Twilight, Texas

by Ginger Chambers

  “Belonged,” Lee corrected. “Augusta died earlier this summer. It’s...Karen who’s here now, sorting through her inheritance.”

  Mae gave him a sharp look. “Karen’s here?”

  “I knew she might be. It’s one of the reasons I came—to apologize.”

  “Who’s Karen? Who’s Augusta?” Shannon asked.

  Shannon hadn’t been a member of the Parker family seven years ago. If later she’d heard about the embarrassment—which Lee imagined she had, being around Mae—there was no reason she’d remember the names.

  “Karen Latham,” Lee explained. “The girl my brother, Alex—”

  “Left standing at the altar!” Mae completed. “It was terrible! Worse thing a Parker’s ever done! If I coulda got my hands on him afterward, he wouldn’t’ve had enough left in him to humiliate us again like he has!” Her shoulders jerked spasmodically. Finally she demanded, “Did she? Did she accept your apology?”

  Lee grimaced. “Let’s just say things are at a rather...delicate stage.”

  “Maybe I should talk to her,” Mae declared, and started forward.

  Lee reached to stop her—that was exactly what he didn’t want—but a hand slipped inside his elbow to restrain him.

  “Maybe it’s like a saddle bur,” Shannon said softly. “Better to get it out in the open. I remember now. Mae was still upset when she told me.” She glanced at Mae, who was already disappearing into the shop’s open doorway. “Why not let the two of them have their talk? Then we can talk, too. I have something to show you.”

  KAREN KNEW INSTANTLY that she was no longer alone. She also knew who the visitor was without looking. Mae Parker had a force about her. A presence that set her apart.

  She sensed the older woman glance around the shop, at the still-too-crowded conditions, then her penetrating gaze settled on her.

  This time Karen was ready. She stood—her back straight, her chin high—on her own ground now. She would not be intimidated. She stepped away from the cheval mirror she’d been about to move and spoke first. “I heard you were in town.”

  “I just learned you were.”

  Mae looked only a little older than the last time Karen had seen her, and even though she now relied on a cane, Karen wasn’t fooled into thinking the intervening years had softened her in any way. “So you just had to drop by,” Karen said.

  “I would have considered it rude not to.”

  Karen’s smile was quick, sardonic. “And heaven forbid, you mustn’t be rude.”

  Mae tapped a wicker planter with the tip of her cane. “I understand your aunt has died. The Parkers extend our condolences.”

  “Why?” Karen demanded.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “You didn’t care about her when she was alive. Why should you now?”

  “Lee tells me he’s apologized.”

  Again Karen didn’t respond.

  Mae smiled tautly. “Would it help if I apologized, too?”

  Karen found facing Mae difficult, but continuing to stand up for herself was important. She had to, to compensate for when she hadn’t. “Are you apologizing for your behavior or for Alex’s?”

  “My behavior?” Mae repeated, surprised.

  “Oh, yes. You made it very clear you didn’t want me in your family. Which is fine. Because I’d rather be where I am than owing anything to you.”

  “You’re a very bitter young woman,” Mae decreed.

  “And I shouldn’t be?”

  Mae moved past Karen to a straight-back chair, where she sat down slowly and carefully. Then, leveling her gaze on Karen, she said, “I’ve dealt with stubborn people all my life. Hell, I’m the most stubborn person I know. You say I didn’t want you in the family...I didn’t even know you, girl. How could I make a decision like that? And as far as Alex goes—” she laughed “—I should think you’d count yourself lucky! That boy never was any good for anythin’. Spoiled rotten. Used to havin’ his own way. What kinda husband does that make? If all men were like him, I’d rather be the old maid I am than married to one of ’em! Now, wouldn’t you, too? Truthfully?”

  Karen tried to steel herself against Mae’s logic. Years ago Alex had told her the way the family matriarch liked to bend and maneuver people to achieve her own ends. That she liked to rule other people’s lives. “I don’t believe you,” Karen said. “I heard you myself.”

  “Heard me?” Mae echoed once again.

  Karen picked up a Hummel figurine she’d missed putting away and rubbed at a spot of dirt on its base. “Look, I’m very busy. If it means so much to you, I accept your apology. It’s what Aunt Augusta would want, so I’ll do it.”

  “I liked your aunt Augusta.”

  Karen’s cleaning stopped. She looked at Mae in surprise. “I didn’t know you knew her.”

  “I didn’t, not really, but I’d like to have. I invited her to tea at the ranch once. She said it wouldn’t be right without you. We came to an understandin’, though, about what a terrible thing it was that happened to you. I told her I considered it a travesty. That boy wasn’t ready to marry anybody. His momma shoulda put her foot down and stopped it right when he first told her what he planned to do. He humiliated you, your parents. He humiliated himself, his parents, his brother. But worst of all, he brought disgrace to the Parker name.”

  “I’m glad you think your name is more important than living, breathing human beings.”

  “The Parker name is living, breathing human beings,” Mae retorted. “What do you think we all are out at the ranch? What Lee is...and his daddy? And there’s lots more scattered throughout the state. It’s not just a name. It’s a symbol of all the principles we live by. And leaving a young woman stranded at the altar on her wedding day breaks every single one of those! That’s why Lee and I tried to talk to you and your parents right away, to do what we could to make things right.” She stopped, her lips thinning. “But they wouldn’t listen, and they wouldn’t let you listen, either.”

  Travesty... principles... disgrace. Had that been what Mae was referring to when Karen heard her making pronouncements all those years ago? Not that she, Karen, was unworthy, but that Alex was too irresponsible to be contemplating marriage! Mae had thought he was wrong. That Jessica Parker was wrong in not doing more to stop it.

  Realization of another mistaken perception flooded through her, and in its aftermath came deep embarrassment. It had been so easy for her to jump to conclusions back then. She’d been predisposed from the way her parents had reacted to the Parkers, in their attempts to prove themselves—No. Karen pulled her thoughts back. She could see it all now. For her mother to prove herself good enough for Jessica Parker. It had injured her mother’s pride to be thought of as wanting—for her daughter to be. That’s why she’d done everything she had for the wedding, spent so much money, reacted beyond reason when it was canceled. Still reacted beyond reason.

  Even after Lee’s attempts at clarification, Karen had held on to her anger at Mae. She’d heard Mae with her own ears! Now, if Mae was telling the truth—

  The older woman exited the chair as quickly as she could and saw Karen into it. Mae also removed the figurine from her hand and put it safely on a nearby shelf.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, girl,” Mae murmured anxiously, seemingly out of character for her. “You’re all pale.” She hissed at herself, “I shouldn‘t’ve said everything I did. Sometimes I forget other people have a different way of dealin’ with things than I do. Can I get you somethin’? Some water, maybe?”

  Karen strove to collect herself. To startle someone as tough as Mae, she must look pretty terrible. “No, I—I’m all right. I just—”

  “How about that lady at the saloon? Bette, that’s her name, isn’t it? Maybe she can—”

  “No, really, please.” Karen got back to her feet and shook her head, trying to clear it.

  Mae gave her a long, hard look before, apparently satisfied, she relaxed a degree. “You had me goin’
there for a minute. I didn’t want to have to explain to Lee and the others that somehow I’d managed to fuss you to death!”

  Unbelievably, considering the hostile way this confrontation had started, Karen found herself smiling at Mae’s little jest. “I’m a lot stronger than that,” she murmured.

  “That’s what I always thought,” Mae retorted, giving a wisp of a smile. Then, more seriously, she added, “Actually, I always thought you were pretty strong. Your aunt thought so, too.”

  “The two of you...Aunt Augusta and you. You certainly seem to have covered a lot of ground when you talked.”

  “Anybody can when they don’t dillydally around.” Mae paused. “I truly am sorry to see Augusta go.”

  “Thank you,” Karen said simply.

  With a nod of understanding Mae left the shop, her cane tapping lightly on the plank floor.

  LEE AND SHANNON SAT in the deserted saloon. The whole town seemed busy with one project or another, rejuvenated by the arrival of the studio workers and Pete’s declaration of cooperation. Some of the women were now toiling inside the hotel, painting and wallpapering and helping with the finishing work whenever construction got to that point. Lee, Diane and Manny had been taping their progress when word reached Lee that his relatives had arrived. Diane and Manny continued without him.

  At first Lee couldn’t concentrate on what Shannon was saying, his thoughts on the two strong-willed women together in the antique shop. But her information became so engrossing, Shannon soon gained his full attention.

  “I didn’t make anything of it at first,” she said, continuing. “Then I read it again and there it was—Byron Parker’s account of rescuing a child from what he called ‘the spring.’ I searched further and found that he’d have been twenty-two at the time. Old enough to have been a member of the posse chasing Nate Barlow, like he claimed in his other account. I also looked at his gravestone in the Parker cemetery, and his birthdate corresponds. He didn’t die until 1944, at the age of seventy-four. Read it. All of it,” she urged, passing Lee the loose sheets of paper that had been taken from two different writing tablets.

  For whatever reason, whether to set the record straight by request of local law enforcement or for his own satisfaction, Byron Parker had filled six pages with his old-fashioned script.

  Lee found the writing difficult to decipher at first but soon grew comfortable with the style. He quickly became absorbed. Minutes later his head jerked up. “He says here Nate Barlow was hanged in Del Norte, after due process of law... and that the posse caught him in Twilight, not because Nate had stopped to rescue a child but because he was up there—” he pointed to the ceiling “—taking a little siesta in one of the bedrooms with the saloon owner’s daughter!”

  Shannon nodded.

  Lee finished the last two sheets. This time when he looked up, all he could do was shake his head and say softly, “My God, he does claim to have rescued a child. The spring must be the well. He says he and his buddy did it during all the excitement following the capture of Nate Barlow. There were only two families in Twilight at the time. The saloon owner and his daughter and the Ramerizes—a husband, wife and their two young kids. The oldest kid hid out in the well when the posse members started yipping and shooting their guns off in the air to celebrate. Then he couldn’t get out. Byron and his friend heard the kid yell, Byron dropped a rope down to him and pulled the kid out.”

  “Do you think it’s true?” Shannon asked.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Lee said frankly.

  “It is what you wanted, right?”

  Lee still felt stunned. He hadn’t expected anything like this! In fact, he’d hoped deep down that they wouldn’t find any documentation to question the Twilight legend. “Uh—yeah. It is. Thanks.”

  Shannon was perceptive. “But it’s going to cause complications, isn’t it?”

  Lee was having a hard time taking it all in. “Yeah. Listen,” he said, leaning forward to gather the papers. “Can I have these for a bit? I’ll take good care of them. But I think, since the information could cause such mischief, we need to check it out properly before we do anything. Just because old Byron said it—”

  Shannon grinned. “Are you intimating a Parker might exaggerate?”

  “I’m saying a Parker is subject to the same flights of fancy as anyone else. And look at the dates—these accounts were written in 1922. Thirty years after the fact. Memories can get pretty fuzzy.”

  “I haven’t said anything to anyone. Not even Rafe or Mae.”

  “Good idea. Let me—let me have it for a while first.”

  “I’m sure Mae already knows about it. She’s been through all this material numerous times. The sheets were folded together in the pages of a book, but if I found them—”

  “What is it Mae already knows about?” Mae demanded from the saloon’s front doorway.

  Lee spun around. “How did it go?” he asked, hoping to divert her.

  “Fine,” Mae said. She waited pointedly for her answer.

  Shannon sighed. “Mae, do you know anything about Byron Parker and the spring here in Twilight?”

  “About him rescuing that child, you mean? Of course I do.”

  “And about Nate Barlow’s capture?” Shannon pressed.

  “That, too.”

  “Then why didn’t you say anything? You knew why Lee was coming here. And you know what people think.”

  Mae shrugged. “What difference does it make? Byron knew he did it and that’s all that matters.”

  Lee gazed at the oldest living Parker. “What about earlier? At the well...when I was telling you the story?”

  “You were havin’ such a good time I didn’t want to burst your bubble. And what does it hurt, anyway? People are gonna believe what they want to believe. Haven’t you learned that yet?”

  Lee was fascinated by her attitude. “Mae, you’re a wonder. But if you don’t mind, would you keep this to yourself? Other people might find the news more than a little... distressing.”

  “Like the movie studio and this town,” Shannon murmured.

  Lee patted the papers. “I’ll put these away in a safe place.”

  “You do that,” Mae said. “We don’t want ’em lost. They’re part of Parker history, even if they’re not in the official book.”

  LEE DIDN’T GO BACK to the hotel after seeing Mae and Shannon off in Mae’s beautifully preserved black Cadillac. He had a lot to think about. What if the accounts Shannon had found turned out to be true? Or...if they were true, could never be proved, other than on the merit of Byron Parker’s word? Did the lack of any backup records at the courthouses preclude the accuracy of the accounts? Or did that make them all the more valuable? And if any of that was the case, what should his next step be? As Shannon had intimated, these findings would hit the movie studio hard, calling into question the facts supporting both the original movie and the remake. Audiences had been led to believe both versions of Justice at Sundown were based on a true story. Cryer Studios had spent millions on the marketing campaign, even to the point of creating this press junket in the town where the supposed rescue had happened, not to mention the bigger, more ballyhooed premiere scheduled to be held two weeks later in Los Angeles. Lee could just imagine the chaos his six little sheets of old-fashioned tablet paper could cause.

  His reporter’s instincts were tweaked. If he and Manny and Diane practically killed themselves putting together the “Western Rambles” special, he could bully Jim Hinley and the powers-that-be into airing it a few days before the Hollywood premiere. And they could break the news to the world. They could publicize it on their own, alerting the other arms of the media that there was a problem with the facts. That would certainly whip up interest, both with the media and the viewing public. The numbers for the special would be spectacular. Everyone would know “Western Rambles” after that.

  As a human being, though, where did his responsibilities lie?

  He looked around at all the activity hummi
ng through the little town. People were working their hearts out. The studio workers, because the studio paid them. But most important, the townspeople, who wanted to use the movie’s popularity as a way to better themselves and to keep the town alive. What would happen to them if the Twilight legend turned out to be false?

  Accountability fell on Lee like a huge weight.

  What should he do?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LEE WANTED TO SLEEP on the information he’d received—reread Byron Parker’s personal account, think about it—before telling the Cruzes. But sleep was a long time coming and worry wasn’t. He tossed restlessly and stared at the darkened ceiling, trying to thrash his way out of the perplexing maze. Without much luck he tried to convince himself that the ripples caused by his stone of truth wouldn’t radiate out and swamp everything in their path. He tried to convince himself that he wouldn’t be the person responsible. He knew something very few others did, and his responsibility was to that possible truth. Not to mention to his show. When finally he did sleep, it wasn’t for long, and he awakened at dawn to another replay of his earlier thoughts.

  The building was still quiet when Lee tapped on the Cruzes’ door. A sleepy Manny answered.

  “What’s up?” Manny asked, yawning. He did a double take when he saw Lee’s expression.

  Lee knew he must look grim but could do nothing to change it. “We need to talk,” he said. “Is five minutes okay?”

  Manny looked over his shoulder at the unmoving lump in the bed. “It’s fine,” he said, then he shut the door.

  Lee waited in the hall, his head tipped back as he leaned against the wall. He overheard the low buzz of his cameraman’s voice and Diane’s protesting moan. It took considerably less than five minutes for the door to open, though—Diane blinking out at him and motioning for him to enter.

  Instead of staying up she crawled back under the covers. Not to lie down but, like a child, to sit and rub her eyes with her fists. Manny, now in a pair of jeans, ran a comb through the dark spikes of his hair as he stood in front of the room’s lone mirror.