Johnston - I Promise (26 page)

“I’d better get that water wiped up in the hall,” Delia said, handing the picture back to Billie Jo.

“I’ll come help you when I’m done here,” Billie Jo said.

“Use this to wipe up any extra water you find.” Delia thrust the folded towel at Billie Jo and headed back into the hall.

Nobody had a perfect life, Delia thought as she dropped to her knees to wipe up the water from the hall floor. There were always trials and tribulations to be overcome. They just took different forms in each family.

She wondered if Billie Jo would let her become another mother to her. She wondered if she would even get the chance.

Billie Jo still hadn’t come out of her bedroom by the time Delia was done. “How are you doing?” she called down the hall.

“Fine,” Billie Jo called back. “Did you check Daddy’s room?”

“Not yet.” Delia had been in Marsh’s room once before, but she couldn’t have described it to save her life. She had been too busy being embarrassed to form any impressions. She was surprised at how neat it was. Her eyes were drawn to the quilt on the bed.

She reached out to touch the motley collection of fabrics and colors and realized it was sopping wet. She had already starting stripping it from the bed when Billie Jo arrived in the doorway.

“Uh-oh,” Billie Jo said.

Delia stopped what she was doing. “Uh-oh?”

“Daddy is absolutely insane about that quilt. I was going to take it on a picnic one time, and he made me put it back. He treats it like it was made of gold, or something.”

Billie Jo crossed to the bed and pointed out a ragged spot on the quilt. “See that? Rats ate it. Daddy said he was lucky that was all the damage they did. I didn’t realize till he found it in the barn that he’d been looking for it ever since we came back here.

“It’s special, because it’s made with pieces of North history. Daddy said someday, when I have kids of my own, it’ll be mine.”

Billie Jo paused, as though realizing how much she had said and how corny it sounded. “Anyway, I thought you should know to be careful with it.”

“It’s sopping wet,” Delia said. “I was going to throw it in the dryer, so it doesn’t get moldy.”

“The dryer doesn’t work,” Billie Jo said. “We’ve been hanging things on the line out back.”

Delia finished stripping the precious quilt, whose history she knew as well as Marsh’s daughter. Marsh had brought the quilt to the live oak one day and explained the story of each patch as his grandmother had told it to him. The ruined patch had been a piece of the dress his mother had worn on her first date with his father.

“We’ll take the quilt with us, and put it in the dryer at my house,” Delia said as she gathered it into a wet bundle. “See if you can find where that leak’s hitting the bed and put a pot under it,” she told Billie Jo, “while I take this out to the kitchen. That way we won’t forget it when we leave.”

It took them half an hour to put pots under all the leaks and wipe up all the water they could find.

“Was anything of yours ruined?” Delia asked.

“Some papers got wet, but they’ll dry,” Billie Jo said. “Thanks, Delia.” She flushed. “I mean, Judge Carson.”

“Delia’s fine,” Delia said with a smile. “I’m glad you made me come. I can see this would have been a disaster.”

Why hadn’t Marsh had the roof repaired? Even as she formulated the question, Delia thought she knew the answer. He must have been inundated with work on the ranch, and with the persistent drought, who could have imagined it would rain? Knowing Marsh, it had never occurred to him to hire someone else to do something he knew how to do himself.

Delia and Billie Jo emptied all the pots and pans one last time before they left. “If the rain doesn’t stop, we’ll make a quick trip back later to check on everything,” Delia promised.

They pulled their boots back on, and Delia retrieved the quilt before they braved the rain again.

On the ride back to the Circle Crown, the sullen-eyed, silent teenager Delia had met at supper was replaced by one who talked a mile a minute and asked questions like she was the investigative reporter, instead of her dad.

“Have you ever been married?” Billie Jo asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I was engaged once, but we realized we didn’t love each other enough to spend our lives together.”

“Did my dad get you pregnant?”

Delia was so startled by the question she almost ran the car off the road. “No, he did not!”

“Oh.” Billie Jo was silent for a few moments. “Whose baby was it?”

Delia didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t tell the truth. She didn’t want to lie, either. “I can’t tell you that, Billie Jo. Not without revealing some things that are still painful to me.”

That shut Billie Jo up. For about a minute.

“So my dad didn’t rape you?”

“He most certainly did not! I know the whole town believes he did, but it simply isn’t true.”

Billie Jo looked relieved for a moment. But came up with another question. “Then why did you run away?”

“Where did you get all this information?” Delia asked, astounded and perplexed.

“Eula Hutchins told me most of it. She found out from her mom, who’s Sheriff Koehl’s sister. So why did you run away?”

“I had problems at home, like a lot of kids do, but instead of staying and working them out, I took off.”

Billie Jo ruminated on that for the rest of the trip back to the Circle Crown. “One more thing,” she said as Delia turned off the ignition.

When she didn’t speak right away, Delia said, “You might as well ask.”

Billie Jo took a deep breath and said, “Is it true your mother killed your father?”

Delia’s eyes rounded. “What? Where on earth did you hear that?”

“Eula Hutchins said—”

“I don’t care what she said,” Delia interrupted. “My mother had nothing whatsoever to do with my father’s death. He was cleaning one of his guns, and it accidentally went off and killed him.” Delia realized her hands were shaking. At least, that was the story she had clung to all these years.

“Let’s go inside, and I’ll show you where you can sleep.” She shoved the car door open, grabbed the quilt from the back seat, and raced for the kitchen door, Billie Jo close on her heels. It wasn’t really necessary to run, because the storm had passed overhead and gone, leaving only dripping eaves and the pungent smell of wet grass and fresh air.

Delia stuffed the quilt in the dryer before she showed Billie Jo to Rachel’s room, where she would be close enough that Delia could keep an eye on her and far enough away not to disturb Hattie. “There’s a TV room downstairs next to my mother’s office if you’d like to watch, or there’s a radio in here if you’d like to listen to music. The study—the room with the gun cabinets in it—has a lot of old books, if you’d like to read.”

“I saw the guns in there,” Billie Jo said. “Who do they belong to?”

“They belonged to my stepfather.” Delia could not, for the life of her, understand why Hattie hadn’t gotten rid of them. “If you need anything, I’ll either be in my room right across the hall, or down the hall in my mother’s room.”

She left Billie Jo changing her clothes for bed and went to check on Hattie. Delia still hadn’t gotten over Billie Jo’s last question in the car.

Did your mother kill your father?

How did rumors like that get started anyway?

She heard Marsh’s voice saying,
Figure it out, Delia.

Her father had struggled with someone. Someone had come to the sheriff’s office and explained Ray John’s death and cleared Marsh’s name.

Who’s left, Delia? Just Rachel. And Mother.

Just Mother.

It wasn’t possible for her mother to have fought with Ray John. Hattie had met Delia at the top of the stairs that morning and gone down with her.

Think, Delia. You heard the shot. You thought it was a dream. The scream didn’t come until much later. Hattie had time to come back upstairs. Maybe Rachel was telling the truth. Maybe she did find the gun on the floor.

Delia found herself at her mother’s bedroom door, her heart pounding so hard it hurt. It felt like she was standing on the edge of a precipice that was crumbling under her feet, and any second she was going to fall off.

The moment of truth had come. There was no putting it off any longer.

Delia reached out and grasped the doorknob and opened Hattie’s door enough to peer in-side. Her mother was still asleep. In fact, she didn’t look like she had moved an inch since Delia had seen her last. Delia gave a chickenhearted sigh of relief. She had a respite. The showdown could be put off one more day.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would learn the truth.

Delia was pulling the bedroom door closed again when an alarm went off in her head.

Hattie hadn’t moved an inch.

Delia shoved the door wide, turned on the overhead light, and hurried to her mother’s side. Hattie’s face looked bloodless under the bright light. Delia reached with trembling fingers to touch her mother’s throat. She found no pulse. Hattie’s flesh was cold.

Delia refused to believe what her eyes were telling her. She laid her ear against her mother’s chest, listening for her heartbeat.

“Wake up, Mother.” She lifted Hattie by the shoulders, as though to sit her upright. Her head sagged sideways like a broken doll. Delia let go of her mother abruptly, and Hattie fell back onto the pillow, her body lifeless, flaccid.

Delia shook her head in disbelief. It simply wasn’t possible. The bypass surgery had been a success. Hattie was supposed to get better. She had been resting comfortably.

And Delia had left her alone to go save a run-down house from a little rain.

She was dead before you ever left the house. She died sometime earlier in the evening. Without making a sound. Without crying out for help.

Delia felt like howling. She had been cheated. She hadn’t made peace with her mother. She hadn’t even spoken much with her, except to argue. There should have been more time. She should have had more time!

There were questions she had wanted to ask. Things she had wanted to say. Things Hattie had wanted to say to her.

Now it was too late. Too late.

Hattie Carson was dead, taking whatever secrets she possessed to the grave with her.

Delia reached for the Bible on her mother’s bedstand, and it fell open to a page where Hattie had left a folded piece of stationery. The parchment was crisp, pure white, as though it had been put there recently.
Delia
was written in her mother’s bold script across the front.

Delia carefully set the Bible down and opened the note.

I forgive you. Can you forgive me?

Delia stared at the words until her eyes blurred with tears. Oh, God. Oh, dear God. How had her mother known she needed forgiveness? How had her mother known she still loved her all these years, even though she hated what her mother had done?

Delia slowly crushed the note in her hand. She looked at her mother lying there so peacefully, as though she were merely asleep. Hattie Carson wasn’t a monster, just an old woman. Her mother. Her repentant mother.

Can you forgive me?

Delia’s chin quivered. “I don’t know, Mama,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”

Chapter Fifteen

“After the cardiac catheterization, I realized there was considerably more damage to your mother’s heart from the second attack than I’d hoped,” Dr. Robbins said. “Surgery was necessary if she was to have any kind of functional life. Hattie opted for it, despite the risks.” Dr. Robbins took a breath and let it out. “We almost lost your mother on the table. That’s why the surgery took longer than expected.

“I never mentioned any of this before, because Hattie specifically requested that I not discuss her condition with her family. When I spoke to her after the surgery, I told her she only had a few months, maybe a year to live, and that she ought to tell her children. But you know Hattie.”

Delia rubbed her temples with her thumbs. Yes, she knew Hattie. “Thanks for telling me, Dr. Robbins.”

Hattie’s doctor had come to the Circle Crown with the coroner and the ambulance that had taken her mother away to Mortenson’s Funeral Home. Mortensons had been burying Carsons ever since the two families had traveled west from Pennsylvania together in 1877 and settled in Uvalde.

“Would you like me to prescribe something to help you sleep?” Dr. Robbins asked.

“No, thank you,” Delia said.

“Give me a call if you need me.” The doctor laid a comforting hand on her shoulder before he left her alone in the parlor and let himself out the front door.

He was the last to leave of those who had come to carry away the mortal remains of Hattie Carson, and the house fell silent.

“Delia?”

Delia turned and saw Billie Jo standing at the entrance to the parlor in a thigh-high T-shirt, one bare foot atop the other.

“Is everybody gone?” she asked.

“Yes. I’m sorry for all the commotion, Billie Jo.”

“It’s all right. I mean, how could you know . . . I’m sorry about your mother.”

“Thanks, Billie Jo.” Delia sighed and looked at her watch. “It’s only eleven, but how about a midnight snack?”

Billie Jo grinned crookedly. “To tell you the truth, I’m starving. I hardly ate any supper.”

“I noticed,” Delia said with an answering smile.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world to slip an arm around Billie Jo’s waist as the two of them headed down the hall to the kitchen. What surprised Delia was Billie Jo’s arm curving around her waist in return. It dawned on her that Billie Jo knew how much she needed the comfort, because she knew what it felt like to lose a mother.

The two of them raided the refrigerator and filled the tile counters with sandwich-making stuff. They carried their creations and a glass of milk apiece over to the table and sat down to eat.

Delia was ravenous. She hadn’t consumed any more at supper than Billie Jo. Amazing how one sought the solace of food—and offered it—in times of sorrow. It was probably some primordial, instinctual thing, Delia thought, as she swallowed a large bite of ham and cheese, some reaffirmation of the need to keep on living in the midst of death.