Christmas On The Range: Winter Roses

“I’m not looking for a husband. I’m in school at our community vocational college,” Ivy reminded her.

“So you are. What a pitiful future you’re heading for.” Rachel paused to take an audible sip of her drink. “I’ve got two auditions tomorrow. One’s for the lead in a new play, right on Broadway. Jerry says I’m a shoo-in. He has influence with the director.”

Ivy wasn’t usually sarcastic, but Rachel was getting on her nerves. “I thought Jerry didn’t want you to work.”

There was a frigid pause on the other end of the line. “Jerry doesn’t mind it,” she said coolly. “He just likes me to stay in, so that he can take care of me.”

“He feeds you uppers and downers and crystal meth and charges you for the privilege, you mean,” Ivy replied quietly. She didn’t add that Rachel was beautiful and that Jerry probably used her as bait to catch new clients. He took her to party after party. She talked about acting, but it was only talk. She could barely remember her own name when she was on drugs, much less remember lines for a play. She drank to excess as well, just like Jerry.

“Jerry takes care of me. He knows all the best people in theater. He’s promised to introduce me to one of the angels who’s producing that new comedy. I’m going to make it to Broadway or die trying,” Rachel said curtly. “And if we’re going to argue, we might as well not even speak!”

“I’m not arguing...”

“You’re putting Jerry down, all the time!”

Ivy felt as if she were standing on a precipice, looking at the bottom of the world. “Have you really forgotten what Jerry did to me?” she asked, recalling the one visit Rachel had made home, just after their father died. It had been an overnight one, with the insufferable Jerry at her side. Rachel had signed papers to have their father cremated, placing his ashes in the grave with those of his late wife, the girls’ mother. It was rushed and unpleasant, with Ivy left grieving alone for a parent who’d never loved her, who’d treated her very badly. Ivy had a big, forgiving heart. Rachel did manage a sniff into a handkerchief at the graveside service. But her eyes weren’t either wet or red. It was an act, as it always was with her.

“What you said he did,” came the instant, caustic reply. “Jerry said he never gave you any sort of drugs!”

“Rachel!” she exclaimed, furious now, “I wouldn’t lie about something like that! I had a migraine and he switched my regular medicine with a powerful narcotic. When I saw what he was trying to give me, I threw them at him. He thought I was too sick to notice. He thought it would be funny if he could make me into an addict, just like you...!”

“Oh, grow up,” Rachel shouted. “I’m no addict! Everybody uses drugs! Even people in that little hick town where you live. How do you think I used to score before I moved to New York? There was always somebody dealing, and I knew where to find what I needed. You’re so naive, Ivy.”

“My brain still works,” she shot back.

“Watch your mouth, kid,” Rachel said angrily, “or I’ll see that you don’t get a penny of Dad’s estate.”

“Don’t worry, I never expected to get any of it,” Ivy said quietly. “You convinced Daddy that I was no good, so that he wouldn’t leave me anything.”

“You’ve got that pittance from Aunt Hettie,” Rachel repeated. “Even though I should have had it. I deserved it, having to live like white trash all those years when I was at home.”

“Rachel, if you got what you really deserved,” Ivy replied with a flash of bravado, “you’d be in federal prison.”

There was a muffled curse. “I have to go. Jerry’s back. Listen, you check with that lawyer and find out what’s the holdup. I can’t afford all these long-distance calls.”

“You never pay for them. You usually reverse the charges when you call me,” she was reminded.

“Just hurry up and get the paperwork through so you can send me my check. And don’t expect me to call you back until you’re ready to talk like an adult instead of a spoiled kid with a grudge!”

The receiver slammed down in her ear. She folded it back up with quiet resignation. Rachel would never believe that Jerry, her knight in shining armor, was nothing more than a sick little social climbing drug dealer with a felony record who was holding her hostage to substance abuse. Ivy had tried for the past year to make her older sibling listen, but she couldn’t. The two of them had never been close, but since Rachel got mixed up with Jerry, and hooked on meth, she didn’t seem capable of reason anymore. In the old days, even when Rachel was being difficult, she did seem to have some small affection for her sister. That all changed when she was a junior in high school. Something had happened, Ivy had never known what, that turned her against Ivy and made a real enemy of her. Alcohol and drug use hadn’t helped Rachel’s already abrasive personality. It had been an actual relief for Ivy when her sister left for New York just days after the odd blowup. But it seemed that she could cause trouble long-distance, whenever she liked.

Ivy went down the hall quickly to her next class, without any real enthusiasm. She didn’t want to spend her life working for someone else, but she certainly didn’t want to go to New York and end up as Rachel’s maid and cook, as she had been before her sister left Jacobs-ville. Letting Rachel have their inheritance would be the easier solution to the problem. Anything was better than having to live with Rachel again; even having to put up with Merrie York’s brother, Stuart, in order to have one true friend.

* * *

It was Friday, and when she left the campus for home, riding with her fellow boarder, Lita Dawson, who taught at the vocational college, she felt better. She’d passed her English test, she was certain of it. But typing was getting her down. She couldn’t manage more than fifty words a minute to save her life. One of the male students typing with both index fingers could do it faster than Ivy could.

They pulled up in front of the boardinghouse where they both lived. Ivy felt absolutely drained. She’d had to leave her father’s house because she couldn’t even afford to pay the light bill. Besides, Rachel had signed papers to put the house on the market the same day she’d signed the probate papers at a local lawyer’s office. Since Ivy wasn’t old enough, at almost nineteen, to handle the legal affairs, Rachel had charmed the new, young attorney handling the probate and convinced him that Ivy needed looking after, preferably in a boardinghouse. Then she’d flown back to New York, leaving Ivy to dip into a great-aunt’s small legacy and a part-time job as a bookkeeper at a garage on Monday and Thursday evenings to pay for her board and the small student fee that Texas residents paid at the state technical and vocational college. Rachel hadn’t even asked if Ivy had enough to live on.

Merrie had tried to get Stuart to help Ivy fight Rachel’s claim on the bulk of the estate, but Ivy almost had hysterics when she offered. She’d rather have lived in a cardboard box by the side of the road than have Stuart take over her life. She didn’t want to tell her best friend that her brother terrified her. Merrie would have asked why. There were secrets in Ivy’s past that she shared with no one.

“I’m going to see my father this weekend.” Lita, dark-haired and eyed, smiled at the younger woman. “How about you?”

Ivy smiled. “If Merrie remembers, we’ll probably go window-shopping.” She sighed, smiling lazily. “I might see something I can daydream about owning,” she chuckled.

“One day some nice man is going to come along and treat you the way you deserve to be treated,” Lita said kindly. “You wait and see.”

Ivy knew better, but she only smiled. She wasn’t anxious to offer any man control of her life. She was through living in fear.

She went in the side door, glancing over to see if Mrs. Brown was home. The landlady must be grocery shopping, she decided. It was a Friday ritual. Ivy got to eat with Mrs. Brown and Lita Dawson, the other tenant, on the weekends. She and Lita took turns cooking and cleaning up the kitchen, to help elderly Mrs. Brown manage the extra work. It was nice, not having to drive into town to get a sandwich. The pizza place delivered, but Ivy was sick of pizza. She liked her small boardinghouse, and Lita was nice, if a little older than Ivy. Lita was newly divorced and missing her ex-husband to a terrible degree. She fell back on her degree and taught computer technology at the vocational college, and let Ivy ride back and forth with her for help with the gas money.

She’d no sooner put down her purse than the cell phone rang.

“It’s the weekend!” came a jolly, laughing voice. It was Merrie York, her best friend from high school.

“I noticed,” Ivy chuckled. “How’d you do on your tests?”

“I’m sure I passed something, but I’m not sure what. My biology final is approaching and lab work is killing me. I can’t make the microscope work!”

“You’re training to be a nurse, not a lab assistant,” Ivy pointed out.

“Come up here and tell that to my biology professor,” Merrie dared her. “Never mind, I’ll graduate even if I have to take every course three times.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Come over and spend the weekend with me,” Merrie invited.

Ivy’s heart flipped over. “Thanks, but I have some things to do around here...”

“He’s in Oklahoma, settling a new group of cattle with a sale barn,” Merrie coaxed wryly.

Ivy hesitated. “Can you put that in writing and get it notarized?”

“He really likes you, deep inside.”

“He’s made an art of hiding his fondness for me,” Ivy shot back. “I love you, Merrie, but I don’t fancy being cannon fodder. It’s been a long week. Rachel and I had another argument today.”

“Long distance?”

“Exactly.”

“And over Sir Lancelot the drug lord.”

“You know me too well.”

Merrie laughed. “We’ve been friends since middle school,” she reminded Ivy.

“Yes, the debutante and the tomboy. What a pair we made.”