Red’s Hot Honky-Tonk Bar (27 page)

“If you’re crazy, I want to be crazy, too,” he answered.

“That money, that could do us a lot of good,” she pointed out.

“
Us
are going to be fine,” he teased. “Especially if we’re going to be
us.
”

She smiled at him, but her thoughts were still serious. “If I took the money, I could fix up the place without worrying about paying for it. I’d have something in the bank if and when we are forced out of our building. Or I could even use it as a down payment for a new building that I would own myself.”

“All true,” Cam agreed.

“It’s like Brad said, money is just money. It’s not like my mother will ever know that I refused to take it. That I threw it back in her face.”

“No, she won’t know,” Cam agreed. “But you will. And if you think this is what you need to do, then I trust you.”

Red looked up at him. His was a young face, but it was strong, it was lived in.

“You’re not even going to ask me to explain?”

He shook his head. “I know you would tell me if you could,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said.

Red sighed heavily. It felt so good to lean against him. Such a relief after so many years of being forced to stand on her own. There was a long, sweet moment between them as the truth
emerged in her consciousness. They were in this together. She no longer needed the walls that she’d built between them.

“My mother just walked away from us and never looked back,” she told him. “I don’t claim to know what all went on between her and my dad. I don’t think anybody can ever really see inside their parents’ marriage. But it was obvious to me, even as a kid, that my mom really disliked her life.”

Red pulled the hair away from her face and tossed it behind her shoulders.

“My dad was a farmer and farmers always struggle,” she said. “I guess they really struggle when they’re married to women who like lots of things. And my mom did like lots of things. So Dad took a second job. But that was still not enough. Mom decided she needed to work, too. I don’t remember thinking much about it at the time. She wasn’t home anymore when I got off the school bus. But I just took care of my chores and the world went on.”

Red’s brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Looking back, I’d say the day she went to work at Grayson Automotive, she was already on her way out the door.”

She glanced over at Cam. He was listening, clear-eyed and intent.

“Harv Grayson was actually a pretty good guy,” Red told him. “He’d been married twenty-five years to his childhood sweetheart. They’d established themselves at the very top rung of what passed for a social ladder in Piney Woods. He had a successful business and she was big in church and charity groups. They’d raised a son who was smart and had as much potential as his father.”

She gave a humorless smile. “They might have fit right in, here in Alamo Heights,” she said. “But within one year, my mom blew all of that to kingdom come. Harv dumped his
wife, forgot about his kid. He was totally ensnared by my mother and wanted to give her anything she wanted. And being the woman she was, well, she wanted it all.”

Cam nodded, understanding.

“None of this touched me, none of it was really important,” Red continued. “I had my daddy and we were a happy family. Truth is, I think we were happier than before she left. No more fighting, no more drama. Daddy and I did what we needed to do and didn’t worry about wanting a lot more.”

Red wiped her hands on the thighs of her jeans.

“If things had just gone on. If nothing had happened, my life would not have changed. I would have finished high school and Daddy would have walked me down the aisle to marry some local guy and I’d never have left Piney Woods.” She heaved a sigh. “But when my father died, well, everybody just assumed that my mother would take me in.”

“Of course,” Cam agreed.

“I think she would have been willing to foist me off on some distant aunt somewhere, if she could find one,” Red said. “But Harv really felt sorry for me. He could never see my mother as she was. He thought that she would want me with her. And she didn’t want to look like she didn’t.”

“But she didn’t.”

“Right,” Red said. “My mother didn’t think much of me. For her, I was too much like my dad, I guess. And her greatest fear was that I would ruin her butt-in-a-jam-jar life.”

“Narcissism, that’s what shrinks call that,” Cam said. “I think it’s more or less incompatible with motherhood.”

Red shrugged. “Maybe that was her excuse.”

“So what happened?” he asked.

“Well,” she said. “We all know that when you screw someone, payback is hell.”

Cam agreed.

“All the time Mom was living high and mighty on Harv’s money and cavorting around town in her Cadillac, the friends of Harv’s first wife were anxious to bring her down. And there I was, her daughter, naive and countrified, such an easy target.”

“Ummh,” Cam sympathized shaking his head.

“I was ostracized at school, laughed at, talked about,” Red said. “It was kid stuff, though I do think they were probably encouraged by their parents. Still, I could have managed that.”

“But something worse turned up,” Cam said.

Red nodded. She heaved a heavy sigh. This story was not one that she’d ever told aloud. She had to momentarily collect her thoughts as she focused on the racing water in the stream in front of her.

“Harv’s son, Kenny, came home from college that summer, as he always did, to work at his father’s dealership. He was an athlete, good-looking, charming and he seemed so grown up. No grown-up man had ever paid any attention to me. But Kenny did.”

Red recalled perfectly how calf-eyed she’d been.

“He talked to me,” she explained. “He listened to all my teenage-girl craziness. He took me for romantic drives around the lake. He gave me my first kiss. And I fell in love with him. It was easy. I needed somebody to love me.”

Red was picking nervously at her fingernails. She hadn’t even realized it until Cam took her hand in his own.

“Kenny didn’t love me,” she said, unwilling to meet Cam’s eye. “I don’t think he even hated me. I was nothing to him. I was a means to an end. He wanted to get back at my mother. To shame her, humiliate her the way his mother had been humiliated. He failed at that. The humiliation was all mine.”

“What happened?” Cam asked.

“He seduced me. It wasn’t any great accomplishment on his part. I mean, how hard would it have been? I was sixteen and desperately in love. I would have done anything he asked. So he pretty much asked for everything. And for the rest of the summer, I gave him whatever he wanted.”

She did look at Cam then. Searching his face for repulsion or judgment. She didn’t find either.

“He started phoning me every time we weren’t together,” Red said. “He’d talk dirty to me on the phone. I would giggle and repeat things he wanted me to say. He told me it was just a naughty game. What I didn’t know, of course, was that he was recording it all to play back to his friends. One afternoon he invited his buddies to meet me, naked. I was so shocked and so scared. I was so betrayed! They took photos of me trying to cover myself up while the other guys laughed and posed for the camera like it was some gang bang or orgy.”

“Oh my God,” Cam said.

“I always tell myself that I was lucky that I wasn’t gang-raped.”

“I am so sorry,” he told her.

“Within days those pictures were passed around all over town,” Red told him. “As far as anyone was concerned the boys were just being boys, but I was a certified slut. No, worse than a slut. They talked about me and Kenny, using terms like depravity, incest and perversion. After half a year of the whole town constantly reminding me that I was not a Grayson, suddenly Kenny and I were brother and sister.”

She glanced over at Cam. He was still with her. Red didn’t know what he was thinking, but he hadn’t walked away.

“My mother was so furious, she was out of control,” Red continued. “She didn’t for a second think that it might not be all my fault. She hit me and kicked me and called me horrible
names, names I’d never even heard of. Harv was horrified, too. But he was at least as upset with Kenny as he was with me. He knew why Kenny did it and I think he felt sorry for me, but it didn’t matter.”

Red sat up straighter and brushed off her jeans as if she could whisk it all away.

“My mom threw me out. She literally locked me out of the front door with the clothes on my back and ordered me off the premises. I just stood on the front lawn, not having a clue of what to do or where to go. I kept thinking, ‘She’s my mom, moms can’t do this, she has to take me back in, she has to let me stay here.’ But it just got later and later. Finally the lights in the house went out. I slept that night on the lawn furniture.

“In the morning Harv came out and woke me up. He’d thrown my clothes in a suitcase and told me to get in the car. We drove to the courthouse in Crockett. Harv had called in a favor from a local judge. The man had me sign a bunch of forms and by lunchtime I had manumission papers declaring me as an adult. Then Harv bought me a sack with a burger and fries and dropped me off at the bus station. He gave me everything in his wallet. Two hundred and thirty-five dollars.”

Red knew she sounded matter-of-fact but, strangely, she felt that way.

“I came to San Antonio because that’s where the next bus was headed.”

“And you never talked to your mother again?” Cam asked.

“I called her about two months later,” Red answered. “When I finally realized I was pregnant. I was so stupid, I didn’t even know how to tell. When I found out, the first thing I did was call my mom. I remember it as if it just happened. The operator said, ‘I’ve got a long-distance collect call
from Emmaline Cullens. Will you accept the charges?’ And my mother, as clearly and firmly as if she weren’t lying through her teeth, answered, ‘I don’t know anyone by that name.’”

Red blew out a big puff of air. A long moment passed between them, only the sound of the water filled the silence.

“So I decided I didn’t know anyone by that name, either,” she said. “My daddy always called me Red. I’ve been Red ever since.”

Cam twisted a thick lock of her hair around his fist. “I like it,” he told her. “It’s a no-nonsense name for a woman who put nonsense behind her.”

“So, maybe now you can understand how I feel about the money,” Red said to him. “Back when I really needed her, when she really could have helped me, she chose not to. Now, when I’m more than able to stand up for myself, she’s trying to have a do-over or get rid of her guilt by paying me off. She’s not going to need the money anymore, so why not use it to buy back the daughter that she kicked to the curb like a bag of garbage. Well, I don’t come so cheap these days.”

Cam wrapped his arms tightly around her as tears ran down her face and her body shook with sobs of grief and anger. He just held her there on that boulder, rocking her back and forth like a baby in his arms, allowing the last of her bitterness to spill out as the water from deep beneath the ground seeped out of the spring, swirling past them and into the world beyond.

As it went, Red began to feel cleansed. The shame and anger she’d clung to so tightly for years had been released and she began to feel better, lighter, hopeful.

When all the tears were dry and the comfort of his arms had become second nature, Cam finally let her go and rose to his feet. “Let’s walk on down to Broadway and see if we can’t find something to eat. I’m hungry.”

“Me, too,” Red said, surprising herself. “It’s so strange. I’ve kept this inside so long. I thought if I ever let it out, it would just destroy me, destroy everything around me. But now I’ve said it. I’ve said it all to you. And the sun is still shining, the water is still running and all my body knows is that I missed breakfast and it’s time for lunch.”

He helped her back up the bank and she followed him along the track. When they were once again on the gravel path, Red took his hand.

“I just realized that my mother and I had something very much in common,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Both of us got a phone call from our daughter that offered us a second chance to maybe get things right,” Red answered. “I guess I’m just lucky that I had to take the call.”

T
he week before Christmas was busy, more so than any Red could ever remember. Typically she would buy a few presents, put up some colored lights and tinsel in the bar and spend the day sleeping in. That was not going to cut it this year.

The party in Daniel’s class went well. She’d become so accustomed to helping out that she now knew all the kids and they all knew her. Her years of working at the bar, translated into appropriate first-grade language, had made her approachable to the kids and apparently unreproachable among their parents.

With school out and the kids home all day, Aunt Phyl discovered so much that had to be done. Cam put a sweet-smelling fir tree in front of the living-room windows and retrieved the ornaments he’d grown up with from a few boxes in the attic.

Aunt Phyl supervised as Olivia and Daniel turned ordinary green limbs and needles into something magical, glittering and festive. They did such a good job, she insisted, that they must redo her tree, as well. For twenty years, at least, Aunt Phyl had
contracted the services of an interior decorator to “dress her home for the season.” This year had been no exception. But she went home and stripped the beautifully appointed and elegantly styled tree down to the lights. The next day, she had Olivia and Daniel redecorate it with homemade ornaments, Christmas cookies and strings of popcorn and cranberries.

“It was the most joy I’ve ever had out of a tree,” the woman admitted to Red.

The evening of Cam’s chamber concert, Red took the night off. She and the kids put on their best clothes and their nicest manners and went with Aunt Phyl to the event on the campus of Trinity University.

They had excellent tickets with a perfect view of Cam, who was seated on the front row among the violins. Red thought him amazingly handsome in his black tux. She was not at all familiar with classical music, but she had no reverse snobbery about it. Music was music and any live production had the potential to touch the heart. The concert did that admirably and she was surprised at how many of the holiday-themed pieces sounded familiar to her. But what truly stunned her was Cam’s performance. She had watched him as the casual, happy-go-lucky fiddle player enjoying himself on the stage many times. But this music made him very intense. He was frowning through the entire performance. This music strived for a perfection that would have leached all the joy out of a honky-tonk crowd.

After the concert, Aunt Phyl took them to the country club for dessert. Cam met them there. Over chocolate Christmas pie with candy canes, Olivia and Daniel asked Cam questions.

“What’s it like to be in the middle of all those instruments at the same time?”

“If you make a mistake, does the person next to you know it?”

“Why do they need that guy with the stick? He doesn’t even play anything.”

Cam took every question seriously and answered as best he could, even including some important practical lessons comparing teamwork and harmony with individual achievement. The children seemed to relish discussion about a world that was all new to them.

Aunt Phyl spotted an old friend and, to Red’s surprise, wanted to introduce Olivia and Daniel. From across the room, Red observed the two former “menaces and criminals” politely conversing with the table of older folks as Phyl looked on with pride.

“She probably should be introducing you, too,” Cam said.

Red shook her head. “I don’t want to meet anybody,” she answered. “I’m happy with the tacky but dependable friends I’ve already got.”

Cam chuckled.

“What did you think of the concert?”

“I liked it,” she told him. “Beautiful music. And you were, by far, the most handsome guy on stage. But I’m glad you don’t do that anymore.”

“Why?”

“Because it doesn’t seem to make you happy,” she said.

“And you are concerned with my happiness?”

“It’s become one of my top priorities.”

Cam raised an eyebrow. “Well, you already know what I want very much.”

Red shrugged.

“You need a hint?” he asked. “What has ribbons and bells, involves some vows and some toasting, goes on for a couple of hours and lasts a lifetime?” He hesitated. “It also rhymes with bedding.”

“You want to go sledding?” she teased. “You’d better take that up with Santa Claus.”

Laughing off his persistent question was the only thing to do during this time, when her own concerns took a backseat to the imminent arrival of her daughter and all the relief and upheaval that was sure to bring.

On his lunch hour, Brad brought by the papers to officially refuse her inheritance. Cam was by her side as Brad revealed details he’d gleaned from the Dallas law firm.

“Kenneth Grayson is executor of the will,” he told Red, which was no surprise. “The will was actually changed shortly after the death of her husband, Harvey, a few years ago. Patsy Grayson added the two subsequent bequests without her stepson’s knowledge.”

Although the bar was empty, Brad lowered his voice as if passing on a juicy piece of gossip. “Grayson said he had no idea where you might be. He didn’t think it was ‘worth it’ to track you down and was willing to just leave the money in limbo. But a few weeks ago he found out from an unexpected source that you were here in San Antonio. After unsuccessfully trying to contact you himself, he turned the information over to his law firm.”

“I’m sure Kenny will be delighted to hear that I’ve refused it,” Red said.

“From what I gathered from his attorney, Kenneth Grayson is perfectly satisfied with the disposition as it is,” Brad said. “He inherited all the property and the remaining shares of the business. Besides, the money you’re refusing goes to the other beneficiary. It will just be added to her share.”

“Who’s the other beneficiary?” Red asked.

“Oh, it’s your daughter,” Brad answered. “Bridge Cullens Lujan.”

Red was shocked into silence.

“Does Bridge know about this?” Cam asked.

“Not yet,” Brad answered. “The attorney asked me about her whereabouts and I told him that she’d been overseas with the army, but that she was due home soon. I didn’t give them her address, because I wasn’t sure if she’d be staying at your house. They can locate her through military channels.”

Red was still speechless.

“I hope you’re not thinking to refuse her inheritance on her behalf,” Brad said. “Because you won’t be allowed to do that. The money was left to her by name. It’s hers to do with as she sees fit. And with yours added to it, well, it’s certainly a considerable amount.”

“No, no,” Red assured him, finally finding her voice. “I would never presume to tell Bridge what to do. Besides, that money could help her buy a house or pay for the kids to go to college. I’m just…just blown away that my mother even knew that Bridge existed.”

Red gratefully signed all the papers that allowed her to throw the cash back in her mother’s face, as well as make it possible for her daughter and grandchildren to benefit from it. She couldn’t have been more pleased.

“It’s worked out perfectly,” she told Cam after Brad left. “There’s only one unpleasant fly in the ointment.”

“What is that?” he asked.

“I have never told Bridge anything about her father,” Red said. “She didn’t know about my family or my history. I’ve kept all that from her. Now it will all have to come out.”

“Are you sure?”

“I can’t let her find out from someone else,” Red answered.
“Once she gets this money and finds out that she had family in Piney Woods, she’s going to be curious. And she won’t be able to show up there without someone saying something, even if they don’t know for sure.”

“What does Bridge already know?” Cam asked. “You can’t tell me that she never asked about her father.”

“I just refused to talk about it. Finally, she accused me of being with so many guys I didn’t know,” Red answered. “Seeing the kind of life I’ve led, it was pretty easy for her to think that. So I just let her.”

“It’s always good to know the truth,” Cam said. “Building a lie between you has probably always kept the two of you apart.”

“I just don’t want to hurt her,” Red said. “She’s already had to live through enough of my mistakes.”

“You’re the one who’s always telling me how tough she is,” Cam pointed out. “You’ve got to have a little faith.”

As the holiday grew nearer, the anxiety about when Bridge would get home seemed to grow and grow. It affected everyone.

Red was torn between the eagerness to see her daughter and the genuine distress that Olivia and Daniel would revert to being strangers once more.

Cam began moving Red’s things back into the upstairs apartment.

“These first couple of weeks, Bridge is going to want to be alone with the kids,” he said. “She’s going to need rest and they’re going to need privacy. And they’ll get neither if you’re still there.”

Aunt Phyl had taken up the task of finding an acceptable house for Bridge’s family to live in as her goal in life, dicker
ing over the phone to old friends in the real-estate business for hours on end.

The kids themselves were jittery as june bugs. Olivia began to have trouble sleeping through the night. And every day Daniel asked, “Is Mommy coming home tomorrow?”

She called on Christmas Eve to say she was in Kuwait.

“I’m going to be a few days late,” she warned them. “But I’ve discussed this with Santa Claus and he says you guys still have to be good through Christmas until I get there.”

“You’re joking with me,” Daniel said. “You didn’t talk to Santa Claus. He’s at the North Pole, not with you.”

“No, of course he’s not here,” Bridge told her son. “This is no place for a busy guy like him. We exchanged e-mails.”

Everyone felt better after the call and the kids agreed with Red that Christmas Eve would be postponed until their mother got home. And Christmas day would go on as planned.

Their plans were more in the spirit of Christmas anyway. Kelly had invited them to visit the hospital to see her husband and Kendra.

Aunt Phyl took the kids to her house, where cookie baking took up most of the morning. A few minutes after noon, they loaded up the car with cookies and presents and everybody.

They met up with Kelly at the hospital’s family room outside the burn unit, ward 4E. Her mother-in-law was still there, helping. Aunt Phyl immediately picked up Kendra, as if the two were long-lost buddies.

Children were not allowed inside the intensive care unit. Instead, they visited with Kelly and the baby and handed out cookies all around the room.

Some of the patients from the unit were well enough to sit with their families. Their injuries were visible and often disfiguring. Red worried that Olivia and Daniel might be
shocked or scared. But the children had been at the hospital many times when their mother worked there. They were not unaccustomed to the sight of wounded soldiers. And the atmosphere was not one of hushed reverence or tearful bravery. It was festive. It was Christmas and everyone in the family room appeared grateful to be surrounded by people who loved them.

Kelly wanted Red and Cam to meet her husband. After they washed their hands, they were buzzed into the ward. They followed Kelly to an alcovelike room within the ward and met her husband, Sean, for the first time.

He was quiet, seemingly shy with strangers. Red didn’t know what to say to him. Should she tell him how sorry she was about his injuries? Should she ask about what had happened? As she mentally dithered about which direction was more polite, she heard herself matter-of-factly inquiring about the strange bandages that he was swathed in.

Sean seemed immediately more comfortable with relaying factual information.

“This is called Coban,” he answered. “It’s like a pressure dressing. Once you start physical or occupational therapy, they put it on you to keep the swelling down.” He shot a quick smile toward his wife. “This is my big Christmas present. I just got it yesterday. I’ve been wearing Silverlon. It’s a kind of wrap that looks like what a ballplayer might get for an athletic injury. But it’s got silver in it that leaches out to kill bacteria.”

Kelly added, “The Coban is like unmistakable evidence that he’s moved from just recovering to rehabilitating.”

“Congratulations,” Red said.

“Thanks.”

Red talked to Kelly as Cam and Sean shared what Red thought of as guy talk about sports teams and dove hunting.
Neither sounded particularly involved with any of it, but they kept at it until they got to a subject they were both interested in—music.

Sean had been into rock, but he was interested in honky-tonk and Cam knew enough about both to discuss bands and trends.

“So do you play at all?” Cam asked him.

Sean hesitated. “I used to,” he said. “I used to play guitar.” With a kind of fatalistic half grin at his burned arm, he added, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it now. I’ve lost some use of my hand. My elbow is pretty stiff and the ends of most of my fingers are gone.”

Cam nodded. “Could you hold a pick?”

“A pick?”

“I’ve heard about guys who switched hands,” Cam said.

Sean raised an eyebrow in surprise. “I hadn’t thought about that,” he said. “I don’t know if a guy could ever get any good left-handed.”

“Did you ever hear of Django Reinhardt?”

“No.”

“He’s one of the great jazz guitarists of the thirties and forties,” Cam told him. “He was badly burned and lost two of his fingers when he was eighteen. They said he’d never play again, but he taught himself a new technique despite his injuries. If you had a left-handed guitar, you wouldn’t have the dexterity issue.”

“That’s true,” Sean said thoughtfully.

“Music is all in the brain anyway,” Cam said. “And the brain is very good at compensating.”

The two continued to discuss the possibility. As they did, the quiet, shy young man opened up to being the bright, funny, interesting fellow that his wife had wanted them to meet.

“I think we’d better go,” Red said a few minutes later. “We don’t want to wear you out.”

“At least not on our first visit,” Cam added.

“I’ll walk you out,” Kelly said, before adding to Sean, “I promise to be right back and carrying Christmas cookies.”