The Widows of Wichita County (3 page)

11:03 a.m.
County Memorial Hospital

B
lack mascara tears trailed down Crystal Howard's tanned face as she stepped into the break room. She looked around with a watery gaze. In a town the size of Clifton Creek, everyone knew everyone. They might never have spoken, but Crystal had seen pictures in the paper, or passed them in a store, or stood behind them in line at the bank. Strangers were people with out-of-state license plates, the women before her were home folks.

“Shelby's been in an accident!” Crystal said to no one in particular. She ran a thumb beneath the stretchy material of her watermelon-colored body suit that fit her curves like a second skin and tried to pull the garment lower over her hips. “He may be dead already, and they're not telling me. I've a right to know. I'm his wife.”

“We understand.” A tall, silver-haired woman's low voice seemed to fill every inch of the room. “Our husbands were also in the accident. We're all waiting to hear something from the doctors.”

“Only one survived,” added a woman a few years older than Crystal. “I'm Meredith Allen, Kevin's wife, and this
is Helena Whitworth. J. D. Whitworth and my Kevin were at the oil rig when it exploded.”

When Crystal just stared the woman continued, “Helen's husband, J.D., planned to invest in the rig. For some reason, my Kevin went along for the ride this morning.”

Crystal looked down at Meredith's offered hand. People in Clifton Creek were never friendly to her when Shelby wasn't around. She knew what they said about her, marrying a man thirty years her senior. She'd been a waitress with nothing to her name, and he was a rich engineer, newly widowed. No one would believe they married for love even if Shelby had been willing to shout it from the courthouse roof.

Crystal took the hand. Meredith Allen did not look like the type to listen to gossip, much less spread it. She probably hadn't heard any of the colorful stories about her and Shelby. Crystal found it hard to imagine this woman walking into Frankie's Bar, wearing an ABC sweater, and sitting down to have a drink.

“I'm Mrs. Shelby Howard,” Crystal said, daring anyone to comment. She'd been married five years, had her hair bleached blonde at a fancy salon and bought her clothes in Dallas. She had endured three surgeries to mold her body to perfection, but she still felt like street trash. She was prepared to fight every time she met someone new.

“I know your husband.” The silver-haired lady stepped forward. “Though he was a few years younger, I went to school with him. He's friends with my husband, J.D. I'm Helena Whitworth.”

Crystal tried to pull her jersey jacket closed across her workout clothes. She suddenly wished she'd had time to change. The gym fashion didn't belong here. She swiped a palm across her cheek and stared at the makeup on her
hand. Not only was she dressed improperly, if she didn't stop crying she would be without makeup. Shelby was sure to yell at her.

A third woman, Crystal hadn't noticed before, moved away from the shadows. She was tall, but then everyone towered over her five-foot-two-inch frame.

The woman pulled a cloth handkerchief trimmed in lace from the velvet folds of what looked to be an English-style riding jacket. She held the linen square out to Crystal.

Refusing the offer, Crystal added, “Oh, no. I couldn't.”

The woman didn't lower the handkerchief. When Crystal met her gaze, she was struck by the natural beauty before her. Huge dark eyes. Long black hair. Breeding that came with generations of old money.

Crystal took the handkerchief and stood up straighter, wishing she had her four-inch heels. “You're not from around here, are you?” The question was out before she knew she'd spoken, but no one looking like this woman ever grew up in Clifton Creek. She reminded Crystal of a picture of Snow White she had seen in an old children's book.

“I—I am Anna,” the woman said in a way that made the words sound foreign. “I—I am the wife of D-Davis Montano. The oil rig was being built on our land. I—I have been told Davis was there when the accident happened.” Her words stumbled over each other. “A—a nurse said they found his wallet in the pile of burned clothes collected from the emergency room floor.”

Crystal nodded, trying not to say anything else to the foreigner. Everyone in the county knew Davis went all the way to Italy for a wife, but few people had ever seen her. Several of the single girls around town were upset
when he married. Davis raised racehorses on the good pasture land he inherited. He had traveled to Europe for a new bloodline and had come back with a stallion and a woman.

Wiping her face with the linen of Anna Montano's handkerchief, Crystal decided she might be little better than white trash, but at least she was from around here. Pretty Snow White Anna wouldn't belong here if she lived to be a hundred. In fact, when she died and was buried in the Montano plot, she'd still be the foreign wife Davis had brought home.

Pacing to the door, Crystal crossed her arms over her ample chest. “My Shelby's still alive. Isn't he? They didn't tell me he was dead. They just said to come to the hospital. They wouldn't have said that unless he was still alive.” She looked at the older woman she'd seen in the paper a hundred times. Shelby had always pointed her out and called her “one fine lady.”

“Isn't he, Mrs. Whitworth? My Shelby's still alive? Don't you figure?”

Helena visibly softened, as if responding to a child. “We don't know. All we've found out so far is there were five men on the rig when it exploded. Four are dead. One is badly burned, and I don't think his chances are good.”

Crystal looked around. “You mean all of us are widows except one?”

“That's right, baby doll,” came a husky voice from the doorway as a fifth woman entered the room.

11:25 a.m.
County Memorial Hospital

R
andi Howard closed the door to the tiny room and leaned against it with all the drama of a breathless heroine in a B movie. “The newspaper and a TV station from Wichita Falls were pulling in when I parked. They say it's hailing between here and the city, but those folks are like roaches, they can live through anything.”

When no one commented, she continued, “There's also more cowhands and oil field workers than I could count hanging around in the lobby. It's busier than Frankie's Bar on payday. I had to fight my way through, then convince some nitwit girl dressed like a peppermint that I'd been told to show up here.” She brushed raindrops from her Western-cut jacket. “We're in for one hell of a storm, gals. This hospital is probably a good place to wait it out.”

She scanned her audience of four and shrugged off any acting she might have planned. “I guess folks dying in this county from anything other than old age is big news.”

“What are you doing here, Randi?” Crystal's tone held
an edge that was not entirely unfriendly. “I thought you were working the day shift now.”

“Didn't anyone tell you? My Jimmy was with your Shelby on the rig.” Randi twisted her dyed, gypsy-red hair into a braid.

Crystal frowned. “I should've guessed he'd be there. He's always shadowed his uncle Shelby. Jimmy knows more about Howard Drilling than either of Shelby's kids. If there were problems on the rig, Shelby would have wanted Jimmy right there with him, learning all he could.” She glanced at the others. “Shelby says Jimmy's been at his side since he was a boy.”

Randi nodded and took a seat, propping her red Roper boots on an empty chair. She pulled out a pack of Marlboros, looked around and reconsidered. So, she thought, these are the newly widowed. An old woman, a foreigner, a Pollyanna who had to be a schoolteacher and darling Crystal who was almost thirty and her husband still called her baby doll.

In truth, she envied Crystal more than disliked her. They had been friends in their single days, sharing everything including boyfriends. The bubbly bleached blonde snagged the rich old Howard while Randi only caught the poor nephew. Oh, old man Shelby always made sure Jimmy was paid well, but Shelby's kids treated her and Jimmy worse than hired help. Which, she had to admit, was better than the way they treated their daddy's second wife, Crystal.

Randi looked directly at Crystal, catching only a glimpse of the girl she had once thought of as a sister. “I might as well tell you, you'll find out soon enough in this town. I was packing to leave Jimmy when the sheriff stopped by our trailer. I quit my job and sold everything
I couldn't fit in the back of my Jeep. I've got to get out of here while I can still breathe. I was meant for something more than singing a few songs once a week during talent night. There's a whole world out there that thinks of more than oil and cows. There's got to be. What was it we used to say, ‘so many men, so little time'?”

Crystal smiled with lips a little fuller than they used to be. “I thought it was so many margaritas, so little time?”

“Well, either way, it's time I moved on. I don't want to grow old and die here, still thinking about what might have been if I'd only been brave enough to go take a look.”

Crystal knelt beside Randi, taking both her hands. “You can't leave, Randi. Shelby says Jimmy is doing real well. He'll be in charge of all the drilling soon. You know Jimmy's crazy about you, girl.”

Randi shook her head. “I swore nothing would stop me from leaving this time. I'm aging by the hour in this town.” She glanced at the machines, hoping one said Coors across the top. “Jimmy loves me, I guess, but that ain't enough. No one in this place seems to understand…life here is sucking the marrow from my bones.” She closed her eyes, fighting back tears. “God, I hope he's dead.”

Silence crystallized, as though speaking her thoughts had somehow made it possible. The four other women in the room forgot to breathe.

Randi opened her eyes. “If he isn't, I won't be able to leave him hurt and burned,” she mumbled, more to herself than anyone. She was not a woman who thought of apologizing for anything she said. “And I won't survive
much longer here, just sitting on the porch waiting for sundown.”

She raised her head, knowing her words were cruel, but realizing they were true. “If Jimmy's alive, this accident just signed my death warrant.”

2:55 p.m.
County Memorial Hospital

A
nna Montano sat quietly at the table, watching the women before her. The rain rattling on the roof provided background music to her thoughts. In Italy, women in crisis would be crying and wanting the family close. A priest might be sitting with them, and their hands would hold prayer beads. In Italy, worry and grieving were emotional passings, shared with family. But these Americans only talked and waited. Unlike Anna, they had not seen the fire and the smoke filling the sky above the oil rig. They still held hope close to their breasts.

She closed her eyes and tried to forget what she had seen this morning. Black smoke rising, polluting the morning sky with tragedy's omen. The ranch hands, hurrying to the scene, would not allow her to come with them. But when the first ambulance had left the ranch, Anna followed in her car. She knew her brother Carlo would be upset that she had not told him she was leaving. He considered watching over her part of being Davis's foreman. But today she had not cared and, besides, he had all he could handle putting out the fire.

She could have waited at home. She knew the news would only be bad. But for once, Anna had not wanted to be in her private world at the ranch. Now, curling into herself in the uncomfortable plastic chair, she realized that for the first time in a long while, she did not want to be alone.

Loneliness was nothing new to her. She rode alone each morning, helping to train the horses. Since childhood, horses were as much a part of her life as family, sometimes more so. She worked alone in her small studio and, more often than not, ate alone both noon and evening while Davis and Carlo went somewhere on ranch business.

Anna thought of herself as no more than a bird in a cage filled with toys. One day someone would leave the door open. The only question haunting her thoughts was would she be brave enough to fly away?

She and Davis had run out of anything to say to one another after their first anniversary, when she still was not pregnant. If it had not been for her love of horses and his love of the money they brought, he probably would never have spoken to her at all. But, from time to time, he needed her advice. He needed her skill. Carlo might know horses, but Anna had an instinct about them. Over these past five years Davis Montano had learned to trust that instinct even though he valued little else about her.

Davis was not unkind. He was never unkind. But, she realized after the first year that he had married her to breed children, and she had failed him. Honor and duty were words that described her marriage, not love.

To her surprise, no tears came as she faced the possibility of his death. She married Davis the week after she had turned twenty-one, and they had been little more than strangers. For her, he provided an escape from an
overprotected life in Italy. She arrived in Texas with her big brother, who was hired as foreman. Between Carlo and Davis, Anna found little freedom in this land of the free. Even the trips she had taken with her mother to hear the great symphonies of Europe were now gone.

“Would you like a soda, dear?” The older woman broke into Anna's thoughts.

“N-no, thank you.” Anna liked Helena Whitworth. She wore honesty like a tailor-made garment.

“I could use a beer,” Randi grumbled. “How long are they going to keep us waiting?” She and Crystal had been talking about the days when they had spent most of their nights boot scooting at Frankie's. “Surely this place has a happy hour.” Randi laughed to herself and began another story that started as the others had, “Remember that night at the bar…”

Anna knew little of such a life, but from the way they talked, their times were more sad than happy. Out of habit, Anna began logging in new words as the women talked. She had learned both English and French before she left for boarding school, but it was the words that were not in the dictionary that fascinated her most. Randi's vocabulary was richly painted in bold strokes.

“M-maybe you would rather be with your f-family?” Anna suggested when Randi and Crystal finally ran out of stories.

Randi shook her red hair. “I don't have none to speak of. My mother ran off with a salesman from the farm and ranch show at the Tri-State Fair the year I was three. My father hasn't called me since last Christmas.” She laughed to herself. “He'd probably call on my birthday, if he could remember it. I'm sure he misses kicking the shit out of me every time he gets drunk. The bastard was meaner than the devil's brother and so dumb I'm surprised his
sperm knew how to swim. With a father like him, you got nothin' to do but pray you're adopted.”

“I'm pretty much the same,” Crystal added. “My stepdad booted me out when I was sixteen and told me not to ever bother knocking on their door again. Mom had to sneak me out a bag of my clothes after dark. She gave me forty bucks and wished me well in this life before telling me not to bother calling to ask for money or anything.”

Crystal rubbed her hand along her workout suit, smoothing away memories with the wrinkles. “I only have my Shelby. Sometimes, when he's busy doing something, he'll give me forty dollars and tell me to get lost, but before I can leave the room he always laughs and says I'd better not be gone long.” Tears tumbled down a face long free of makeup. “His two grown children hate me, though. If he's dead, I'll be lucky to get my clothes out of the house, even in paper bags, before they bar me from the property. Shelby's all I have. All I've ever had.”

“You're not in Shelby's will?” Randi pulled the tab on her diet drink.

“I mentioned it once, and Shelby said his son told him that's the reason I married him, to get all his money. I guess Shelby wanted to prove them wrong, 'cause he never changed the will and he kept all of Howard Drilling out of community property. I never asked him about it again.”

“You poor thing.” Randi draped her long arm around Crystal's shoulder and squeezed. The gesture offered more discomfort than sympathy, but neither woman noticed. “I always figured when you hooked up with him, it was your lucky day.”

“I do love him,” Crystal cried. “No one understands, but I do. I'd love him if he didn't have the money or the big
house. I can't think about what it would be like without Shelby.”

Helena lowered herself into the chair next to Anna, directly across from Crystal. “We know you love him.” The older woman patted Crystal's arm. “J.D. told me many a time that you must love Shelby to put up with his drinking and pranks.”

Anna thought Crystal suddenly looked far younger than her years as the tears ran down her face. She and Randi had to be close to thirty, but Anna felt a lifetime older. They might have lines forming around their eyes, but Anna felt like she had them on her heart. Maybe people who never got involved in life aged faster on the inside. Anna felt sorry for Crystal, the kind of blind love she had for Shelby seemed far sadder than the cold, routine love she had for Davis.

“Shelby isn't so bad.” Crystal sniffed. “Oh, he gets crazy and makes me do things that embarrass me something terrible in front of his drinking buddies. But then he says he's sorry and can't live without me. He's always buying me stuff after he hurts my feelings.”

“Jewelry?” Randi leaned closer, looking genuinely interested in her friend's whining. The lines on Randi's face reflected years of answering to last call.

“Sure. Lots,” Crystal said proudly. “But it's all locked up at the office. Trent won't get it for me unless his daddy tells him to.” Crystal blew her nose. “I don't care about the money or the jewelry. I just want Shelby.” She sniffed loudly once more. “I don't want to be out on the streets again. I want to be close to him and he feels the same. He says his heart doesn't start each morning until he looks at me.”

Anna watched as Helena pulled the crumbling group
back under control. “What about you, Meredith? Is there family you'd rather be with?”

The schoolteacher raised her head. She had not said anything in half an hour. The size-too-small sweater she wore was hopelessly twisted, once more making the letters tumble together. “No,” she answered. “My mom moved to Arizona to live with her sister when she retired. I have no siblings, or kids of my own. I guess I always figured Kevin is enough of a kid to keep me busy. Since I can't go back to my classroom, this is as good a place as any to wait.” She lowered her head, returning to the thread she had been twisting off her sweater.

“Well, I have enough kids for us all.” Helena smiled. “I had two girls by my first husband. Twins, though they look nothing alike. My second husband had four children I helped raise, but none of them live close any longer. I was fifty when I married J.D. but if it had been possible, I'd have had his child.”

“You're kidding.” Randi gulped her drink. “You'd be on Social Security before the kid got out of high school.”

Helena laughed. “It's crazy, but I wish I could've done that for him. He's my third husband, and the only man I ever really loved. If he's dead, he'll also be my last. God only made one man like J. D. Whitworth.”

“I—I have tried,” Anna said slowly, trying not to stutter. “T-to have children, I mean. But there have been no babies.”

“Not me.” Crystal shook her head. “First, a kid would ruin thousands of dollars of surgery. Second, I might have a brat like Shelby's others. I can't see going through all that to bring someone like Trent Howard into the world.”

“That kind of thing is not for me,” Randi's low voice was added to the group. “I don't mind running the plays,
but I sure don't want to make a touchdown. Western clothes are hard to find in maternity sizes.”

Suddenly the talk turned to life, and living life, and making choices all women have to make. Their conversation became real. No need for social barriers or polite lies. Somehow, the accident, on the rig miles away, made them all the same. All equal. All sisters. The fear they shared brought them together, making each stronger because of their bond.

They talked of the joys in their lives and the changes they wished they had made. Helena, as the oldest, perhaps felt she could be the most honest and her honesty cleared the table of all pretenses. She told of marrying young the first time and losing him in Vietnam, a month after the twins were born.

For a while she had been a single mother trying to start a business and rock two babies at night. After five hard years, she'd married a man ten years her senior for security.

They'd found babysitters and housekeepers to manage the children and he'd taught her how to build her small dress shop into Helena's Choice.

When he'd died years later all she could say about him was that he had been a good accountant.

Randi talked of deeds done and regretted, Meredith talked of thoughts she harbored, and somewhere in the confessions the cowgirl and the schoolteacher were the same. The difference lay only in degrees.

Anna mostly listened and smiled to herself. In the strange room so far from Italy, she suddenly felt very much at home. She even told the others of her art, something Davis would never approve of, and, to her surprise, the women were interested.

The room finally grew silent, except for the low rumble
of the vending machines. Each woman knew they were opening, showing themselves as they never would have done under normal circumstances. Their honesty bred a calmness that floated like a current through the room, washing away worry and fear.

Helena leaned across the table and touched Crystal's manicured hand with her wrinkled one. “No matter what, we'll survive, dear. If no one else, we have each other. I'll be there for you, if you need me. I swear.”

“Helena's right.” Meredith added her hand brushing the older woman's. “We can get through this.”

Randi joined the covenant. “Oh, well. Hell, why not. I'll help where I can, if any of you need me.”

Slowly, Anna's hand finished the circle of fingers in the center of the table. No one said a word, but a pact wove its way around them. They silently agreed to stand beside one another. Women from different worlds within the same small community.

Whatever lay beyond the door did not seem so terrifying knowing someone stood near. They were silent, thinking of what was to come, realizing the news would be bad for some, if not all, in the room.

The door opened with a slight swishing sound. All hands retreated slowly, yet the covenant remained. Invisible. Strong. In the passing of a few hours they had put aside their masks and accepted one another. The world's intrusion would not alter that acceptance. For the first time in her life, Anna did not feel so alone.

“Ladies.” A retired doctor shuffled into the room on shoes that never lifted from the floor. He was stooped with age and looked well into his seventies, but intelligence shone from his eyes. “The staff called me in to help right after they sent the ambulance out to the Montano place. I was here by the time the men started arriving.
Because I know most of you, I was asked to speak to you.”

He nodded a greeting to Helena and Crystal, and then touched Meredith on the shoulder. When his watery gray eyes met Anna's, he said, “I'm Dr. Hamilton.” Before Anna spoke he added, “Mrs. Montano.”

Randi turned toward him, lifting her Coke a few inches. “Doc.”

“Randi,” he answered with an honest smile.

“We've been waiting.” Randi sat up in her chair. “Hope you can tell us something.”

He cleared his throat, trying to be professional. “As I'm sure you know, all five of your husbands were on a rig Shelby Howard built that stood on Montano land. The way I hear it from a few of the crew being treated for burns, J.D. planned to invest extra money in the rig so one of the bank officers, Kevin Allen, had to come along for the ride.”

He glanced at Randi and added, “Jimmy was there with Shelby. Helping out as always.”