Lone Star Rising

She nodded again and closed the door.

Zack, old buddy, what are you doing? He trotted down the uneven sidewalk toward his pickup, fat, cold raindrops smacking his face and hands as he unlocked the driver’s side door.

He was pursuing her, that’s what. A woman so pregnant it practically hurt to look at her. A woman with three boys. A woman who was undoubtedly still in love with her dead husband. He climbed in his truck and swept his wet hair back in frustration. A woman who, it turned out, just happened to be Zack Trueblood’s lifelong ideal.

CHAPTER FOUR

UP EARLY. Despite bouts of insomnia, I keep telling myself I’m doing better day by day. I only think of Danny every day now instead of every hour. I can’t figure out if all widows do this, or if it’s worse for me because I’m carrying Danny’s child, but it’s like I can still feel him with me sometimes.

Like yesterday, when Zack Trueblood was leaving. I swear, I got the funniest feeling, like a subtle presence or something. As if Danny’s ghost was swirling around us or something. Danny used to get so jealous if I so much as talked to another guy. And when Zack grabbed my arm, I felt the strangest conflicting sensations. Like I was too aware of how good it felt to be touched again, and then immediately I felt sort of guilty, like I was still married or something.

Maybe it was just all this static electricity in the air. We had thunderstorms all night. I woke up about a kazillion times. Kept hearing noises. I have like a double whammy of paranoia—the usual kind that sets in when your pregnant and anxious about anything that might threaten your baby, plus a good dose of the usual widow’s insecurities on top of that. It got really windy again a minute ago and now there’s lightning like crazy. Well, time to quit scribbling in this diary and get ready for work, storm or no storm.

I hate leaving the boys to get themselves off to school when the weather’s like this.

And you, little baby, you just stay all tucked away safe and sound, right here inside your mommy. Whatever am I gonna do when you decide to come out?

ROBBIE CLOSED the cover on her journal—a cheap thing with a picture of a puppy on it. She tucked it under her pillow, then she swung her feet over the side of her bed. A chill ran through her as she pulled free of the soft sheets and her toes touched down on cold floorboards. She vowed again that she would find her area rugs and spread them out tonight. But each day her good intentions slipped through her fingers like shifting sand, where one urgent thing morphed into another and no task was ever completed until finally, each and every night, she fell into bed, exhausted.

Taking this job was probably a bad idea, but what choice did she have? If she had waited, Parson would have been forced to fill the position with somebody else. A twist of resentment curled up again as she thought how irresponsible she’d been to let Danny cut corners by dropping his life insurance. But after years of marriage she’d been worn down, arguing with the man about every single hare-brained decision he made.

In the bathroom adjoining to the cavernous, high-ceilinged master bedroom, she studied herself in the oval mirror above the pedestal sink. She’d slept a little better last night—a few hours—with that window properly repaired, but even so she was developing permanent dark circles under her eyes.

This bathroom—there were two upstairs, one downstairs, and none of them were in good repair—was dingy, as bland as clabbered milk. White on white on white, from the tile to the tub to the limp curtain someone had left hanging crookedly at the narrow window. She made some mental notes about adding color as she washed her face.

Most small towns in the Hill Country had old houses like this one: rambling nineteenth-century monstrosities that had devolved into bleak rentals, passed from hand to hand. In the towns where historic restoration caught on, these houses got rebirthed into awesome show-places. Painted Ladies, the civic-types called them. Robbie could envision this one that way, a beauty that shone with civic pride, only three blocks off Main Street.

After she patted her face dry, she attacked her hair with a big brush. Then her fingers went to work, efficiently plaiting the masses of reddish blond curls into a neat French braid.

As she braided, Robbie continued envisioning the house through artistic eyes. What this bathroom needed was one dramatic focal point. Like a giant stained-glass window instead of that scratched-up square of frosted Plexiglas that covered the window above the tub.

And wouldn’t it be cute, she thought, to find an old velvet straight-backed sofa to tuck under the high windows in the kitchen? Wouldn’t it be nice to refinish all these deep window boxes in this house in a coat of purest white and just leave the panes bare and let the sun pour in? Wouldn’t polished mahogany countertops set off those high kitchen cabinets?

When she caught herself thinking like this, she always brought herself up short. Number one, she wasn’t living in an HGTV show. This was life on the broke side of widowhood. Number two, old man Mestor, the crook, would never consent to doing anything expensive or upbeat to the house. Number three…baby.

The little darling kicked as Robbie pulled the stretchy panel of her well-used maternity jeans up over her belly. For a top she pulled on a boxy white shirt. Yesterday, Parson had gently objected to the overalls. Whatever.

She struggled into a pair of thick white socks and slipped her feet into her athletic shoes, and when she had trouble bending to lace them, she suffered a brief sting of tears. Danny had always tied her shoes for her this late in her pregnancies. Stop it, she told herself. You have a lot to do before you go to work.

Downstairs, she chugged down a glass of orange juice. Breakfast could be grabbed at the diner later. She put out bowls and spoons for the boys’ cereal, set out the sack lunches she’d made the night before and stapled a detailed note with instructions to Mark’s, then put the stapler right back where it belonged in her “grand central,” her super-organized lap desk. She had done the tole painting that decorated the flip top herself. Very cute, she often thought—an elaborate pattern, a sort of blend between country quilt and Mexican mandala. Inside the lap desk was the simple system she’d been using to run this family for years and it had never failed her. With her sudden move to town, she was grateful that the whole thing was portable enough to be tossed onto the seat of her minivan.

Lightning flashed, and when hard rain lashed at the window Zack Trueblood had installed only yesterday, Robbie’s thoughts went back to him. She had to admit she longed to see him, if she was honest with herself. Lord, she hated this business of being alone. She had never spent one day alone in her life. Danny had asked her to go on a hayride when they were in the eighth grade and they’d stayed together like hand-in-glove ever after.

Other guys had tried to get her attention, even tried to win her affections, but Robbie was loyal to Danny, always—even later when his irresponsibility began to let her down. Now that he was gone, she felt incredibly disloyal for the way she had been thinking about Zack Trueblood. But my gosh, that firefighter had the dreamiest coal-black eyes on God’s green earth. Well, this was plain silly.

She grabbed her jacket and headed out into the storm. The rain, a driving Hill Country deluge that would flood hard-packed roads and wash out rocky ravines, hit her face and wet her hair despite the hood on her little red jacket. Her front got soaked, too, because the jacket was too small to cover her belly.

She slammed the door of her van and plucked at the soaked white fabric where her belly button poked out like a gumdrop. Nice. Thank God she would slap on an apron as soon as she got to work.

The minivan had to be cranked three times before it sputtered to life. A new worry: car trouble. She couldn’t afford that now. Then it hit her. Who would drive her to the hospital when the time came? She only had five weeks. The days were racing by like ticks of a second hand. Daddy would come, of course, whenever she called him, day or night. But the McBride farm was a good seven miles out of town, and with a fourth baby, labor could be shockingly rapid.

Besides, if she called Daddy, Mother would insist on coming with him. There would be no peaceful labor and delivery then. Oh, no. Mother would boss. She’d boss Daddy. The nurses. Maybe even the doctor. Most of all Marynell would boss Robbie.

Peering out the rain-sheeted windshield and thinking of her mother’s pinched face, Robbie muttered aloud, “Hurry up and get back, Markie. I’ll feel a darn sight safer then.” She could not wait until her sister returned from her honeymoon. Everything would be all right then. None of Robbie’s other babies had come early. Markie would be home in plenty of time and then her strong, competent sister would help her.

It was only three short blocks to the gravel alley that ran behind the Hungry Aggie, but still Robbie breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled into the small lot out back, amazed that she’d made it without stalling out in high water. She slammed the van door again and dashed around rivulets of water and enormous puddles to the back door, where Parson stood holding it open.

“Come on, girl!” he hollered over the din of the pattering rain. “Before you catch your death.”

“You ought not to have come in on a morning like this,” he scolded when Robbie got inside. He was already helping her out of her jacket. For decades, Virgil Parson had been the only black man living or working in Five Points. But Parson never mentioned that fact, and neither did anybody else. He actually lived in another town with a sweet wife and numerous kids and grandkids. He drove to work in Five Points because at the Hungry Aggie he got to do what he did best—dish up food like an old-time chuck wagon cook, though he’d actually learned the art of slinging out large quantities of food for hungry men while serving in the Navy.

“I know how these rainy mornings go,” Robbie said as she smoothed back her damp, frizzy hair. “All the farmers will come into town to get away from their wives. And they’ll end up sitting right here in our booths, jawing ’til the rain stops. We will be busy filling coffee cups until noon.”

Parson chuckled as if that idea plumb tickled him. “That’s a fact. And it’s why I came in early to make some extra pies.” His black eyes sparkled in a face as furrowed as a fresh-plowed field.

Virgil Parson loved nothing so much as being prepared and making money. And he made buckets full off the regulars at the Hungry Aggie, not to mention the seasonal tourists who wandered from town to town in the Hill Country, looking for that perfect piece of chess pie. At the Hungry Aggie they found the chess pie and much more. Barbecued chicken, baked ham, sweet potato pudding, red beans and rice, hot rolls with peach peel jelly.

Robbie tied on one of the clean white aprons that the efficient old cook had already hung on hooks next to the walk-in refrigerator. Her wet shirt felt clammy against her tummy, but she was relieved that the moisture didn’t soak through the starched apron.

“You’re getting better at this, girl. You even beat old Nattie Rose in here this morning,” Parson informed her.

Robbie gave Parson a grimace. Nattie Rose was not old. She went to high school with Robbie’s younger sister, Markie. And Nattie Rose was never late. “Hope she’s not trapped out on some low water bridge,” Robbie said. Nattie Rose and her husband Earl lived on Earl’s family’s ranch, way out on a remote ranch road. Without Nattie Rose as a rudder, Robbie’s job would be hell today.

She and Parson fell into the rhythm of work in the brightly lit kitchen. He cut biscuits. She filled the two big coffeemakers. Together, they laid out bacon strips onto large jelly-roll pans. Parson always slow-baked the bacon in the kitchen’s huge cast-iron ovens because he claimed that was the aroma that brought in “The Boys,” as he called the customers.

When they’d gotten things organized, Parson pulled up a stool for Robbie to perch upon. “You and Hootcheecoo better take a load off while you all can.”

Parson, who made up a nickname for everybody, had taken to calling the baby Hootcheecoo, which amused Robbie, since she hadn’t been able to come up with a proper name for the baby yet. In the same way that Frances, Roberta and Margaret McBride were named after their aunts, Robbie’s three sons had been named the masculine versions of the McBride sisters. Frank after Frankie, Rob after Robbie, and Mark after Markie. Robbie supposed she would be breaking up the family rhythm with this fourth surprise baby.

Their routine had been for Parson to scramble Robbie some eggs as soon as the grill was hot. He set a pat of butter to sizzling, tossed on peppers, onions and tomatoes, poured the whipped eggs over the pile and added a handful of chopped cilantro and a dash of picante sauce. Robbie’s mouth started to water. Parson cooked a finer omelet than any four-star chef.

“Did you get that window fixed?” He wiped his hands on his apron while the eggs started to bubble.

“Yes,” Robbie said glumly. Not because she was thinking about the window, but because of the man who had fixed it. Thinking about how he was too gorgeous, and she was too frumpy. She was starting to wish Zack Trueblood had never come around to further complicate her life.

“What’s wrong?” Parson eyed her, then poked a spatula at the edge of the omelet. “You needin’ a little cash money for that window, child?”

“No.” Well, actually she did, but that was not Parson’s problem, bless his generous old heart. “Zack Trueblood fixed it for free.”

“Zack Trueblood? The one that comes in here and eats up everything but the sink? That big firefighter boy that looks about half Indian?”

Robbie winced. Nobody would dare hazard the mention of race to Parson, but such matters weren’t sacrosanct to the old man. His were the old ways, plain-spoken, uncomplicated by worries about such matters as political correctness.

“What’s ailing you? You look like you just bit a sour pickle.” The spatula halted in midair as if a thought hit him. “You ain’t having pains already, are you?”

“No.” Robbie smoothed the crisp white apron over her tummy then squirmed up onto the stool. “It’s just…oh, it’s nothing.”

“It is too something.” Parson plunked a heavy plate with the steaming omelet before her. “And you ought not to hold it in, lest you pop or somethin’.”