Heaven, Texas

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  His mother loved someone else. As the knowledge hit him, he waited for a rush of anger, but to his surprise, it didn’t hurt nearly as much as he’d thought it would.

  He tried to pick his words carefully. “What if you were the one who died, Mom? And what if four years after you’d died Dad met somebody he cared a lot about, somebody who’d make him stop being so lonely all the time.” After avoiding this conversation for so long, it somehow finally felt right to be talking about it, and he had the queer sense that Gracie was holding his hand. “And what if he did the same thing you’re doing and shoved this person out of his life because of the way he felt about you. What would you want me to say to him?”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  He heard the agitation in her voice and knew he was upsetting her, but he kept on. “Oh, it’s exactly the same thing.”

  “You haven’t been through this! You don’t understand.”

  “That’s right. I’m just imagining what I’d say to him, is all. I guess you’d want me to tell him to stay lonely for the rest of his life. To do what you’re doing and turn his back on this new person he’d grown to care about so he could spend the rest of his life lighting candles to your memory.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re pressing me on this! You don’t even like Wayland. You admitted it.”

  “No, I don’t, but I’ll tell you this—I sure as hell respect the sonovabitch.”

  “Don’t be vulgar,” she said automatically. And then her eyes filled with tears. “Bobby Tom, I can’t. Your father and I . . .”

  “I know how you felt about each other, Mom. I saw it every day. Maybe that’s why I’ve never had much interest in getting married myself. Because I’ve always wanted the same thing.”

  Gracie danced past in his peripheral vision, and at that exact moment, the fact that he could have the same thing his parents had had all those years hit him so hard he nearly stumbled. Jesus. As he held his mother in his arms and felt his father’s presence, he knew that same intimacy was right here waiting for him on the other side of the dance floor. He loved her. The knowledge almost knocked him to his knees. He loved his Gracie Snow—funny clothes, bossy manner, and all. She was his entertainment, his conscience, the mirror into his soul. She was his resting place. Why hadn’t he understood this weeks ago?

  He’d grown so used to thinking of his life a certain way that he’d blinded himself to his real needs. He’d actually compared Gracie with the sex trophies and made Gracie the loser because she didn’t have big breasts. He’d ignored the undeniable fact that women who existed only to go to parties and look good had bored him for years. He’d overlooked the way gazing at Gracie’s pretty gray eyes and flyaway curls made his mouth water. Why had he clung so tenaciously to the idea that those sex trophies were what he wanted? Gracie was right. At his age, he should have learned something about what he needed from life a long time ago. Instead, he’d continued to judge women on the same artificial scale he’d used when he was a hormone-driven adolescent, and it made him ashamed. Gracie’s beauty had pleased his eye from the beginning. It was real and bone deep, fed by her innate goodness. It was the kind of soul-nourished beauty that would still be with her when she was an old lady.

  He loved Gracie Snow, and he was going to marry her. He was going to marry her for real, dammit! He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, to fill her belly with his babies and fill their house with his love. Instead of scaring him, the idea of spending the rest of his life with her sent such a rush of joy through him that he felt as if he were rising up off the dance floor. He wanted to pull her out of Dan Calebow’s arms that very minute and tell her he loved her. He wanted to see her melt in front of his eyes. But he couldn’t do any of that until he’d tried to set things right with his mother.

  He looked down at her. His chest felt tight, and his voice didn’t sound quite normal. “All this time I’ve been acting like my aversion to Way was personal, but the fact is, I know that I’d have gone into orbit no matter who you might have taken up with. I think part of me wanted you to lock yourself away and mourn Dad for the rest of your life just because he was my father and I loved him.”

  “Oh, sweetheart . . .”

  “Mom, listen to me.” He regarded her urgently. “I know one thing as sure as I know my name—Dad would never have wanted me to feel like that, and he wouldn’t have wanted you to suffer the way you’re suffering, not in a million years. Your love for each other was big and generous, but by turning your back on the future, you’re making it seem small.”

  He heard the quick intake of her breath. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” she said faintly.

  “I know that. Are your feelings for Sawyer going to change the way you felt about Dad?”

  “Oh, no. Never.”

  “Then don’t you think it’s about time you found your backbone?”

  He could almost see her pulling herself taller. “Yes. Yes, I think it is.” For a moment she didn’t do anything, and then she gave him a fierce hug.

  He glanced around and shifted their position on the dance floor. She squeezed his shoulder. “You are the most wonderful son any woman could ever have.”

  “Let’s see if you’re still saying that after I embarrass you to death.” Letting go of her hand, he reached out to tap Way Sawyer on the shoulder as he and his partner swung by. The older man came to a stop and regarded him quizzically.

  Bobby Tom spoke. “Are you going to monopolize Miz Baines all night, Sawyer? She and I have a few things to talk about, don’t we, Miz Baines? How ’bout we switch partners?”

  Sawyer looked so dumbfounded that, for a moment, Bobby Tom thought he was going to let this golden opportunity slip by. He quickly recovered, however, and nearly knocked over poor Judy Baines in his eagerness to get his hands on Suzy.

  Just before she slipped into his arms, Sawyer’s gaze met his own, and Bobby Tom couldn’t ever remember seeing so much gratitude in another man’s eyes. Suzy, in the meantime, had a combination of excitement and panic in her expression.

  Bobby Tom took Mrs. Baines’s hand. Realizing he loved Gracie had tossed his whole world upside down, and, to his amazement, he found he was actually enjoying himself. He gave Sawyer his best outlaw’s squint. “My mother’s a respectable woman with a reputation to uphold in the community, so I’ll expect you to do right by her. And don’t take too long about it, either, because if I hear of any hanky-panky going on before the ceremony, there’s going to be some big-time hell to pay.

  Sawyer threw back his head and laughed. At the same time, he looped his arm around Suzy’s shoulders and swept her right off the dance floor.

  Judy Baines craned her neck to watch as they disappeared. She turned to Bobby Tom and clucked her tongue. “I think he’s taking her behind the barn.”

  “Hanky-panky, for sure.”

  “You gonna do anything about it?”

  “Give the bride away, Miz Baines, and hope for the best.”

  Way and Suzy couldn’t stop kissing each other. He had her backed up against the side of the barn with the shirttail of her prim white blouse pulled out and his hand up underneath it. They were both breathing heavily, and Bobby Tom’s silly warning had left them with a giddy sense that they were getting away with something.

  “I love you, Suzy. I’ve been waiting for you all my life.”

  “Oh,Way . . .”

  “Say it, sweetheart. Tell me. I need to hear the words.”

  “I love you, too. You know I do. I’ve loved you for a long time. And I need you so very much.”

  Way kissed her again, then voiced the question that had to be asked. “What about Hoyt? I know how much your marriage meant.”

  She brought her hand from the back of his neck to cup his jaw. “I’ll always love him, you know that, but Bobby Tom made me understand something tonight that I should have been able to figure out a long time ago. Hoyt would want thi
s for me. He’d want you for me. I guess I’ll always believe that somehow he gave us his blessing tonight through his son.”

  Way stroked her cheek. “This has been hard on Bobby Tom. I know the way he felt about his dad.” For the first time since he’d started kissing her, he looked troubled. “It’s no secret your son doesn’t like me, Suzy, but I promise you that I’m going to do my best to change that.”

  She smiled. “He likes you a lot; he just hasn’t figured it out yet. Believe me, the two of you are going to get along fine. He would never have turned me over to you if he hadn’t already made up his mind about that.”

  He looked relieved, then he began taking tiny nips out of her bottom lip. At the same time, his thumb found her nipple. “Sweetheart, we’ve got to get out of here.”

  She drew back and gave him a mischievous grin. “Bobby Tom said you were supposed to treat me with respect.”

  “I am. First I’m going to get you naked, then I’m going to treat you with respect.”

  She pretended to think it over. “I don’t know if we should. He was awfully intimidating.”

  He groaned. “It could take a couple of weeks for us to put a wedding ceremony together, and there’s no way I can wait that long to touch you. Your son can just learn right now to respect the needs of his elders.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Way kissed her once again. When they finally parted, he threw back his head and laughed. The biggest hood at Telarosa High had finally won the heart of the prettiest girl in the sophomore class.

  As Bobby Tom leaped up on the platform to recognize the golf tournament winners, he was halfway giddy he felt so good. High on love and the realization that life held more for him than football, he had just decided exactly how he was going to go about letting Gracie know that everything had changed. Making the grand gesture had always appealed to him, and he intended to give his future wife a marriage proposal she’d never forget.

  Gracie, in the meantime, was counting the minutes until the agonizing night would be over. She tried to find some sort of peace in accepting the knowledge that she would never again let herself be satisfied with less than she deserved, but nothing could ease her heartbreak.

  Terry Jo had refused to handle the drawing for the quilt raffle, so she found herself on the platform, standing as far away from Bobby Tom as she could get. While Luther thanked the athletes for participating, she looked out over the crowd. Willow and the rest of the Blood Moon people stood in a group, Elvis had fallen asleep in Natalie’s arm, and Buddy and Terry Jo were standing with Jim Biederot, Bobby Tom’s old teammate, and the Calebows.

  A number of Bobby Tom’s athlete friends had danced with her this evening, and most of them had been amused by her ignorance of who they were rather than being annoyed. Unfortunately, she’ had discovered that they had somehow learned she was the one who had broken off with Bobby Tom, instead of the other way around. Women would have been sympathetic if they heard their friend had been dumped, but Bobby Tom’s friends seemed to think this was unbelievably funny, and she was certain they’d been ribbing him about it all evening. She knew what kind of blow this would be to his pride, and a vague sense of apprehension settled around her pain.

  Luther picked up the glass fishbowl containing the stubs of the raffle tickets that she’d given him earlier and gestured for her to approach. “Before Bobby Tom recognizes our guests tonight, we’re going to draw for the beautiful quilt the folks at Arbor Hills Nursing Home are raffling off. Most of you folks know Gracie Snow. We sure are going to miss her after she leaves and let’s give her a big round of applause for all the hard work she’s done.”

  Enthusiastic applause broke out, accompanied by some loud whistles. She reached into the fishbowl to draw out the winner.

  “Number one-three-seven.”

  The ticket, as it turned out, was the one the crew members had bought for Elvis, who awakened as his mother brought him forward. Gracie handed over the quilt to Natalie and gave the winner a special hug and kiss, realizing, as she did, how much she was going to miss this sweet-tempered baby. With the drawing completed, she tried to step down off the platform only to discover that Luther was in the way.

  Bobby Tom approached the microphone and launched into a routine that would have done a stand-up comic proud. As he poked fun at his friends’ golf games and his own poor score, she thought she’d never seen him more entertaining. His eyes fairly glowed with happiness, and his grin would have done justice to a toothpaste model. She had the dismal thought that he couldn’t have found a better way to let the crowd know that he wasn’t the one suffering from a broken heart.

  He finished recognizing the athletes, and she waited for him to step back from the mike so she could slip away. Instead, he looked over at her. “Before we start the dancing again, I have one more announcement to make . . .”

  A trickle of alarm slithered down her spine.

  “Some of you might have heard that Gracie and I broke our engagement. You might also have noticed that she’s pretty mad at me right now.” Once again his mouth curled in a grin so engaging that it was impossible to imagine anyone other than the world’s most unreasonable person ever being upset with him.

  She prayed for him to stop. She couldn’t bear the idea that he was going to somehow hold up her private misery in front of this crowd for everyone to see, but he continued to talk.

  “The thing of it is, there are engagements and then there are engagements, and it turns out Gracie and I were only engaged to be engaged. But now it’s time to do this right. Bring Gracie over here, Luther, because she’s still mad at me, and I doubt she’s going to come on her own.”

  She would never forgive him for this, she thought, as Luther gave a hearty chortle and pulled her forward. She looked down at Terry Jo, at Natalie and Toolee Chandler all standing before her in the crowd, wordlessly begging one of them to help her, but they were all smiling. Bobby Tom’s friends seemed to be enjoying this, too.

  He wrapped his arm around her and gazed down into her stricken face. “Gracie, right here in front of God, the hometown crowd, and all these gym rats that I call my friends, I’m asking you to do me the honor of becoming my wife.” He put his palm over the microphone and leaned down to whisper, “I love you, honey, and this time’s for real.”

  An awful shudder ripped through her. She never imagined anything could hurt this badly. The crowd laughed and clapped. These were the people he’d grown up with, the men who were his friends, and there was no way in the world he could tolerate any of them seeing him as a loser. He’d lied when he said he loved her. Lies came easily to him, and to save his reputation, he was willing to destroy her.

  Her soft, choked words were for his ears alone. “I can’t marry you, Bobby Tom. I deserve something better.”

  Only as her voice came back to her, amplified by the speakers, did she realize he’d removed his hand from the microphone before she spoke. The laughter of the audience abruptly stopped. There were a few nervous chuckles, and then as people realized she was serious, utter silence.

  Bobby Tom’s face had gone pale. Stricken, she gazed into his eyes. She hadn’t wanted to humiliate him, but the words were spoken and she wouldn’t take them back because they were true.

  She waited for him to come up with some sort of wisecrack to defuse the situation, but he didn’t say anything.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, backing away. “I’m really sorry.” She turned and rushed off the platform.

  As she pushed through the stunned, silent crowd, she waited to hear his lazy drawl, his endearing chuckle amplified by the microphone for the hometown crowd. In her mind, she could even hear the words he would choose.

  Whooee! Now that, folks, is one mad little lady. Bet it’s gonna cost me more than a bottle of champagne and a night on the town to get her settled down.

  She pushed forward, stumbling once on the hem of her long dress, and then she heard his voice, just as she’d known she would. But instead of
the words she had imagined, the loudspeakers crackled with rage and hostility.

  “Go on, Gracie! Get out of here! We both know I was just trying to do you a favor. Shit; Why the hell would I want to marry somebody like you? Now get out of here! Get the hell out of my life, and don’t ever let me see your face again!”

  She was sobbing, humiliated. She plunged blindly forward, not knowing where she was going, not caring, only knowing she had to get away.

  A hand closed on her arm, and she saw Ray Bevins, the Blood Moon cameraman. “Come on, Gracie. I’ll drive you.”

  The loudspeakers shrieked behind her with the deafening sound of feedback from the microphone.

  She ran.

  24

  Bobby Tom Denton turned out to be a mean drunk. He destroyed most of the interior of the Wagon Wheel, kicked the windows out of a brand-new Pontiac, and broke Len Brown’s arm. Bobby Tom had been in fights before, but not with somebody like Len and not with Buddy Baines, who’d only been stealing the keys to Bobby Tom’s truck to keep him from driving drunk. Nobody could have imagined a day when the people of Telarosa would be ashamed of their favorite son, but that night they all shook their heads.

  When Bobby Tom woke up, he was in jail. He tried to roll over, but it hurt too much to move. His head throbbed and every muscle in his body ached. As he attempted to open his eyes, he realized that one of them was swollen shut. At the same time, his stomach felt like he had a bad case of the flu.

  He winced as he slowly lowered his legs over the side of the cot and dragged himself into a sitting position. Even after a particularly brutal game, he’d never felt this bad. Dropping his head into his hands, he let despair wash over him. A lot of people didn’t remember what they did when they were drunk, but he remembered every miserable moment. Even worse, he remembered what had led up to it.

  How could he have stood up there at that microphone and talked to Gracie like that, no matter how humiliated he’d been by her rejection? The glimpse he’d had of her face as she’d run away would stay with him for the rest of his life. She’d believed every damning word he’d uttered, and the knowledge filled him with shame. At he same time, the echo of her words to him was scalded in his brain.