If Wishes Were Horses (13 page)

Thus Etta had been astonished and then crushed, not only by Alice’s words but by the way Alice looked at her as if she were garbage in the street.

“Be nice to her,” Roy told Etta later. “She’ll come around eventually.” Then he added how beautiful and sweet Etta was, so Aunt Alice couldn’t help but fall in love with her as he had.

He had made Etta believe it could happen, and she had been as nice to Alice as a person could possibly be. She had studied books and articles on etiquette and style until she could have been presented at a Southern League meeting. She had read Town and Country and the Saturday Evening Post from cover to cover each month and looked up definitions and pronunciations of difficult words she came across, all in an effort to improve so Alice would not only like her but love her.

Her efforts had been in vain, of course. Alice did not intend to ever accept her. Alice considered it as a mark of her standing in society to disdain Etta. Once she had come to accept this, Etta had ceased to be hurt or manipulated by it.

Still, she had always done best with Alice when she had had sufficient time to prepare to face her. Gazing at the older woman now, Etta had the sinking feeling that she was not sufficiently prepared.

Petite and straight as a rod, Alice stepped into the foyer and eyed Etta from head to toe. “Latrice said you’ve been so sick as to take to your bed. It appears to me you’ve been farmin’.”

“Are you so hard up for people to criticize, Alice, that you had to come all the way out here and start on me?” She was rather pleased with her comment, and with Alice’s frown.

“I’ve come for my sister’s things,” Alice said. “When Cynthia died, poor Roy wasn’t ready to let go of her things. I haven’t said anything, because he’s needed these pieces of his mother around him. Now, however, by rights they are mine, and I’d like to get them before they get lost from family.”

“What things are you talkin’ about?”

“Well, the mantel clock, for one.” She strode to the mantel and gestured at the clock. “It was our mother’s clock, and Cynthia said expressly right before her death that I was to have it, but Roy just couldn’t part with it. And that lamp over there—it’s from our family home . . . and there are several quilts that our aunt made for each of us when we were newly married.”

Etta gazed at her a moment, then said, “Suppose you go around and pick out what you want.”

Alice went to the door and beckoned to her maid to bring some boxes. Etta had not seen the maid, nor had she seen that the backseat of Alice’s car was filled with boxes.

She felt a small flicker of alarm. She had thought she had done the right thing; she did not want Alice to go around claiming Etta had stolen what rightfully belonged to her.

Alice put the mantel clock into a box. After that she picked up not only the red glass lamp, but the small marbletopped curio table upon which the lamp had sat.

“The lamp has always sat on this table,” she said.

Then she went into the den and took two prints of fox and hound hunts and then the large print of two Victorian girls from the living room wall. “I gave these to Cynthia myself,” she said.

Having warmed up on those few items, Alice moved about the living room and then up the stairs to the linen closet, snatching up articles as swiftly as a challenger in one of those grocery store sweepstakes. At the linen closet, she laid claim not only to the before-mentioned quilts but to an Irish lace spread as well. “I gave this to Cynthia on her fortieth birthday,” Alice said.

Etta watched with a growing amazement and dismay, realizing she had once again foolishly underestimated the woman. She watched as Alice strode into the dining room, where she retrieved the blown-glass miniature dog and horse and cat, and several vases, as well as a set of twelve crystal glasses.

But when Alice went to lay claim to the silver tea and coffee service, Etta said, “No. You can’t have this.”

“This set was my sister’s. She bought it in St. Louis. We were there together on a trip.”

“It belongs now to Roy’s child, his mother’s grandchild.”

Alice’s gaze drifted to Etta’s belly. “I see. All right, but I must insist on taking the silverware. It has our family initial.” She took up the polished chest of silver.

Etta reached out for the chest, too, saying, “The initial stands for Rivers. Carterroy bought this for Cynthia right after Robert’s death. Roy told me so.”

“Cynthia picked it out herself. I helped her,” Alice said, tugging the chest from Etta.

“But you didn’t buy it,” Etta said, tugging it back. “And your name is not Rivers.”

Alice’s eyes blazed, then her mouth formed a bitter line, and Etta found herself, a woman pregnant going on seven months, in a grappling match with a petite silver-haired matron for possession of a chest of silverware.

“You little tramp,” Alice said. “Roy may have married you, but you never were a Rivers.”

“My child is Roy’s child,” Etta said.

“And are we certain of that?” Alice said.

The comment caused Etta to jerk hard on the case, using her belly as leverage. Alice held on, too, like a little bulldog. Gazing into Alice’s glittering eyes, Etta realized that the fight was not really over the silverware. It was over something much larger, something she could not name but which she knew was very important.

Johnny turned his truck into the Rivers drive and slowed, looking at the real-estate sale sign. He’d heard tell how things were. The word was, though, that the bank wouldn’t throw a woman and a new baby out of their home, at least not for a few months. Johnny figured he could use those few months. He felt he might be a little crazy, but there was a strong urge inside him that told him to come on to this place. The corrals were good, and there was a barn with a room. At the present, Johnny had horses, and he needed a room. He eased forward, mindful of the filly in the bed and the two horses tied to the back, and headed down the lane toward the house.

A black Cadillac sat out front, doors open, a thin young woman in a tan cloth coat sticking a box into it. Johnny tipped his hat to her and said howdy out the window, but she just sort of stared at him. He parked to the side nearer the barn and walked back to the front door. The woman in the tan coat was gone, the front door stood open. He naturally went inside. Hearing voices and noise, he walked through to the dining room, stepping carefully with his boots and spurs over the shiny flooring.

He came to a stop in the dining-room entry, right behind the woman in the tan coat, and beheld the sight of Mrs. Rivers, her and her belly in faded overalls, going round and round with a small, silver-haired woman in a skirt and sweater and pearls. Johnny recognized the elegant silver-haired woman from the funeral. The two women were having a tussle over a case.

As soon as they both saw him and the woman in the tan coat, who was shrinking backward into Johnny, they stopped, eyes wide. The silver-haired woman let go of the wooden case, which came as a surprise to Mrs. Rivers, whose eyes sprang wider as she stumbled backward. She lost her hold on the case, and it fell to the floor, opened, and spewed forth shiny forks and knives and spoons like it was upchucking, while Mrs. Rivers took hold of the buffet to keep from falling.

Johnny didn’t know what to do. He just stood there feeling awkward.

The silver-haired woman in the pearls lifted her chin. “I’m certainly not going to fight you for any of this,” she said and stalked off past Johnny like a stiff breeze, causing the woman in the tan coat to turn and follow as if by a tow line.

Mrs. Rivers mumbled something like, “You could have fooled me,” and then Johnny saw her sliding from the buffet and downward to the floor. Before he could move, she’d gone right down to her knees amid the strewn silverware.

Alarmed that she was fainting, he started toward her. At that same moment the kitchen door swung open, and Miss Latrice burst onto the scene.

His gaze suddenly lighting on Mrs. Rivers’s belly, Johnny stopped short, consumed by uncertainty. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

She nodded. “Just out of breath. Anger and resentment take a lot out of person.”

Johnny didn’t know what to say to that. He was relieved to see she wasn’t fainting.

Miss Latrice hardly looked at Mrs. Rivers; she knelt and started fervently raking in the silverware, grumbling in a low voice, “Why in the world would you let that woman have free rein in the first place? I thought I had taught you better sense.”

“It seemed the thing to do at the time,” Mrs. Rivers said, and she was sort of chuckling, which just seemed to make Miss Latrice look madder.

Johnny hung back. He did not know how he managed to get into these awkward situations. It seemed every time he deliberately set out on a course, things got all jumbled up.

Etta felt dazed. She could not look up at the cowboy. She was too embarrassed. Did he always have to arrive when she was in a mess?

Feeling something poking her hip, she shifted and pulled two forks from beneath her and then reached for a spoon from under the buffet, handing all three to Latrice. She saw the cowboy’s hands extending two spoons. She reached to take them, and because there was no way out of it, she raised her eyes.

The cowboy was gazing down at her with his silvery eyes anxious and curious.

Etta said, “I’m sorry to tell you I still don’t have the money my husband owed you. I have even less now than I had the day we buried him.”

He looked surprised, then said quickly, “Oh, no, ma’am. I’m not here for the money. You see, I have a little filly out in my truck.” He gestured with his hat. “I need someplace to keep her, and I was hopin’ we could work somethin’ out.”

Etta looked quickly into the man’s eyes. Steely gray, strikingly bright against his rugged face. A handsome heartbreak man, she thought instantly as she averted her gaze and smoothed her overalls.

“I’m sorry, but in case you didn’t notice, there is a for-sale sign in the front. There’s really no way I can help you, Mr. . . .” She stopped, feeling silly about not knowing his name.

“My name’s Johnny Bellah, ma’am. I guess we didn’t get properly introduced the other day.”

His voice was soft and deep, his face smiling, and he stuck out his hand. It was warm, moist, and rough. She was the one to pull her hand away.

He said, “I got the filly out at my truck, if you’d like to see her.”

Without waiting for her to answer, he tucked his hat on his head and moved quickly across the oak flooring, his spurs jingling softly with each step, to the door that he drew open for her.

Etta hesitated and then went with him, thinking that life was just flowing on and dragging her with it.

She spared him quick glances, noting again his starched shirt stretched over broad shoulders and his lean hips. And his limp, which seemed very pronounced today.

“Got my bad knee wrenched yesterday,” he explained, as if reading her mind.

Her eyes met his briefly before skittering away.

She said, “How much did you say my husband owed you, Mr. Bellah, and what for exactly?”

“Eight hundred dollars. I got the IOU right here.” Stopping, he pulled his wallet from his back pocket, took out a rumpled slip of paper and handed it to her. “I sold some horses for your husband down in Fort Worth back this winter . . . but this idn’t for that. This is for a poker game.” His voice dropped a notch, and his eyes shifted.

"Oh."

It was Roy’s handwriting all right, all his sweeping flourishes. Etta did not think she was much concerned with a poker debt.

Handing the note back to him, she looked over at his pickup parked in front of the barn. “You said you have a filly?” Shielding her eyes against the sun, she looked at his truck and saw two horses, which appeared to be tied to the back of the truck.

“Yes, ma’ am.” He hurried to fall in step with her again. “Little red dun, not four months old . . . and these two-year-olds, too.”

“You brought them here like that?” Etta asked, finding the image of the truck trailing horses down the highway quite amazing.

“Well now, I couldn’t very well put them in the back. They’d have beat this filly to death. I go slow so they can keep up.”

He shoved the older horses aside and opened the tailgate. Strong, rough hands . . . shoulder muscles thick beneath his blue shirt. Etta shifted her gaze from his body.

“Easy girl,” he murmured.

The filly backed up. She was so gaunt her ribs and hipbones protruded, and her legs looked like rickety sticks. He pretty much tugged her to the ground, struggling to bear her weight with his injured knee. Etta hovered, wanting to help but not knowing how.

“They took her mama to nurse an orphaned colt,” he told her, “and threw her out in the pen with the other string. She can’t hold her own with them, and she would’ve been dead in no time. I need a place to keep her and to break these other two for a fella. Thought maybe I could use your place here, in exchange for your husband’s IOU. I’ll only need a month or so.”

Of course he wanted to stable all three, but had mentioned only the filly at first. Etta was not at all surprised; such was the way of men like him, who were not being devious but simply assuming.

She gazed at him. He gazed at her, his luminous silvery eyes charming and expectant.

She thought she should say no, but instead she shrugged and put a hand to touch the filly’s soft nose. “I guess it’d be okay. Might as well get some use out of the place while we can.”

“Well now,” he drawled, a warm grin sweeping his face and lighting his eyes, “I certainly appreciate this, ma’ am . . . and I’ll tell you what. I’ll throw in breakin’ that red horse for you.”

Etta’s head came up. She saw his eyes bright and eager and his smile as easy and sweet as slipping down a child’s slide.

“Maybe,” she said, then turned and walked back to the house.

Within the space of the following two days, with Etta watching from the safety of the house, Johnny Bellah not only moved his adopted filly and the two geldings he had contracted to train for Jed Stuart into the stable, but himself as well, moving his tack into the tack room and his belongings into the stablehand’s room.