The Widows of Wichita County

by Jodi Thomas

  A pounding shook the bedroom door. "Momma, you up?"

  Helena did not answer.

  "Momma, I heard you in there. I know you're still home. Don't try to fool me."

  Slowly, Helena crossed to the door and threw the bolt, wondering when her daughter had started talking to her in such a way. "Morning, Paula." She tried to smile at her offspring. "You're here early."

  Paula hurried into the room like an overweight, middleaged, SWAT team commando. "I thought I heard you talking to someone."

  Helena did not look in the direction of J.D.'s chair. She knew he was no longer there.

  "I must have been thinking aloud," Helena finally offered as explanation, and returned to her desk. "I was trying to arrange my schedule today." She frowned at Paula's unisex clothes. Both girls had no regard for the fact that their mother owned a dress store. You would think they would at least try to dress in fashion colors if not styles.

  "Oh, Momma, you shouldn't talk to yourself. That's the first sign of a weak brain."

  "I doubt that, honey." Helena laughed. "Or half the people in this town would be babbling day and night."

  A sense of humor had been left out of Paula's makeup. She fidgeted like a freshman debater being challenged. "I didn't mean nothing personal, Momma. I just came by to see if you want to go to lunch with me. I'm worried about you being all alone and I know you're not eating like you should."

  "Sorry, but I made plans for lunch." Helena noticed relief more than disappointment cross Paula's face. "Crystal Howard needs my advice about a few things. I promised to meet her at the hospital."

  "You're not going to lunch with her?" Paula circled the desk. "She's nothing but a lowlife, Momma. Folks say she was old Shelby's mistress even before he was widowed."

  "Be careful," Helena warned. "She happens to be the wife of one of J.D.'s friends. If she needs help, I'll do what I can."

  "Yeah, but J.D.'s dead, Momma." Paula whispered the words as though she could lessen the blow as their impact reached Helena.

  "Not in my heart." Helena lifted her chin. "He'll be with me always."

  She reached for a silver dollar she kept in the organizer at the corner of her desk. "When he left for the army, my mother gave him this. Told him it would bring him home. When he came back the last time and we married, he slipped this silver dollar in my hand during the ceremony promising he'd never leave me again. He said it took him through the valley of the shadow and back to me."

  Paula looked like she was fighting to keep her eyes from rolling to the back of her head. "Oh, all right, Momma. If you want to think he's still here, Preacher Wayne said it's understandable for the first few months."

  Helena made no comment. Preacher Wayne was quoted so often in this town, she would not have been surprised to see him come out with a quote-of-the-day calendar.

  Paula changed the subject. "Can't someone else help Crystal Howard? Or maybe you could just talk to her, give her advice. But don't go to lunch. At least not where you'll see anyone we know."

  Helena was disappointed in her daughter, but somewhere deep down she knew that a part of the blame for what Paula had become lay with her. When the girls were small, she had left them in someone else's care most of the time. Helena told herself that, as a single mother she had to make a living but, in truth, she'd always felt like an outsider. Almost from birth, the twins bonded with one another, treating her as a stranger. She had built a successful business by working day and night. The twins were passed from day care to babysitters to housekeepers.

  "I need to help Crystal," Helena answered. "For her sake and mine."

  "Oh, I understand." Paula's whole body relaxed. "You do need something to keep you busy. A project. Everyone will understand that."

  Helena did not argue. She finished dressing, listening to Paula remind her to take her heart medicine as though she had ever forgotten a pill in her life. She left two hours before she planned to meet Crystal. Paula was still there when she came downstairs, talking with the housekeeper about things that needed to be done. Paula seemed convinced her mother would forget such details. Helena overheard her, but made no comment. In her way, Paula was just trying to be helpful.

  Helena thought of returning to lock her bedroom door, but decided that would spur too much curiosity. Paula might rifle through the desk, or help with cleaning, but she would never sit in the chairs by the window as Helena had done for an hour yesterday. She would never notice the beauty and color as the last few leaves fought to remain on the trees. She would never see how the bare branches seemed to thicken and knot like thin aging fingers stretched toward heaven. Her daughters would never witness the wonder she saw each day simply sitting beside J.D. in their worn leather chairs.

  Ten minutes later, Mary looked surprised when Helena walked into the small office over the dress shop. Though Helena could well afford a suite of offices for herself and Mary, they both enjoyed the quarters they had started with almost forty years ago. Helena remembered an old saying her father liked to quote: Having money doesn't always have to breed gluttony.

  "Morning, Mrs. Whitworth." Mary stood at attention. "We weren't expecting you." Mary used the plural as though there was more than herself in the office.

  At four feet eleven inches, Mary looked frail and washed out with her gray hair and eyes, but in all their years together she had never taken a sick day or asked for more than her two-week vacation.

  "Morning." Helena smiled. "I wonder if you might call Elliot Morris and ask him if he's got a little time free for me this morning?"

  "Of course." Mary never asked for explanations. "Right away."

  She followed her boss to the other end of the office where a long window looked down on the finest dress shop between Dallas and Oklahoma City. Helena's Choice.

  "Mrs. Whitworth?" Mary whispered.

  "Yes?" Helena continued to watch a few customers moving about the store. When Mary did not say anything, Helena glanced at her friend. "What is it, Mary? Don't tell me we've had another manager quit?"

  "No." Mary looked tortured.

  Helena waited. Mary always bore the burden of every problem on her shoulders as though it were her fault. The wiring could spark, and Mary would start apologizing.

  "It's about your daughters. They've both been in asking all kinds of questions about the running of the store. Paula even asked to see the books."

  Laughing, Helena patted Mary's arm. "I'm sorry, dear. It's my fault. They've felt the need to smother me since the accident and in truth, I've been more tired than usual. Out of desperation, I asked them to check on the store just to allow me some peace. I hope they didn't pester you."

  "Oh, no. I just wasn't sure how much to tell them." Mary was a woman who always needed to know exactly where to stand. If she had been on the Titanic, she would have been looking for her place card as the ship submerged. "Paula's got a head for numbers, I can tell. She likes everything in order, like her mother."

  Helena never thought of either girl as being like her and guessed Mary was, as always, being kind.

  "Tell them whatever they're interested in knowing. Some day, they'll have to run the place. Let them take care of any last-minute Christmas ordering, if they like. Any mistakes they make can be sold in the January clearance sale."

  Helena closed her eyes, trying to imagine what the store would look like if her daughters took over. Grays, blacks and browns would be the colors for all seasons and a blue light special would flash every hour. Handbags would all be huge and shoes practical. Animals and cartoon characters would likely dance across the hem of all the blouses.

  She straightened. She was only sixty-three. Retirement was still years away. She felt so good lately, she had not bothered to take the atenolol her doctor thought she needed twice a day. Her blood pressure had not been high for years, and it was time to stop bothering with at least one of the many pills he always insisted she take.

  There was nothing wrong with slowing down a little and just enjoying the sunsets with
J.D. She was old enough to know what her body needed and fewer pills seemed right.

  Thirty minutes later, Helena walked into Elliot Morris's law office in a royal-blue wool suit that flattered her white hair. She said simply, "How can I help Crystal Howard?"

  Elliot offered her a seat and asked his secretary to bring a fresh pot of coffee. Both knew this would take some time.

  They came to the oil fields on horseback, by train, by wagon and in Model T Fords, all loaded down with what they owned. They came unprepared and untrained, but with their pockets full of dreams.

  November 4

  Dusk

  Randell House Restaurant

  By the end of the day, Crystal's head whirled with excitement. Helena not only helped her select several new, professional-looking outfits, she gave Crystal suggestions on how to handle Shelby's business. Helena knew the insides of running a company and shared her knowledge freely.

  Anna Montano joined them at the restaurant for drinks and dinner. As before, her speech was halted, almost a stutter at first. But by the time the salad arrived, her words flowed smoothly with only a hint of accent. There was an intelligence about Anna, a grace that Crystal knew she would never have no matter how many people called her Mrs. Howard.

  There was also something fragile about Anna that frightened Crystal, for she was not sure her foreign friend would stand to face the winds of change. A few of the oil workers had said Anna refused to talk to the sheriff or anyone else investigating the fire. They commented it was almost like she was afraid of the law. So far her brother had been answering all the questions, claiming that when she had to make a statement she would.

  Crystal worried. Anna seemed too fragile, like a hothouse flower that had never had to face the real world. She wasn't sure what it would take to make Anna stand on her own.

  Some folks are fighters, and some aren't. Crystal saw herself as a fighter, scraping her way since her teens. But Anna'! Anna didn't have a scar on her.

  Crystal noticed a few gaps in the conversation, but they weren't uncomfortable. It was grand to sit in such a nice restaurant and eat a meal with her new friends. Helena looked stately, as she always did, and Anna's beauty way timeless. Crystal found herself sitting up straighter and watching her manners carefully.

  After all, she did know how to eat at a restaurant that didn't have a drive up window. Shelby used to joke that she'd never had a meal she didn't have to pay for first until she married him. Crystal could hardly wait to tell him about tonight.

  She made it through the meal with only one mistake. She stacked the plates after each course. When the waiter frowned at her and picked up the dinner plates, Helena told him to bring several desserts. They were still starving she said, and might eat until they had the plates stacked a foot high. All three women laughed and Helena, thin to the point of being bony, ate three desserts before she gave up the challenge.

  As they hugged goodbye in the parking lot, Crystal knew they all felt that invisible bond that had formed in the nurses' break room the day of the accident. It had grown stronger with time.

  Thirty minutes later, Crystal could still feel it, like an invisible hug. She sat on the edge of Shelby's bed, telling him every detail about the meal and everything Helena and Elliot said.

  As usual, she had no way of knowing if Shelby was listening. Maybe he was already asleep, or maybe he was in too much pain to care about her day. It didn't matter. She talked to him anyway. "We'll get you out of here as soon as the doctor gives the okay. I talked to Nurse Landry and she said she'd contact a nursing service that will provide the best round-the-clock care. We'll convert a few of the spare bedrooms into nurses' quarters, so they will be with us all the time."

  The house they'd built on the north edge of town always seemed so huge to Crystal. It had wide marble floors and gold doorknobs just like a palace. With the new plans it was shrinking by the minute. "Everything you'll need will be upstairs. I'll move your office staff to a few rooms downstairs so I can work with them and still be close to you. Helena says they shouldn't mind coming over if I have the cook prepare them lunch every day."

  Crystal brushed her hand over his. "Oh, Shelby, you're going to be so proud of me. I've thought of everything even a lift for the stairs. I'm going to help you get well."

  He didn't respond.

  "I can do this, Shelby." Tears welled in her eyes. "I promise I can. You'll see. You'll be so proud of me."

  "Mrs. Howard?" A nurse had slipped in silently. "Is it all right if I bring your bed in now? Visiting hours are over."

  Crystal straightened. Things were changing, she could feel it as surely as she'd felt the north wind chill her bones when she'd walked in from the parking lot. She just wasn't sure if they were changing for the better or worse.

  Shelby was still alive. She was still his wife. Yet fear choked her. Some days Shelby seemed to be barely hanging on to life, and if Trent had his way no one would see Crystal as part of the Howard family. At first Trent told everyone she'd run the first time she got a hold of any real money. She had already written checks for thousands of dollars and she was still here. She didn't blame him for hating her; she'd probably feel the same way he did if their positions were reversed.

  Crystal smiled at the nurse. It didn't matter what Trent said or thought, people were starting to respect her.

  "Bring the bed in." Crystal smoothed her new clothes as she moved off Shelby's bed. "I'll hold the door so it doesn't bump and wake Shelby."

  The nurse nodded. As she worked, she whispered, "He's stable now. You should go home and get a good night's sleep yourself."

  Crystal shook her head. "I'll go home when my husband does." Smiling, she swore she'd show all those people who wouldn't give her the time of day. She wasn't some tramp Shelby picked up. She was his wife, and she'd be a good one if it took her twenty-four hours a day.

  She wasn't the nobody her stepfather had predicted she'd be. She was somebody and, for the first time since she married, she had friends to prove it. Helena had even said she was a jewel and Helena Whitworth wasn't the kind of woman to say something that wasn't true. Also, Anna cared about her for no other reason than they were friends. Even Meredith Allen, a schoolteacher everyone respected, came by to visit almost every other day.

  When Shelby got better, he would see the change. Her clothes had class. She was learning and growing. He'd see it in the way she walked and talked and in the way she knew to let the waiter stack the plates.

  Then he could take her back to the Randell House Restaurant, and they would sit right in the middle of the place. And maybe when she told him she loved him, he'd say it back to her…just once.

  Thunderstorms have a habit of whirling across the prairie without warning, but snow rolls in like the tide bringing layers of winter. Before man settled the land, buffalo roamed by the millions. The buffalo is the only animal that faces the wind no matter how cold it blows. Some say the wildcatters were like that, always facing their problems head on.

  November 6

  Streets of Clifton Creek

  The weather turned ugly a few hours before dawn, coating the streets with what the locals called "Satan's Ice." A sheet of ice so thin it was invisible on the highway, but if you hit it, you might slide right into hell.

  Meredith crept toward school in her old Mustang with the bald tires. Almost there, she passed Sheriff Granger Farrington. He stood beside his car parked behind a van that had slid off the road and taken out the school crossing sign and ten feet of an old chain-link fence.

  Waving at him, Meredith moved past. When she glanced in her rearview mirror she noticed him watching her.

  She felt sorry for him having to work in the cold. It usually took a few hard freezes before the college kids wised up and slowed down.

  As the day progressed, Meredith thought of Granger when the snow moved in on top of the ice. She doubted he would have time to go home for a set of dry clothes or even have time to eat. The thought of him out in the weather made he
r shiver even in her warm classroom, for she knew he was spending the day pushing people out of ditches, jumping cars with their lights left on, and directing traffic.

  At four, with most of the school empty, Meredith borrowed the office phone and finally called the sheriff.

  "Sheriff Farrington's office. This is Inez. How can I help you?" Inez sounded official and bored.

  Meredith smiled into the phone. Inez usually only worked mornings. Whenever Meredith was at the courthouse on holidays Inez always found the time to stop in for a visit. Slit, seemed to think her breaks lasted until someone from the sheriffs office yelled her name down the hall.

  "May I please speak to the sheriff?" Meredith kept her voice formal not wanting to have to explain why she way calling.

  "Sure, Meredith. I'll put you right through. No problem at school, I hope?"

  Meredith closed her eyes. Of course, Inez would have caller I.D. and from there it would be no mystery to figure out who was calling. "No problem at school. I just have a question about the weather."

  "It's ringing," Inez said, a moment before Meredith heard a click.

  "Yes!" Granger almost shouted. "What's the next problem?"

  Meredith almost hung up the phone. He sounded busy.

  "Go ahead," he snapped.

  Meredith glanced around the tiny office to make sure no one was listening. "Sheriff Farrington, this is Meredith Allen."

  There was a silence on the line and she wondered if she had lost the connection.

  His voice finally came, slower this time. "Are you all right, Meredith?"

  The concern seemed more than just professional, but she could not be sure. "I'm fine," she answered, knowing his question was not just a way of passing time. "And you?"