be perfectly frank with you, Marian, my son isn’t an exceptionally fine young man, and the only person he loves deeply is himself.”

     I couldn’t believe what she was saying.

     “It isn’t entirely his fault,” she went on. “He suffered more than I realized when his father went to prison, and he’s never really gotten over the humiliation. He’ll spend the rest of his life trying to make up to himself for everything he believes he lost. I’ve no doubt that he’ll be extremely wealthy in time. But you of all people should know that wealth doesn’t bring happiness.”

     “I can be the wife he wants,” I said.

     “The wife he needs, you mean. All the social graces he needs to help him get ahead.”

     I had no answer because I knew what she said was true.

     We were married by the county judge in April on the mezzanine of the Spur, and Valerie organized a pleasant reception. I asked Peggy to stand up with me, and Bix brought one of his friends from Randolph to be best man. Not without thinking about the formal dress packed away somewhere in the attic at the ranch, I bought a white suit at Baker-Hemphill in San Angelo and a stylish hat with a small veil in front. I even found a cobbler in San Angelo who could adapt a pair of low-heeled dress shoes for my brace.

     Bix was dashing in his dress uniform. Edward gave me away, but I knew he still had his doubts. Jo Matthews and Laura smiled and said all the right things. Miss Grace and Dutch came, but Francie didn’t. I had to be satisfied with that.

     Bix had made reservations for us at the Cactus Hotel in San Angelo. I had a champagne-colored satin nightgown that hid my brace, but Bix seemed oddly unimpressed and spent a long time in the bathroom. I finally gave up on him sweeping me off my feet and sat down on the edge of the bed to take off my brace. I was just lifting my leg from the floor when he came back. He couldn’t hide the look of revulsion on his face as he glimpsed my withered leg, and I quickly flipped the sheet over it. You’ve seen this before, I thought. What’s the problem now?

It didn’t take him long to do what had to be done. Then he turned over with his back to me and fell asleep, or pretended to. I lay there with my gown bunched up under my breasts, aching for something I couldn’t explain, and feeling totally alone.

     “Well, you’re pregnant,” Doc snapped as he sat down across from me. “What happened to your other baby?”

     I felt weak. “My. . .”

     “Hells bells, girl, I know when a woman’s had a baby before!”

     “It died,” I said.

     “Why?”

     “I don’t know. It was born dead.”

     “Full-term?”

     “It was early. Two months.” Lying had always come easy for me. I just had to remember what I’d said and not get caught.

     “Problems with the pregnancy?”

     “I was sick all the time.”

     “What about your labor?”

     “I don’t remember. Just that it hurt.”

     “I take it you weren’t married to the father.”

     “No, and you’d better not spread this around.”

     “Bix doesn’t know?”

     “Of course not!”

     “He didn’t know you weren’t intact when you married?”

     “I suppose not.”

      “That boy always was an idealistic fool!” He leaned back in his chair. “I doubt you’ll carry this baby to term, and if you do, you’ll die trying to have it. The best thing to do is hope for an early miscarriage.”

     “Haven’t you heard that only the good die young?” I struggled to my feet. “And if you tell anybody else about this, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

       He glared at me. “I’ll see you back here in a month.”

     I didn’t miss the fear in Peggy’s reaction when I told her about the baby. I didn’t tell her what Doc had said, but I did say that I wanted to wait awhile before I told the others about the baby.

     “Not even Jo?” she asked in surprise.

     “Pretty soon,” I said. “Pretty soon.”

     I joined Bix in San Antonio for a few weeks when school was out. He wasn’t happy when I told him I was pregnant. “This just isn’t the right time,” were the first words out of this mouth. “I’ve been asked to go to Germany as part of the war crimes prosecution team.”

     “Could I go with you?”

     “No, no wives or families, but…”

     I felt relief. “Then there’s no problem, is there?”

     “How will it look for me to go off and leave you now?”

     “If that’s all you’re worried about, don’t be. It’s a wonderful opportunity for you. I want you to take it. I mean that, Bix. You know I do. I’ve been reading in the newspaper about these trials. They’re important, and they’ll be a a golden opportunity for you professionally.”

     “It’ll definitely look good on my resume when I starting looking for a place in a law firm, that’s for sure.”

     “You passed the bar with flying colors. All those missions and the Distinguished Flying Cross, too. You’ll come home to offers from the best firms.” I knew how to stoke his ego and placate him.

     He nodded. “Yes. Yes, all that’s true.”

     “Then go and don’t look back. I’ll be fine.”

     Maybe I would, and maybe I wouldn’t, but whatever happened, Bix would get what he wanted. With luck, I would, too. .

Chapter Twenty-Two

      As it turned out, what to do next ended up being taken out of out hands. A couple of Saturdays after Min Bailey’s death, we were sitting around in our pajamas drinking hot cocoa and watching Rosie play on the rug at our feet, when a knock on the door sent us scrambling for our robes.

     The man introduced himself as George Cummings, a lawyer from San Angelo, and apologized for coming unnannounced on a Saturday. “I haven’t had a chance to even call,” he said, “but I drew up Ermina Bailey’s will about a year ago, and I just heard she’d died.”

     “Aunt Min?” Peggy’s mouth formed a surprised 0.

     “May I come in?”

     Peggy’s nose turned pink. “Oh, yes! Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

     Rosie had fled to my lap, leaving her blocks scattered for the man to step over and around. As soon as he sat down, she deserted me for Peggy, but I was getting used to that now.

     “As I said, I drew up Mrs. Bailey’s will about a year ago, and when I heard she’d died, I got it out. You’re Peggy Bailey, am I right?”

     “Peggy Gianchinni now, but my name was Bailey.”

     “You were a little difficult to track down.” He reached into his briefcase and brought out a folder. Mrs. Bailey left everything to you, it seems. She had a small bank account, only a few hundred dollars, and the boarding house. As soon as I probate the will, it’s all yours.”

     Peggy looked at me as if asking for help, but I didn’t know what to say.

     “Mine?”

     “She didn’t have anyone else.”

     “We weren’t even related really. I was her husband’s niece.”

     “Nevertheless, she left everything to you. I understand the boarding house is in pretty bad condition, but I also know through the grapevine that Joseph Cambaugh who owns the chemical company is wanting to expand and would like the property.”

     “Cambaugh?”

     Then I remembered. “That man who came around asking you all those questions when we were in high school?”

     Peggy stared at me. “I...I’ve seen him in town a couple of times lately, but he didn’t see me. I don’t think he did anyway.”

     “You didn’t tell me that,” I accused her. “What if he’d come here to the house?”

     Peggy shook her head.

     Mr. Cummings seemed confused. “I just brought up the name because of the possible property sale. I assumed you wouldn’t want the house.”

     “I don’t!” Peggy squeaked. “I don’t want it!”

     “I’ll file the will for probate on Monday, and you’ll need to be in court to sign any papers. Then I’ll put you in touch with Mr. Cambaugh, and…”

     “No!” Peggy jumped up. “I don’t want to talk to him!”

     “You don’t have to,” I told her. “We’ll call Dutch to take care of things.”

     “Dutch?” Mr. Cummings asked.

     “Dutch Tankersley. He’ll be in court with Peggy whenever, and you can deal with him.”

     When the man had gone—actually, he fled from two crazy pajama-clad women—Peggy and I sat staring at each other. “Call the ranch,” I said finally. “Dutch will know what to do.”

     Dutch and Miss Grace came in that afternoon. Thankfully, Rosie was napping, so we all sat in our living room trying to make sense of things.

“I knew about Cambaugh,” Dutch said finally. “Bascom let me know about him bothering you, and the next time I ran across him in town, I asked him about it. He didn’t say much, but I got the feeling he thought he’d known your mother.”

     “Mamma? He couldn’t have known her. She never went out with anyone. It was just the two of us.”

     “I told him not to bother you again. He was around several times after that, but you and Vic were in school in Austin. Then I ran into him a second time while you and Vic were in Brazil. He asked bout you again and seemed mad about it for some reason.”

     It was all too much for Peggy. I’d never seen her really cry for Vic, but now the tears came out like there was no stopping them. Miss Grace took her in her arms and sat there until the flood stopped.

     “I’ll take care of things,” Dutch said when Peggy came up for air.“You did the right thing to call me. I do think we should go take a look at the house before you make any decision. I’ll get someone to come in and appraise it so you’ll get top dollar, although the last time I was by there, it looked like it was in bad shape. We’ll ask Abe Birnbaum to look at the furniture. He’s having trouble getting stock for his secondhand store. Everybody’s holding on to everything right now like they did during the depression.” He stood up. “After that, you can sell if you want to. The money will make a nice little nest egg for you and Rosie.”

     Peggy’s slate gray eyes fixed his, not with anger but with resolution. “And Vic.”

     Dutch nodded. “And Vic.” The pain in his voice broke my heart.

     “The house was full of antiques,” Peggy told me after she went with Dutch and Mr. Birnbaum to look things over. “Mr. Birnbaum is bringing in someone from San Angelo and promised to make sure I got what everything was worth. We even went up in the attic, but it was empty except for a trunk. Mamma’s trunk. Can you believe it? The hospital shipped her things to Aunt Min, and she never told me. It’s been up there all these years.” She smiled then. “And Mr. Birmbaum is getting someone to bring it here so I can have Mamma’s things.” She had a far-off look. “After all these years, Peaches. Mamma’s things. I’m going to have them again.”

     Mr. Birnbaum personally accompanied the trunk to our place the next Saturday and had his helpers place it against the wall in our small living room. “I had them break the lock because there wasn’t a key,” he said. “But you can get a new lock if you ever need one. Then he handed Peggy a check. “Two antique dealers in San Angelo bought everything in the house.”

     Peggy took the check in her hands. “Five thousand…I can’t believe it!”

     Mr. Birnbaum patted her. “You deserve every penny, little Peggy.”

     “You’ve done so much...I need to pay you for your trouble.”

     He shook his head. “It was my pleasure. I watched you grow up, remember. I knew about your struggle and the bad times and couldn’t do anything about them. But you’ve done well for yourself, and I’m proud of you. Now put that money in the bank, and when Vic comes home, the two of you and little Rosie will have a good start.”

     Peggy cried again, but I silently blessed the man for bringing something more important than the check. He’d brought Peggy hope.

     The trunk, exuding a musty smell from all those years in Min Bailey’s attic, sat unopened for a week. One afternoon I picked up Rosie because Peggy was scrubbing for an emergency surgery with Doc, and we stopped at the hardware store for some oil to wipe off the trunk. With Rosie walking now, I could do errands on the way home from school without unloading the buggy. I tied a long blue ribbon around her wrist to keep her from wandering away.

     “That baby is growing like a weed,” Mr. Samuels said as he rang up the bottle.

     “She’s almost three.” I smoothed her blonde curls.

     “I know Peggy’s glad for the company and the help,” he went on. “Dutch says you two have the old Bates place fixed up real nice.”

     “We like it.”

     “What’s the oil for?”

     “Oh, I want to wipe down an old trunk we acquired,” I said. “One of us bound to need it to pack up after the war.”

     “It shouldn’t be that long now. I just hope the Japs give up before we lose our boys going in there.”

     I thought of Tank. “So do I, Mr. Samuels.” I laid the money on the counter. “I’m not glad your grandson was wounded, but I’m glad he’s home for good now.”

     “Billy’s getting along great. He’ll be as good as new before long. He wants to go back, but I’m betting...hoping...he doesn’t get the chance.”

     “We’re all hoping for that.” I picked up the oil and the receipt. “Say thank you and goodbye, Rosie.”

     She dimpled. “Bye bye, sir.” She waved her little hand in a way that made my heart melt.

     Peggy couldn’t believe how a little oil had transformed the dingy trunk. “It looks almost like it did when it sat in our apartment in Lubbock. Mamma used it as a table for a lamp.” She surveyed it again when she came back from putting Rosie to bed. “I guess I ought to open in.”

     “I don’t know what you’re waiting for,” I said, scooting the ottoman to where I could watch.

     The smell of cheap perfume drifted up as soon as she opened the lid. Then I saw that the bottle had broken and soaked the neat stack of handkerchiefs in one corner of the tray. emptied the tray first, laying the handkerchiefs, comb and brush and tarnished silver-plated mirror neatly on the table. She took out a porcelain dancer wrapped in an old apron. Standing on her toes in the palm of Peggy’s hand, her delicate arms curved around her head, she had a certain charm. “Mamma said she’d found her in a five-and-dime in Chicago when she was allowed to leave the orphanage for an hour on Saturday afternoon. “She saved the money they paid her for watching the younger children.”

     “I didn’t know your mother grew up in an orphanage,” I said.

     “From the time she was four. She said she thinks her parents died in some sort of epidemic, but she didn’t really remember. But she said they were good to her in the orphanage. They didn’t have much, but they never went hungry. And they always managed to pay the older girls a few pennies for extra work.”

     She held up a framed picture. “This is my father. Mamma kept his picture on her dressing table.”

     “He was quite handsome,” I said honestly. I pointed to the fine script across the bottom of the picture. All my love, Cliff. “And he loved your mother.”

     “She loved him, too. I wish I’d known him.” Peggy lifted a carved wooden box. “She kept this on her dressing table, too. I think my father made it, but I’m not sure.” She showed me the glass beads and filigree earrings and a cameo brooch that she said might have belonged to her mother’s mother. A thin gold wedding ring, almost worn through on one side, came out last. “She never took it off. I haven't even been to her grave in Carlsbad."

     “We’ll go the next time I have enough gas coupons,” I promised her.

     She put the glass beads around her neck and lifted out the empty tray. Beneath it were her mother’s clothes, including a flowered silk kimono. “She used to wear this on Sundays when she didn’t have to work,” Peggy said softly. “I’d sit by her and stroke her arm. It felt so good.”

     Another box held some baby pictures, two baby dresses, a pair of shoes with holes in them, a lace cap, and all the little gifts and cards she’d made at school and brought home to her Mamma.

     The last thing in the trunk was a bundle wrapped in a woman’s old-fashioned black skirt. Inside was a matching jacket, a white silk blouse, a pair of high-button black shoes, and a green brocade handbag. She emptied the handbag into my lap where sat on the ottoman. It contained a pair of white kid gloves, a small silver mirror with the initials MRG engraved on the back, a comb, a lace handkerchief, a paper folder with a railroad ticket and a claim check for trunk, and finally a plum-colored velvet case that opened into a double picture frame.

     The left side held a picture of a young woman with a man wearing an army uniform. On the other side was the same young woman seated alone. Her hair was piled high on her head, and there was a haughty tilt to her chin. I gasped. We’d both seen the picture before. It was the same one that Joseph Cambaugh had shown Peggy the first summer she worked in the drugstore.

     I could almost see Peggy shaking her head and hear her saying, “No, sir, I don’t know her.

     But now, under new circumstances, we both knew. Peggy was looking at herself.

Chapter Twenty-One

     The Christmas of 1943 was the strangest one I’d ever had. Peggy and Rosie went to the ranch, of course, but I had enough gas coupons to drive to San Angelo.

     It was hard to find toys that year. Everything was going for war materials. Miss Grace made new clothes for the girls’ rag dolls, and Edward found some little cars for Will in a department store in San Angelo.

     I’d planned to stay in San Angelo through the first, but when Edward and Valerie were invited to a party on New Year’s Eve, I decided to go home and get a head start on Macbeth, which I planned to read with my seniors in January. Just outside of town, I passed the package store. Later, I couldn’t explain what made me stop, because I hadn’t had a drink in two years. I hadn’t even wanted one.

     By mid-afternoon, I was already very drunk, but I knew there was plenty of time to sober up before Peggy came in from the ranch the next day. So when I heard her key in the door that evening, I grabbed my bottle and glass and tried to make it to the bedroom before she saw me. Unfortunately, I forgot to latch my brace and pitched forward head first into the sharp edge of the coffee table.

     “Peaches, what in the world. . .” She was on her knees beside me, and I could hear her sniffing the air. “You’re. . .you’re drunk!” She rolled me over carefully. “And you’re bleeding!”

     “I’m okay,” I mumbled. “Want to go to bed.”

     She pushed and pulled me into a semi-upright position. “That’s a nasty cut. It needs stitches.” She pulled my hair as she examined my head again. “Three, maybe four stitches.”

     I tried to get away from her hands. “Leave me alone.”

     “You stink worse than Aunt Min!” she said angrily. “It’s a good thing I left Rosie at the ranch. If I’d known you were home, I’d have figured you could watch her for me when I go to work tomorrow, but you couldn’t watch a fly on the wall like this!”

     “Leave me alone, dammit!”

     “I can stitch you up,” she said, more to herself than to me. “I’ll go get what I need from the hospital, and Doc won’t have to know you’re drunk.” She got up. “Where are the keys to your car?”

     “Not going anywhere,” I said thickly.

     She got down on the floor again and took off my brace. I heard her drop it on the floor across the room, and if I could’ve gotten my fingernails into her, I’d have gladly scratched her eyes out.

     As soon as she was out the door, I reached for the bottle, but it had spilled when I fell. I felt nauseated, then realized that I needed desperately to go to the bathroom, but I was helpless to move. When Peggy got back, before she could even start taking care of the cut, she had to clean me up, and afterwards she had to clean the floor. By the time she came to the bedroom to check on me, I was too humiliated to do anything but lie in bed and cry

     “Peaches, why?” she asked, sitting down carefully on the edge of her bed.

     “I’m so alone,” I moaned, turning my head away from her.

     “You have Rosie and me and everyone at the ranch, and your students adore you.”

     “You don’t understand.”

     “I’m trying.” I looked around the room. “Do you have another bottle? You know I’ll find it.”

     “In the closet.”

     “I’m going to pour it out.”

     “I sure as hell can’t stop you!”

     She found the bottle and said she was going to empty it down the kitchen sink. She came back with a glass of Coca-Cola. “This’ll help settle your stomach,” she said, putting her hand behind me head so I could sip from the glass. “I’ve known you’ve been unhappy for awhile, but I didn’t know what to do.”

     “You can’t do anything. No one can.”

     “You’re not helping things any by drinking.”

     “What would you know about it?”

     “You could’ve really hurt yourself when you fell. You could’ve broken some ribs. . .punctured a lung. . .”

     “I don’t care.”

     “But I do!”

     “Too bad.”

     “Peaches. . .”

     “Leave me alone, Peggy. I should’ve told you I was a bitch to live with.”

     She got up. “I’ll check on you later.”

     Apologies had never come easy for me, but I owed Peggy a big one, and I made it sincerely. “I won’t do it again,” I added.

     She’d left Rosie at the ranch after telling them I was sick, so it was just the two of us. She regarded me thoughtfully from across the kitchen table. “What did you do it this time?”

     “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Sometimes it’s like I’m suffocating inside a huge black cloud, and it terrifies me. A drink helps me not feel so afraid.”

     “You had more than one,” she accused me gently.

     “Yes, I did, and I’d have had more if you hadn’t come home!” I returned angrily. I could only grovel so much.

     She played with her coffee cup in silence.

     “I’d never do anything like that when Rosie’s around. . .when I’m responsible for her. I’m not stupid.”

     “Maybe coming back to Danford wasn’t such a good idea.”

     “Do you want me to move out?” I asked coldly.

     The tip of her nose turned pink. “Of course not! I just meant that maybe being back in Danford had something to do with that big black cloud.”

     “No. It followed me to DC.”

     “I don’t want you to go, Peaches. I love having you here. I was so lonely in that garage apartment, and this place is so much more cheerful. You and Valerie did a wonderful job fixing it up! I feel real cozy. . .almost like I feel when Vic’s around.”

     “I’m glad, krolik. And I’m telling you the truth. What happened the other night won’t happen again.”

     She looked up at me then with those wide, honest eyes, and I almost flinched at the vulnerability I saw in them. “All right,” she said softly. “If you’re really feeling better, I’ll go get Rosie tomorrow morning.”

     I thought I’d feel happier when I was taking care of Rosie again, but the big black cloud kept hovering around. Rosie was mine. . .or she had been once. I’d given her away, and now a part of me was sorry. It was painful to realize that she was better off with Peggy and Vic, but that’s the way it was. I’d never tell them. Never tell anybody. That night I went to bed early and wished desperately that Peggy hadn’t poured out that other bottle.

     The year began well enough. As spring approached, I wondered what I was going to do with my summer. When summer came, I didn’t have to wonder. The Allies invaded France early in June, and we all knew Vic was probably in the middle of things. Then the dreaded telegram arrived at the front door one afternoon just about the time Peggy got home from the hospital.

     I’d never forget how Peggy just stood there with the telegram in her hand, so still she might be dead and still standing somehow. I got to her as quickly as I could and led her back to the sofa. “I can’t,” she said finally, holding the envelope out to me. “I can’t, Peaches.” Her eyes were dry, but there was something in them that frightened me more than tears would have.

     My hands were shaking, but I managed to slit the top of the envelope with the handle of my spoon and take out the message inside. Regret to inform you. . .your husband. . .reported missing in action 10 July. . .should more information become available. . .” I crumpled the paper in my fist.

     “Missing,” I said, but it came out a whisper. “Missing, krolik, not dead.”

     Her head went down the way it used to back in high school. “Oh, Vic,” she moaned softly. “Oh, Vic.”

     I called the ranch to tell them what had happened. Dutch and Miss Grace made it to town in record time. “I have to show up at work tomorrow,” Peggy insisted when they suggested taking her back to the ranch. “We’re short-handed as it is, and I’m the only scrub nurse if Doc has to do surgery.”

     “We could take Rosie for a while,” Miss Grace said.

     Peggy nodded. “Yes. Yes, that would help.”

     At two, Rosie was in perpetual motion, and it was getting harder for me to corral her even for a few hours, so having her safe at the ranch for a few days was better for everyone. “That’s the right decision,” I told Peggy. “She’ll be fine, and you can have some time to process things.”

     When they’d gone, we sat in the living room in silence. “He’s missing, krolik, that’s all. He’ll turn up.”

     She nodded. “I know he will. We’re so much a part of each other, Peaches. I’d feel it inside if he…”

     “Of course, you would.”

     We got up the next morning and went our respective ways. That night, after she’d called the ranch to check on Rosie, she told me about Min Bailey. “Someone found her at the bottom of the stairs. She’d been there a while. Doc says it’s a stroke, and her liver’s gone, too.”

     I didn’t trust myself to offer an opinion.

     “He said I didn’t have to take care of her, that he’d get a temp from San Angelo, but I told him no.”

     This time I exploded. “She nearly killed you!”

     “She needs me, Peaches. She’s all alone.”

     “That’s good enough for her.”

     “Besides, I already started taking care of her. Ruby Bullock and I managed to get her reasonably clean and comfortable, and I think she recognized me. She can’t talk, but…”

     “I wouldn’t do it.”

     She looked straight at me. “I know you wouldn’t, but I have to. It’s the last chance I’ll get to put the past behind me forever.”

     Min Bailey hung on overnight and through the next day. Peggy said she’d spent as much time with her as she could and told her about going to college and then to Brazil and about Rosie. “Then I told her about Vic, and there were tears in her eyes.”

     I shook my head in silence.

     “I told her that I forgave her and that I hoped she’d forgive me for not understanding how she was even more alone than I was. I had Vic, but she didn’t have anyone. Maybe if I’d understood that, things would’ve been better.”

     “You were fifteen years old! She knocked you around, and she didn’t protect you from that boarder who…”

     “I don’t want to talk about that, Peaches. It’s over.”1"

     “Of course, it’s not over! You'll live with the physical effects of what he did for the rest of your life

     “I’m all right. I need you to do something for me. Stop by the drugstore and get some nice lotion for me to take to the hospital. I remember how good it felt when Mrs. Friedman brought me some, and Miss Grace rubbed my arms and back.”

     I nodded. “I’ll do it tomorrow on the way home from school.”

     Three days later, Min Bailey died peacefully—or so Peggy said. “I told her that God loved her and that I loved her, and she just sort of closed her eyes. Doc called Friedman’s and apparently she’d paid for everything in advance. We’ll just do graveside for her tomorrow.”

     Only Doc, Brother Baxter and his wife, Miss Grace and Dutch, and Peggy and I went to the cemetery. I only went for Peggy, and she seemed to know and appreciate it.

     When it was over, Doc told Peggy to take a couple of days off. “If I have an emergency, I’ll call you.”

     So we went back to the ranch for the weekend and tried to figure out what was next.