Born Under The Lone Star

She swallowed against a thickening in her throat that threatened to choke her. She could feel her cheeks beginning to burn and was relieved when her mother turned her back to them again and resumed working on the potatoes with a renewed vengeance.

Justin was coming to Five Points? To live? Right next door to Robbie? This was impossible, the cruelest blow fate could render. What kind of wormhole of fate had she been sucked into? If she hadn’t promised her sister she would stay until the baby came, she’d high-tail it back to Austin right now.

“Maybe you two should get together, while you’re both here in Five Points and all. Bill Keenan over at the barbershop said the guy’s single again. It wouldn’t hurt you to be social. Kilgore’s a decent fella, good-looking, kind of in your league, I reckon.”

“I…” Markie finally found her voice, “I’m afraid I won’t have time for any socializing. I’ll be too busy at Robbie’s place.”

Marynell’s thin arms jerked with three vicious swipes of the slicer before she spoke. “Your daughter has some fool idea about taking Robbie and the boys back to their farm.”

“Oh, really?” P.J. poured his tea. His manner remained evenhanded and accepting, as always. “Is that what Robbie wants?”

“Yes. She said so. I’m sorry, Daddy. I know you were looking forward to having the boys here with you for a while. But Robbie’s got to do what’s right for her.” And I do, too, Markie thought. She would protect her heart. After all these years, the thought that she still needed to made her incredibly sad.

“Well, it’s her choice. I guess that means you and Justin Kilgore will be neighbors, too, at least for a while.” P.J. smiled as if this was a dandy idea. “What can I do to help you get settled?”

“Oh, that’s typical. You go and take her part.” Marynell jerked her head at Markie, though her gaze remained fixed on the potatoes. “Isn’t that the way it’s always been?”

P.J. extended his well-honed farmer’s arms toward his thin wife. “Now, Marynell. Hon.”

She shrugged him away. “Leave me alone. Nobody cares that I’ve done all this work, getting things ready for the boys. Now it’s just—pfft!” She flipped a hand and water droplets sparkled in the sunlit air. “Change of plans!”

“Now, Mother,” Markie said sadly. P.J. tried again. “Come on now, sugar,” he coaxed. “We’re all just trying to do what’s best for Robbie here. She’s got a lot to cope with. While I was in town I talked to Mac Hughes and the farm situation is not good.”

Mac Hughes was the local banker who handled the loan on the Tellchick farm.

“What did he say?” Markie asked quietly, casting an eye at the stairs. If the news was really awful, they’d have to break it to Robbie carefully.

“Danny was way behind on his payments, Mac wouldn’t say how far. He said he can wait a few weeks until Robbie gets over the funeral and all, but he’s going to have to have some kind of payment soon.”

Marynell flew across the room at Markie, flapping the dish towel like the wings of an angry hen defending her chick. “See? I told you it would be better if they were here. And didn’t I tell you not to upset Robbie! Well, if I have anything to say about it, we are not going to lose that land! Now, go upstairs and get me that diary!” She punctuated the last four words with four pokes of a bony finger to Markie’s shoulder.

“Mother!” Markie yelped. “Cut it out!”

“Marynell.” P.J.’s level voice stopped the women’s bickering. “Just calm down now and tell me what this is all about.”

“It’s all her fault.” Marynell’s hurt-filled eyes were now brimming with tears. “After all she’s put me through. Now this!” She pressed the wadded dish towel to her mouth. “Now she’s trying to take Robbie and the boys away from me!”

“Mother,” Markie repeated, more quietly this time, though she was undeterred by Marynell’s emotional display. She decided to get back to what her mother had been ready to blurt when P.J. came in. “What does my diary have to do with Robbie’s land?”

“Your diary?” P.J. said. “You mean that old pink diary I stuck in the box with your other things? Is that what this is about?”

Markie and Marynell stared at P.J. Just as Markie hadn’t needed to ask her mother if she had read the diary, she did not need to confirm that her father hadn’t. And so she realized that not only was he unaware of her teenage pregnancy, he knew none of the other things that had happened eighteen years ago. He certainly had no idea he had a grown grandson on his way to Five Points.

“You put that diary in that box?” Marynell asked. Anger flared again, quickly replacing her self-pity.

“Well, I figured you wouldn’t want it. You don’t even want to keep my family diaries that are a hundred years old. It was on a shelf way up in your closet. I found it back there when I was putting some Christmas stuff up. Long time ago. I just figured Markie left it there…did I do something wrong?”

“It’s all right, Dad. Mother and I will talk about this later, after she’s had a chance to calm down.” It was clearly a threat, a warning that Markie would somehow get to the bottom of this deal.

For her father’s sake Markie patted Marynell, even though what she really wanted to do was strangle her. But she had to get her dad out of here. Marynell would make him suffer for this trespass.

“Right now I’ve got to go upstairs and help Robbie get packed,” she said. “We could use a little help getting the heavy bags downstairs.” Her fingers tightened ever so slightly on her mother’s shoulder. “We are going back to Tellchick Farm. You understand that now, don’t you, Mother?”

Marynell gave her a bitter look, but nodded when P.J.’s head turned.

“You female-types.” P.J. took a sip of his tea. “If it isn’t one drama around here, it’s another.”

OVER THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, Markie became progressively more fatigued. The move to Robbie’s farm had cost her dearly, not only in time and money, but in a hidden emotional toll that couldn’t be calculated.

And it had cost her plenty of plain old sleep. To the point where she was having weird dreams again. Dreams where she was kissing Justin Kilgore. Dreams where the two of them admired their newborn together. She chalked it up to being in this place, to knowing that he was near.

Every night, after Robbie and the boys had hit the sack, she went downstairs and soundlessly went about the task of plugging her laptop into Robbie’s phone jack in the kitchen and setting to work at the sturdy oak table.

She knew she couldn’t last like this—working until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., answering e-mails, devising strategies, setting up schedules, just plain putting out fires for her client. It seemed as if she had her cell phone plastered to her ear all day, burning up the minutes. And at night her fingers were tethered to the Internet, a curse and a blessing it turned out, keeping her awake far too long into the night.

But every morning she was up early to fix breakfast for the boys and Robbie and help her sister sift through the wreckage of her life. These first two weeks had flown by in a blur of trips to negotiate payment schedules with the funeral home, the doctor, the bank. They’d sorted through Danny’s clothes early in the first week because Robbie burst into tears every time she so much as glanced at a pair of his boots. They’d gone through the farm’s books and bills and paperwork together and, together, had come to a sad conclusion. Danny and Robbie’s debt was horrendous. Robbie admitted to Markie that it was far worse than Danny had let on.

“Sissy,” Markie started gently, “I don’t see how you can hold on to this farm.”

They were sitting at the same oblong oak table where Markie had been working her late-night hours. Only it was midafternoon and the slanting southwest sunshine made the table, made the whole house, in fact, look dusty and stagnant. Several flies had slipped in when the boys had clamored out to play. The insects wasted no time in finding the smears of ketchup the boys had left on the worn countertop.

As Markie got up to swat the flies and wipe the table, she longed to be back in her sleek, new air-conditioned town house on the edge of Austin’s urban sprawl. As penance for that selfish thought, she vowed to give her sister’s kitchen a thorough cleaning…as soon as they confronted this financial mess.

Robbie moaned softly with her elbows propped on the table, her head cradled in her hands. “But what are Mother and Daddy going to say if I default on the note? They cosigned on this place.”

“Let’s not worry about them. Let’s try to decide what’s best for you and the boys. If you file for bankruptcy, I believe you can stay on the place as a homestead.”

“Bankruptcy?” Robbie lifted her pale face. “I can’t do that. Danny would never do that. I’d rather sell out.”

Once Robbie had made up her mind, they’d gone to a Realtor in town, arranged for the sale of the place, and Markie had taken on the task of riding and walking the property with the appraiser.

“He said it might take months to find a buyer for a farm of more than a thousand acres,” Markie told her sister when she got back.

“Then the sooner I list the place, the better.”

“He thinks you should fix it up first.”

“Oh, really?” Robbie’s voice rose sarcastically. “Now, there’s an idea! Oh. But wait. I’m flat broke, pregnant as a pea, with three kids pulling at me all day long. Well, shoot.”

Markie had just stood there, flabbergasted. This was not her nicey-nice sister talking.

The work and stress had been going on like this for a few weeks when one night in the wee hours, right after she’d unplugged the laptop and jacked Robbie’s phone back in, the thing let out its jangling ring, as if it had been waiting. Markie snatched up the receiver.

“Hello?” She kept her voice down. A farm could be so eerily quiet. Noise carried especially far in the wee hours. Down by the remaining outbuildings one of the dogs set to barking.

“Markie?” The resonant baritone voice was unmistakably like the one she’d heard on the phone from Dallas recently. “This is you, isn’t it?”