Widow's Tears

by Susan Wittig Albert

“You’re right, I’m not super interested in that side of things,” Ramona conceded. “But I was thinking that maybe you could stay on to teach classes and read palms and birth charts and all the other goofy, far-out things you like to do, while I took care of the rest of it.” She picked up her knife and fork and cast a critical look at the massive mound of gravy-smothered chicken-fried steak on her plate. “This is humongous,” she said. “It better be good.” She began cutting off a corner. “Oh, and not just the Cave, either, Ruby.”

  Ruby frowned. “Not…just the Cave?”

  “Uh-uh.” Ramona shook her head emphatically. “If I’m going to invest in this enterprise, I wouldn’t want just a little piece of it. I’d want the whole thing. The Cave, the tearoom, Party Thyme, the Thymely Gourmet. The whole enchilada.”

  Ruby sucked in her breath. Everything? Ramona would set her free of the entire three-ring circus?

  “Naturally,” Ramona went on in a careless tone, “I’d be willing to pay a very good price for those pieces of the action. In fact, I’ll pay almost any price you ask—within reason, of course. Thanks to my ex, I’ve got more cash than I know what to do with.” She forked up the cut-off corner of her chicken-fried steak. “Ain’t that a hoot? He had to pay me all that money just for the privilege of marrying that not-so-dumb blonde who got her hooks into him.” With a chuckle, she stuck the meat into her mouth. “Getting what he deserves, if you ask me,” she added, chewing.

  Ruby regarded her sister with near-disbelief. Sell her businesses to Ramona? Get rid of all that administrative stuff? The idea was so tempting that she almost blurted out an immediate and excited “Yes! Oh, Mona, yes!”

  But she’d stopped herself in time. There was a catch, and one that she wasn’t sure she could explain to her sister without hurting her feelings. If Ramona took over her part of the three-ring circus, she would have to work with Cass and China—especially with China.

  And that would not be easy. China was entirely logical, one of the strongest left-brained people Ruby had ever known. From China’s über-rational point of view, Ramona was, well, ditzy. She attracted bizarre events, like the time a car passed her on the freeway and flung a hubcap through her windshield. Or the evening the three of them were cooking dinner at Ruby’s house and a hanging rack of pots fell down when Ramona came into the kitchen. When she turned around, the blind snapped up, knocking a flowerpot off the windowsill, and two cupboard doors flew open. Ruby had once tried to explain that such events were related to Ramona’s piece of Gram Gifford’s gift, but she gave it up. China was open-minded about most things, but poltergeists weren’t something her left brain was prepared to accept—without more concrete evidence, that is.

  But there was something else. China was her own woman. She did not like to be managed. Ramona, on the other hand, was a born manager. She was competitive. She liked to have her way—to be the boss. It would not be a match made in heaven.

  As it turned out, however, Ruby didn’t have to hurt her sister’s feelings. “Of course,” Ramona added thoughtfully, “China might not be overjoyed if I dealt myself in.” She dug into her taco salad. “Cass and I get along okay, but China isn’t my biggest fan.”

  Ruby almost laughed. Ramona had obviously managed to tune in to China—and had gotten the message, loud and clear. But she only nodded. “That’s a tempting offer, and I’m grateful, Mona. Let me think about it for a few days.” She hesitated. “The idea is really attractive. If you took over all that management stuff, it would solve so many problems. But of course, I’d have to talk to China.”

  And at the thought of telling China what she was considering, her insides tightened into a cold, hard fist. They were best friends and close, in many ways closer than sisters, certainly closer than she and Ramona. They had worked together for years and years, and while they’d had the occasional minor spat, they had always ironed things out. Leaving the partnership wouldn’t be easy, that was for sure. Even though she would still be in and out of the shop, teaching classes and consulting and the like, it wouldn’t be the same.

  “I’m not sure I understand.” Ramona was scowling. “Why do you have to get permission from China to do what you want with your business? She’s not your boss, is she?”

  “Of course not,” Ruby snapped, then softened her tone. “We’ve been together for a long time. I just…I just have to think about it for a little bit, that’s all.” She would also have to look at the partnership agreement she and China had signed. It seemed to her that she remembered some sort of language about what they would do if one of them wanted to back out.

  She was still thinking about it five miles later when she pulled into the village of Round Top (population 77), consulted the clock on the dashboard, and made a quick left on Main Street. Halfway down the block, she pulled into a parking space in front of Royers Round Top Cafe, a funky little place that had once been a filling station. She hadn’t been sure what time she’d get away, so she’d told Claire not to expect her for lunch. Anyway, Royers was reputed to serve the best hamburgers in South Texas and the best pie in the whole world.

  A hand-painted sign beside the door said, Oh No, Not You Again!! And when she opened the door, she saw that the inside was every bit as funky and fun as the filling-station exterior. Oilcloth-covered tables and mismatched chairs were crammed close together. The walls were completely plastered with hand-lettered signs (For Those in a Hurry, Go to Houston!!! and Eat Mo Pie), slogan T-shirts signed by customers (some of them famous), postcards and clippings and advertisements for Royers’ world-famous pie. It was still a little early, so she had the place almost to herself.

  Royers’ reputation was not exaggerated. The burger was generously topped with bacon and blue cheese, and the coffee was great. Claire had warned that she wasn’t much of a cook, so they wouldn’t be having any fancy meals, but Ruby thought it wouldn’t matter now. After this lunch, she couldn’t eat for a week. And the Blackwood house wasn’t that far away—if they got really hungry, or if they just wanted to get out for an evening, they could come here.

  At the thought of Claire, she frowned. The whole thing had been so extraordinary, so unexpected. It had happened on Sunday evening, when Ruby had been sorting through Gram Gifford’s pieced quilt tops (she had inherited those, too), some of them made of marvelous old Depression-era fabrics. She had promised to give one to her quilting club, the Texas Stars, to quilt for the silent auction at the Pecan Springs library in July. Which of course had made her think of Gram and their wonderful summers in Smithville. Which had reminded her, inevitably, of their last summer together and Gram’s gift and the Blackwood mansion. And of Claire, who had been her very best friend when she was a girl, and who had been at the Blackwood house with her the day Ruby discovered that she had inherited Gram’s gift.

  At that very moment the phone had rung, and Ruby had raised her head, knowing with a stabbing conviction that it was Claire on the other end of the line. Over the years, the two of them had gotten out of the habit of staying in touch, although they still exchanged birthday and Christmas greetings and kept up to date on major events in each other’s lives. Claire had had her problems when she was in her twenties—drugs and alcohol among them—but she had straightened herself out, married a great guy, and seemed to be doing well. She had a good job at a magazine in San Antonio and did freelance writing and ghostwriting on the side. The last time she had called was when Colin was murdered. The last time Ruby had seen her was at the memorial service for Claire’s husband, Brad, two months after Colin’s death. Brad had died of pancreatic cancer. Ruby had called a couple of times after that, but Claire hadn’t returned her calls.

  Ruby put down the quilt top she was holding and stared at the phone as it kept on ringing. She knew it was Claire, and she knew what Claire was going to say—going to ask, rather. She didn’t want to hear it.

  Well, she didn’t have to listen, did she? She could lift the receiver and break the connection. Or she could let the machine pick up, then (accidenta
lly on purpose) erase the message without replying. But that wasn’t fair to Claire, who’d had a hard time of it in the past couple of years. And anyway, Ruby knew with a disquieting certainty that this wasn’t going to go away. She could listen now or she could listen later. She reached for the phone.

  Claire got straight to the point. Someone in her family had died and left her an unexpected inheritance.

  The Blackwood house, Ruby thought.

  “The Blackwood house,” Claire said brightly, too brightly. “Do you remember the place?” She didn’t wait for Ruby to answer. “Long story short,” she hurried on, “I have to figure out what to do with it. Maybe turn it into a bed-and-breakfast, or try to sell it, or…something.”

  She needs advice.

  Claire’s voice changed. “Look, Ruby, I need advice. So of course, I thought of you, because you were here with me when we were girls. You know the place, and—”

  She broke off. There was a silence, the sound of quick breaths, then a half-despairing whisper: “Come and help me understand what’s going on here, Ruby. Please come. I can’t do this by myself.”

  But even before Claire had finished, Ruby was shouting a silent No, no, I can’t, I won’t, no. Not that house again, please, not that place, no, not even for you, Claire.

  But there was a right and a wrong answer here and No, I can’t was wrong. This was something she couldn’t hide from. And even as the gooseflesh crawled across her shoulders and her stomach knotted, she knew she didn’t have any choice. She was being directed to go, by whatever force in the universe made these arrangements.

  Come and help me understand, Ruby. Please come.

  So Ruby had said yes, mostly because she knew that no was wrong, but also because Claire sounded so desperate. And also because there was something in her, stubborn and insistent, that wanted to revisit the place and know the truth of what had happened a long time ago. She had been young and inexperienced in handling her gift. She might have misremembered, or been mistaken, or exaggerated, or fabricated. After all, it had been the first time, hadn’t it? And it wouldn’t be surprising if a first-timer got it wrong. In fact, it might be surprising if she got it right.

  She might have a gift, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t screw up.

  Ruby picked up her coffee cup, propping both elbows on the table. In the background, the café’s music system had been playing an old Texas song by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys.” Now, it switched to Connie Francis’ recording of “My Wild Irish Rose.” An interesting coincidence, Ruby thought. But of course it wasn’t a coincidence. This was Gram Gifford’s all-time favorite song, and Ruby was just this moment thinking of Gram, and of Claire.

  Besides China and Ramona, Claire was the only other person in the world who knew about the gift Ruby had inherited from Gram Gifford. Ruby’s other friends and the people who took her classes—they understood that she was psychic (when she wanted to be), and they accepted it as a quirk of her personality. But Claire had been there when it had first happened and they had talked about it later, in whispers, because the idea was so overwhelming that they couldn’t say it out loud. Claire knew that Ruby had inherited it from Gram Gifford, who had inherited it from her mother, Colleen, who—

  The rest of the story was lost in the mists of time, and Ruby had never traced it further. She had never wanted to know where the gift came from or what it had meant to her ancestors. In fact, it made her so uncomfortable that, early on, she had taught herself how to flick the switch off (as she thought of it to herself) and how to dial it down, and she left it in the off position as much as she could. If she hadn’t, she would’ve been inundated by incoming messages, competing noise, other people’s stuff. There were some very good reasons, she often thought grimly, not to be entirely grateful to Gram.

  Gram’s mother had come to America from Dublin when she was a young girl and had bequeathed to her daughter not only her red hair and her gift, but also her sense of Irish fun. Annie (Gram’s given name) was soft and round and warm and cheerful, the kind of grandmother any little girl just had to adore. She had lived most of her life in Smithville, a small town about thirty miles west of Round Top, where Ruby and Ramona had spent their summers, wonderful, unforgettable summers, busy with picnics and popcorn and read-alouds at bedtime.

  That is, that’s where they had spent their summers until the year Ruby was ten, Ramona was seven, and their father and mother divorced. Their father, Gram’s only child, had been killed in an automobile accident shortly after that. Gram, too, had died not long after, and from then on, their mother had sent the girls to spend July and August in Lubbock with her sister Dorinda, a strict Bible-believer who had laid down a long list of rules that little girls had to follow. If they didn’t, God would send them straight to hell when they died—and hell was a very unpleasant place. Aunt Dorinda was nothing at all like Gram Gifford, who thought that God loved everybody, even when they didn’t manage to do everything just right.

  Gram had worked at the Smithville library, just a few blocks down the street, and pretended with some success (because she was easy and comfortable with her gift), that she was just as ordinary as her neighbors and friends. But by that last summer, Ruby had begun to understand how it was that Gram could always tell what she and Ramona were thinking, why she knew when company was coming and who it was, and how she could predict the arrival of a particular cat at the bowl of kitty food she kept on the back porch for the neighborhood’s feral cats.

  “Just you watch, Ruby,” she would say softly, as they looked out the window. “That big black tom with the torn ear will be jumping over the fence in a jiffy, he will.” And in a jiffy, there he was, as if Gram had conjured him up by naming him.

  Years later, after Ruby had more experience with her gift, she wondered whether Gram’s gift had been somehow different, and that was why she had been so easy with it. Maybe she’d seen less or felt less—or had seen and felt mostly cheerful, comfortable things, like the big black tomcat coming over the fence to get his dinner. Or maybe it was because Gram had been using her gift for such a long time that it had become second nature, and she knew there was nothing to be afraid of.

  Claire, who was the same age as Ruby, lived across the street and came over every day. She was cute and energetic and full of ideas for things to do—tomboy ideas, mostly, because that’s the kind of girl Claire was—and they became fast friends. They walked over to Burleson Street for ice cream, or climbed trees in the park, or rode bikes out to Shipp Lake to go fishing, although of course Ramona couldn’t do that, because she was too little.

  And one hot July day, Claire invited her to visit her great-aunt Hazel, who lived all by herself in a large, old Victorian house—the Blackwood house—out in the country, past La Grange. It was the summer of the divorce, the very last of the beautiful summers, when Ruby had learned that she was different, that she was like Gram. That she knew things that other people didn’t know, saw and heard—yes, and felt—things that others didn’t see or hear or feel. It had been such an awful, overpowering experience that she—

  “More coffee, hon? And how about some pie?”

  The woman’s voice startled Ruby, and she jumped. “Oh,” she said, putting down her cup with a clatter. “Yes, just a little more, thanks. But I think I’ll take a pie with me.” She studied the photos on the menu. “The buttermilk pie with chocolate chips, pecans, and coconut looks really good.”

  “Tastes good, too.” The woman—Monica, according to her name tag—poured hot coffee from a carafe. Her name tag also bore a red sticker with a skull and crossbones and the words No Frickin’ Frackin’! “You from ’round here?”

  “From Pecan Springs,” Ruby said. “Halfway between Austin and San Antonio, on I-35.”

  “Oh, sure. Nice little town. My granddaughter’s in college there.” Hand on one ample hip, Monica grinned. “Not as little as little ol’ Round Top, o’course. But we’re big for our size.”
She paused, and Ruby chuckled appreciatively. “You here for one of the Institute programs?”

  “No, actually, I’m visiting a friend.” Ruby took a breath. “At the Blackwood house. That’s what it used to be called, anyway.”

  Monica pulled her brows together. “Yeah, that’s it. Widow Blackwood’s place.” Her voice had changed, and Ruby, glancing up at her, knew why. “You say your friend lives there?”

  “She’s recently inherited it,” Ruby replied carefully. “I’m not sure whether she’s actually living there yet.” Claire hadn’t said, either, although Ruby wondered whether she was being forced by financial circumstances—the cost of Brad’s long illness—to take on the house. She had just said, Come…please come.

  “Your friend’s a braver woman than I am.” Monica leaned over, lowering her voice. “Not tellin’ tales, but ever’body in these parts knows the place is haunted.”

  “Really?” Ruby shivered. She wasn’t surprised that the house had a reputation, just hoping for an explanation or a little more information. “Haunted…how? I mean, how do you know?”

  Monica’s eyes glinted avidly. She was obviously not unwilling to talk. “The place has been sittin’ empty while the estate got sorted out, which is takin’ a while. Way I heard it, there was some kinda question about the will.” She took a breath. “Anyhoo, the lawyer for the estate, Mr. Hoover, over in La Grange, he figgered he’d put the place up for rent while things was still up in the air. Like for summers, y’know, bein’ as how the house is still full of furniture and all. He and his wife went out there to stay for a week so he could see what’d be involved if he decided to rent it. They lasted three days.”

  “Why?” Ruby asked.

  Monica leaned over. “Place is haunted,” she replied, giving the word a spooky quaver. “That’s what Mrs. Hoover told my sister-in-law Betty, who cleans at her house. Said she just flat refused to sleep another night out there, and if Mr. Hoover didn’t drive her home, she would start walkin’.”