Polly wasn’t listening. She let out a howl.
“Bertha!” She started down the street. “Bertha! Oh please! Answer me! Bertha?”
Powderkeg overtook her, grabbing her around the waist. She was hysterical.
“She’s all right,” Powderkeg said. “She’s all right! Look!”
He pointed back to the Cinderella carriage. The rubble had been pulled away and Titan was standing on the ground, his hand extended into the carriage. Old Bertha’s hand was reaching for his. Powderkeg held the sobbing girl as they watched the surreal fairy tale play out. It was as if Cinderella had fallen asleep inside her coach and emerged a grouchy and ample-bottomed eighty-year-old.
Polly ran to Old Bertha and threw herself into the old woman’s arms.
“Calm down, now,” Old Bertha said, patting the girl. “It’s fine. Titan got us into the carriage just in time.”
Old Bertha looked at Pappy.
“So you decided to come back, did you?” she said.
“I did,” Pappy said.
“You’re a mess,” she said, looking him up and down. “Don’t expect dinner until you clean up.”
Cleo was watching Jeffries. He was still moving boards off the coach.
“You don’t have to do that,” Titan said. “I can clean it up later.”
Jeffries threw down a piece of wood angrily.
“Fine,” he said. “Handle it yourself. See if I care.” He started to storm away, but Titan grabbed his arm.
“I’m sorry,” Titan said. “I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you. I just . . . I just thought it was for the best.”
“You remember?” Jeffries said.
“Of course I do. How could I forget?”
The two men embraced. As they kissed, Cleo turned to Powderkeg.
“Jeffries is gay?” she asked.
“Woman, he’s worked for you for twenty-five years,” Powderkeg said. “How is it you didn’t know he was gay?”
“I really need to start paying more attention,” Cleo mused, returning her gaze to the two men leaning against the dented Cinderella carriage.
“Now I understand,” Wesley said to Erinn. “Jeffries confided in you that he wanted to see Titan. That’s why you offered to take him on as a PA.”
“That’s right,” Erinn said.
“That was very kind of you,” Wesley said. “I mean, he has no PA experience.”
“Unlike you?”
The flirtatious banter didn’t fool either one of them. This was merely a brief détente. The secrets of Fat Chance were going to continue to come out. Jeffries and Titan were just the tip of the iceberg.
* * *
Dymphna refused to look at the space where her farmhouse used to be. She got the chickens and rabbits resettled. The barn and rabbits’ habitat were unscathed, but the fence was mangled. The goats were heading back to them, looking like aliens with their sodden, matted hair. For now, the barn seemed to be where the goats wanted to be. They went into the barn single file, ignoring Professor Johnson and Thud along the way.
Professor Johnson went to Dymphna, who was studiously concentrating on the rabbits.
“The animals seem all right,” he said. “The goats got home OK.”
Dymphna nodded.
“I’ll accept any decision you make,” Professor Johnson said.
Dymphna looked up, startled. “I’m sorry—” She shook her hair as if trying to clear a fog in her head. “What decision?”
“Even though I thought I knew you, I didn’t,” Professor Johnson said. “When I had to go back to Los Angeles for six months, it never occurred to me we wouldn’t make it. It wasn’t until you left that I started to worry. When Maggie showed up—”
“Maggie doesn’t—” Dymphna interrupted hotly, but Professor Johnson held up his hand. She backed down.
“When Maggie showed up and mentioned that you took to the hills whenever things got tough, I didn’t really believe it.”
“But now you do?” Dymphna said in a small voice.
“Well, I’m not going to lie to you,” he said. “It did get me thinking. I didn’t know you had a sister. I didn’t know anything about your life before you lost your land in Malibu, and I only knew that because Cutthroat told us when Wesley played the DVD.”
“I just don’t like to talk about the past.” Dymphna looked out over the land rather than at Professor Johnson.
“I’m not asking you to. What I’m saying is, if this is too much for you and you decide to take your rabbits back to Los Angeles, I’ll understand.”
“Is that what you want?” she asked.
“Is that what you want?” he asked right back.
* * *
“There’s Rocket,” Maggie shouted, pointing to the longhorn rambling over the rise from Dymphna’s farm.
“I can’t believe how lucky we’ve been,” Titan said, as he and Jeffries walked quickly toward the bull.
As Titan reached the section of Main Street where Dymphna’s farm started to become visible, he realized something was very wrong. He turned back to the townspeople, who were starting to disburse.
“I can see the barn, but I can’t see the house,” Titan shouted.
“Oh no!” Maggie cried, as she broke into a run. “Dymphna!”
She shot passed the rest of the townspeople as she raced up the hill. It was slippery from the rain and there were chunks of missing earth, which caused all of them to fall on their way toward the top of the hill.
Maggie was the first to see her sister and Professor Johnson standing in the barnyard. Before, the space had been anchored by the house on one side and the barn on the other. Now there was only the barn, standing like a confused and lonely bookend.
Maggie stopped running and took a deep breath. She tried to quiet her heart. It would not do for Dymphna to see her panic, or even show sadness, at the prospect of her older sister coming to harm. After all, she knew both of them had fantasized about the other’s unfortunate demise since they were children, sent to their separate rooms for fighting. Seeing her sister standing in the ruin of her life made Maggie’s heart ache, but she had to be tough. She might meet Dymphna halfway, but she wasn’t going to be the first to offer an olive branch. She might get a poke in the eye.
She dug deep inside for all the evidence of Dymphna’s failings as an older sister. The fact that both her parents had admired Dymphna was something she’d lived with until her parents died. The sound of her father’s pride when he announced “Dymphna won the spelling bee” to her mother’s cheerful chirp of “Dymphna is selling her own line of knitwear to boutiques” grated on her even now. Tired of recounting the injustices, she moved on to the slings and arrows of following Dymphna through school. Dymphna with her art awards, Dymphna with her 4-H awards, Dymphna with her posse of cute boyfriends. As they got older, the playing field leveled. Maggie might not have been able to get her parents’ attention, but she could make Dymphna’s boyfriends sit up and take notice.
She smiled grimly at the memory of seducing Dymphna’s sophomore-year boyfriend. The exhilaration of the conquest had been short-lived. Dymphna’s brokenhearted wails rang through the house for a week. Her parents had endless discussions about Maggie for once. It wasn’t exactly winning first place in something, but it was much more fun, more empowering and easier. Taking things from Dymphna became an addiction. She’d swear to herself she was going to stop, but the temptation would get too great and she would think “OK, only one more time.”
And then Dymphna just left. Dymphna took off as soon as she turned eighteen, leaving Maggie to deal with brokenhearted parents, who blamed her! It was the final drop in a heart full of resentment. Her cup runneth over.
As she got closer to the farm, it occurred to her that Dymphna and Professor Johnson were working at cleaning up, but seemed to be working separately, not together. Her view was obscured from time to time, because everyone but Pappy, who was helping Old Bertha up the hill, had passed her by.
Now that she
was calm again, she reached in her waistband to make sure her treasure was safe. There might have been one minute when she was locked in the vault and feared for her life that she was tempted to give up her treasure, but the urge passed as quickly as the tornado. She stood still as Pappy and Old Bertha huffed by. She smiled grimly to herself. The only thing more fun than ruining something special for Dymphna was ruining something special for the people whom Dymphna loved.
Taking down Fat Chance was going to be epic!
“It looks like your sister is safe at least,” Pappy said to Maggie. When she didn’t respond, he added, “You OK?”
“Yes,” Maggie said.
But she wasn’t.
Chapter 34
Titan was the first to reach Dymphna. He swooped her up in a bone-crunching hug.
“Titan,” she said softly, “my house is gone.”
“I know, sugar,” he said. “Mine too. The forge got hit. But Rocket is OK. We’re all OK. That’s all that really matters.” He put Dymphna back on the ground. Jeffries came up and put his arm around Titan.
“You can come back to Los Angeles. I’ll take care of you,” Jeffries said.
“I just might,” Titan said. “There isn’t anything left for me here.”
Dymphna’s heart started to pound.
She was angry when Professor Johnson gave her the out of leaving. She wanted to prove she had what it took to finally stay in one place and to make things work. But maybe it wasn’t going to be her choice this time.
Was this the end of Fat Chance?
She tried to smile at the two men.
“I see this disaster had one good outcome,” she said. “You two got over yourselves!”
Dymphna knew that after the reading of the will, Titan had been so upset he’d bolted from the living room as soon as they were dismissed. When Dymphna was leaving, she went to find him. Even though they had just met, she knew he was going to be the one she leaned on in the months ahead. She’d found him in a darkened hallway, locked in an embrace with Jeffries. The men broke apart immediately and Jeffries put his butler-mask back on and excused himself.
Dymphna wasn’t sure if Titan had wanted to talk about it, so she walked with him down the long driveway in silence. He was the one who spoke.
“I guess that looked a little weird,” he said.
“Do you even know that man?” Dymphna had asked, then decided to be quiet rather than sound the tiniest bit judgmental.
“No,” Titan said. “I was just trying to find a corner in that humongous house where I could be alone. I hate crying in public. I thought that hallway was safe, but the butler saw me and came to see if I was OK. Next thing I knew, we were kissing!”
“Wow.”
“I know.”
When Jeffries had first shown up in Fat Chance, Texas, having driven Cleo to the turnout above the town, Dymphna had taken her cue from the two men; they’d acted as if they’d never laid eyes on each other. After Jeffries drove away, Dymphna asked Titan why he hadn’t run up to Jeffries.
“You must have been surprised to see him,” Dymphna said. “You could have at least given him a hug.”
“Jeffries isn’t out of the closet,” Titan said. “In case you haven’t noticed.”
“But he drove all this way!” Dymphna said. “He might have come all this way to see you.”
“Maybe,” Titan said, “but maybe not.”
“You didn’t give him a chance,” Dymphna said.
“He didn’t give me a chance to give him a chance!” Titan said huffily.
Dymphna had let it go.
“That’s all behind us now,” Titan said, bringing Dymphna back to the present. “It was a misunderstanding. I thought he didn’t want to acknowledge me and he thought I didn’t want to acknowledge him.”
“Nothing like a near-death experience to clear the head,” Jeffries said.
“Nooooooooo,” came a wail from the rubble.
Dymphna, Titan, and Jeffries turned to see Erinn standing ankle deep in mud, holding the remains of her computer. Polly strode over to her and examined the mangled piece of technology.
“Yeah,” Polly said. “This is toast.”
“I don’t have a backup!” Erinn said.
“Shit,” Powderkeg said.
“Watch your language,” Cleo said. “That doesn’t help.”
“I knew it,” Erinn said. “I knew I was risking everything shooting here without access to the cloud!”
“Is she delirious?” Old Bertha whispered to Fernando.
“The cloud is . . .” Fernando started, but looked at Old Bertha’s puzzled face and realized it was futile. “The cloud is a thing. An important computer thing.”
Old Bertha nodded.
“So,” Pappy asked Fernando, “everything she shot is gone?”
“Most everything,” Fernando said. “She might have an interview or two still on her camera, but from the look on her face, she’s in big trouble.”
Pappy tried not to show the relief he felt.
“Well, that just sucks,” Maggie said. “Do you think she’ll start over?”
“Can’t say,” Pappy said.
Maggie noticed that Pappy was eyeing the debris carefully but surreptitiously.
You’ll never find what you’re looking for, she thought.
As if agreeing with Maggie’s unspoken thoughts, Pappy let out a heavy sigh. He finally grabbed Old Bertha’s elbow to help her down the hill. Bertha turned back to the group.
“It’s gonna be dark soon,” she said. “Best you all get back to town as soon as you can.”
Dymphna said that she and Professor Johnson would come down as soon as they made sure the animals were safe for the night.
“We can make room for you at the inn,” Old Bertha said.
“We can stay behind the Boozehound,” Professor Johnson said.
“That’s right,” Polly said. “I forgot you had a little place back there.”
“We’ll need a place,” Titan said, taking Jeffries’s hand.
Old Bertha paled. “I don’t have any more rooms,” she said quickly.
“But you just said you could always make more room,” Maggie said.
“Well, that was before I realized all the rooms were taken.”
“I see,” Jeffries said. “Well, we can always sleep in the limousine.”
“Like hell!” Cleo burst out.
Everyone turned to stare at her.
“What I mean is,” Cleo said, regaining her composure, “I can move over to Powderkeg’s and you two can have my room.”
Once the group internalized the old-new development between Powderkeg and Cleo, all eyes turned back to Old Bertha.
“Oh, what the hell,” she finally said. “Fernando, I think you need to feed all of us. That is, if the food didn’t all blow away. I’ll fix up a room for these boys.”
“You got it,” Fernando said.
Pappy, Old Bertha, Powderkeg, Cleo, Maggie, Polly, Titan, and Jeffries headed down the soggy hillside. Erinn stood cemented to the earth where her computer had met its end.
“Let’s go back to town,” Wesley said.
“It’s all gone,” Erinn said.
“Those interviews aren’t the story anyway,” Wesley said gently. “You said so yourself.”
“Aha!” Erinn said. “I knew I was on the right track, Mr. Wesley Tensaw.”
“You’re impossible,” he said.
“Really?” Erinn stomped through the mud as they headed into town. “I thought I was remarkable.”
“No,” Wesley said. “You said I was remarkable.”
After the other townspeople left, it was very quiet on the farm. Dymphna and Professor Johnson looked down over Fat Chance.
“We should get down there pretty soon,” Professor Johnson said. “That hillside will be tough to navigate in the dark.”
“Do you think it makes sense to rebuild?” Dymphna asked.
“That depends on whether you want to stay,” Profes
sor Johnson said.
“Maybe I’d stay if it made sense to rebuild.”
“That’s not much of a reason.”
“If I didn’t rebuild, you could use this land for grapes.”
“Yes, I could.”
Dymphna shivered in the rapidly cooling breeze.
“We better get down to town,” she said.
Chapter 35
Night was merciful. As the inhabitants of Fat Chance sat around the big center table at the café, it was easy to ignore the ruin they would face in the morning. While the Creakside Inn and the stores on the boardwalk had been spared destruction, the giant had not left the place unscathed. Mud covered all the buildings, Main Street was a river of sludge, and the boardwalk had gaping holes.
Erinn retrieved her camera from Powderkeg’s store. She knew she had the interviews with Old Bertha and Titan, which were both compelling pieces. If her hunch was right, and she could get around Wesley, the interview with Titan would be gold.
She looked around the table, trying to gauge the group dynamic. Fernando and Polly just seemed absorbed in getting the food on the table. Polly enlisted Maggie’s help. Professor Johnson and Dymphna appeared to be barely speaking. Erinn was glad to see Jeffries and Titan staring moonily into each other’s eyes. If Titan was going to leave Fat Chance, now that the forge was gone, he’d need all the support he could get. Cleo and Powderkeg were also playing the role of lovebirds, but that seemed to be a familiar story to the townspeople. Old Bertha and Pappy seemed drained by the events of the day, but Pappy seemed alert. Erinn noticed that Wesley kept trying to catch Pappy’s eye, but Pappy studiously avoided eye contact with the big-city attorney.
Erinn was itching to get to Pappy. If her suspicions were right, she’d have the story of the century. The fact that he seemed wary of Wesley checked yet another box on her list of theories. She needed to keep an eye on him. He’d bolted once; she wanted to make sure he wouldn’t get a chance to do it again.
Pappy suddenly stood up and tapped his mason jar with a spoon. Unlike the ping ping of fine crystal, the mason jar sounded a flat ponk ponk ponk. But it got everyone’s attention.
“I know this has been a rough day for everybody,” Pappy said. Turning to Titan and then to Dymphna, he added, “Some more than others. But as mayor of Fat Chance . . .”
Livin' Large in Fat Chance, Texas Page 22
