THE BEST MAN IN TEXAS

by Kristine Rolofson

  "You know, dear," Georgia whispered, her mound of chicken salad forgotten. "Maybe you should, ah, see someone."

  "See someone? About what?" Delia attacked her hamburger with the ferocity of a bear fresh out of the winter cave.

  "You have a right to be angry. You have a right to be sad."

  "I sense a 'Dr. Phil' lecture coming on." Delia wiped her lips with a napkin and set the hamburger back onto the plate. "What on earth are you talking about?"

  "The drinking, dear. The risky behavior. Signs of depression, don't you think? And talking to someone—"

  "Such as a therapist?"

  "Well," Georgia said, hesitating a bit. "It wouldn't hurt. You've had quite a shock."

  "Mom." Delia took a deep breath, exhaled and muttered something under her breath. Georgia didn't ask what she said. She picked up her fork and stabbed a chunk of chicken breast as if she and her daughter were having a casual Friday afternoon lunch and not talking about Delia's mental instability.

  "I'm fine," Delia declared. "It hasn't been easy with the divorce and all, but I am fine. Really. I'm not the first woman in the world who's had her husband leave her for someone else. I don't spend my nights crying in my pillow."

  "All right, dear. I just thought I'd make a little suggestion." She smiled brightly and shoved the chicken into her mouth. Georgia didn't believe a word of this "fine" business.

  She was going to have to watch Delia like a hawk. Those nervous breakdowns were frightening events. Great-aunt Belle, on her mother's side, had locked herself in a room for six months once. Folks had whispered it was on account of "the change." Horatio, Belle's younger brother, said she had always been skittish. One day she came out of her room like nothing had ever happened and that was that, except for a slight facial tic.

  "I think," Deli a said, picking up a French fry with her fingers and then putting it back on her plate. "I think Uncle Gin's trailer is the answer to everything."

  "What do you mean?" Georgia didn't think she was going to like the answer.

  "I really want to get out of the house. All I'm doing by staying there is making Martin's life easier. He can clean and pack the rest of the things by himself, or maybe he can get the kids to help."

  "Them help? Those children of his haven't lifted a finger to do anything since the day they were born." Rude ingrates, all three of them. And the youngest, Jennifer, should be kissing Delia's feet for being a mother to her instead of walking around with her nose in the air acting like Delia was some kind of maid.

  "We spoiled them," Delia said. "I should have been tougher."

  "Martin should have been tougher." He'd let those three treat Delia like dirt under their feet

  "Well, I'm done with the place. I'm going to take my clothes and my beads and my books and move into Gin's."

  "You can't possibly—" Nervous breakdown, Georgia thought. Her daughter was declining into a mental abyss of no return.

  "Of course I can. I'm divorced, alone and free to do anything I want." Delia's smile was heartbreakingly brave.

  "But people will think—"

  "I don't care." Now the stubborn chin, the one physical trait she inherited from her father, lifted. Those hazel eyes held a warning: Mom, this is none of your business.

  "Well," Georgia said, her chicken salad doing somersaults in her stomach. "I suppose I can say that you're out there at Gin's going through his things and cleaning the place up to rent out."

  "I suppose you can say anything you want." Delia reached for her refilled glass of tea. "I'm looking forward to moving on."

  "My home is always open to you, Delia," Georgia said, as she had so many times in the past months since Martin had turned into a lust-filled idiot. "When you get tired of that trailer and want your old room back."

  "I'm not going backward, Mother." Delia picked up a pickle and took a bite. "I'm going forward. I've never lived alone, you know."

  "Well," Georgia sniffed, remembering the odor of Horatio's mobile home. "It's vastly overrated."

  * * *

  "Mrs. Drummond, are you sure?"

  "Of course." Della smiled at the elderly woman behind the counter of St. Luke's thrift shop. "It's all yours."

  "Oh, my, well, we can't thank you enough."

  "It's my pleasure," Delia said, and couldn't have meant it more. She'd spent the last hour filling her car with boxes from her "Mrs. Drummond, mayor's wife" life and now those same boxes were stacked inside the basement entrance of July's only thrift store. "I hope you can make some money from these things."

  "I'm sure we will, but—" The elderly woman gave Delia a sympathetic look. "This can't be an easy time for you, dear."

  "You know," Delia replied, smiling. "This is the easiest part." And she meant it, long after she drove away from the thrift shop. The new Delia didn't need or want those fancy things any more—not the china or the crystal or the silver serving platters. Not the linen tablecloths or the polished silverware or the expensive Egyptian cotton king-size sheet sets. She'd left the first Mrs. Drummond's possessions packed in the attic—as they had been for thirteen years—for the children, who were old enough now to appreciate it. Maybe. And Delia would be damned if the next Mrs. Drummond—if Martin ever married Julie Brown, which Delia doubted—would use Delia's wedding presents for eating, drinking or sleeping.

  No, she had been reasonable about this whole affair, divorce, losing the house situation, but she simply would not share wedding gifts as meekly as she'd shared her husband.

  A woman, even a reasonable and perhaps dull woman such as herself, had to draw the line somewhere.

  Delia pulled into the parking lot of the Wal-Mart on the edge of town and looked at the list she'd written after lunch, once she'd sent her mother on her way to her weekly card game and taken two more aspirin for her headache. Febreze, air freshener sprays, paper towels, Lysol and a small window air conditioner would be a good place to start. She'd pick up some instant tea mix, a plastic pitcher and some chocolate chip cookies, too.

  That would be enough to get through the afternoon. She had her clothes, books and jewelry in the trunk, her makeup and shoes in bags on the floor of the passenger seat and her cell phone in her purse. She was ready to become self-sufficient and independent.

  She was going to call her friends, get better at partying and, if she remembered the incident in her kitchen with J.C. Brown, she was going to have to improve when it came to flirting with men. She still blushed to think of how it must have seemed to poor J.C., whose reputation in high school had been that of a guy who could give orgasms with one touch of his fingers.

  That skill had been discussed at several pajama parties, but since no one had experienced sex with J.C. the speculation remained just that. Maybe next time they were in a bar together she would ask him.

  Or maybe not. She blushed thinking about it, which meant there was no way she was going to actually say such a thing out loud.

  She was out of that man's league, always had been. It might be better to reactivate her single life with someone who was a little less skilled, a little less sexy. Wild and crazy sex was completely out of the question, but maybe having coffee or lunch with a man would be a better way to get back into dating shape. Then again, maybe men were more trouble than they were worth.

  * * *

  Joe could have sworn he saw Delia stepping into the place across the road. He would have thought she'd be home taking aspirin all day, but then again, he didn't think the wealthy ex-Mrs. Drummond would be visiting anyone at the Pecan Hollow Trailer Park.

  Not that it wasn't a decent place to live. Mostly retirees and a few young families starting out, but nice enough. And quiet, his mother assured him. He'd wanted to buy her a condo in Austin, but she wouldn't move away from July or from Julie and her kids.

  Still, by the time he'd parked his truck in front of his mother's trailer and turned around to look again, the Delia look-alike had disappeared. He thought about calling the real Delia, just to ask how she was doing, bu
t he decided against it. She might not remember much about yesterday and probably wouldn't want to be reminded.

  He sat in his truck, rolled the window down and turned off the engine. He didn't know what the hell to do about his family. He'd come to July to rescue his mother and talk sense into his sister, but so far he hadn't accomplished much except buy a lot of groceries and pick up his mother's arthritis medication at the drugstore.

  Last night's family reunion hadn't been anything to celebrate. Once he'd left Delia's white palace, he'd driven through the Burger Barn's drive-up window for a couple of hamburgers, then he'd gone out to see his mother. She'd been so thrilled to see him that he hadn't had the heart to tell her that he was in town to confront Julie. Mom assumed he was on vacation, didn't have a care in the world and had just stopped in to take her out to supper.

  That had been the easy part of the day, even with his nephew Hank in a high chair and baby niece in one of those little carrier things on the seat beside him. The back booth of the Steak Pit had been a pretty wild place to be once Hank discovered that French fries were going to be part of his meal.

  Then his mother had broken the news that Julie had gone off with her new boyfriend and wouldn't be back until Sunday. Meaning Joe was stuck in July for the weekend, when he'd planned to give the kids back to Julie today and take his mother back to Austin with him for a couple of weeks. She always liked visiting him and there were a couple of cousins of hers who were always happy to get together for dinner and an evening of the blues on Sixth Street

  .

  His conversation with his sister—after she'd finally answered her cell phone—had been short and frustrating.

  Joe grabbed the grocery sacks and climbed out of the truck. His mother's place was a double wide, one of the largest in the park. He'd put on a screened porch for her last year for her birthday when she wouldn't let him take her on one of those fancy cruises out of New Orleans. Betty Brown wasn't much for traveling.

  He let the screen door slam behind him as he stepped inside the kitchen and looked at his mother, a baby on her hip and little Hank crying and clinging to her knees, and wondered how she could look so calm. But she looked exhausted, too, so Joe set the bags on the kitchen table before he reached for his nephew and swung the three-year-old into his arms.

  "Hey, Hank, what's the matter?"

  His nephew, blond hair sticking out all over his head as if he'd just gotten out of bed, frowned at him. "Nothin'."

  "He wants his you-know-who," Hank's grandmother said, sinking into a rocking chair moved from the living area to sit beside the kitchen table. There wasn't much room to walk around, but it was convenient for rocking baby Libby to sleep. "Been talking of nothing else before and after his nap."

  "Poor guy," he said over the boy's head. Hank wrapped his arms around his uncle's neck and rested his cheek against Joe's. The kid was growing fast Joe could hardly believe how big he got since Christmas, when the family had come to Austin for the holidays. Julie had been ready to give birth any day and was more than happy to let her mother and brother entertain Hank, whose joy in life had been a set of plastic horses and a foot-high barn with doors that opened and closed. "I finally talked to her."

  "And?"

  He set Hank down. "Hey, buddy, why don't you get some of those little horses of yours and we'll go outside and build a ranch?"

  "Like yours?"

  "Yep. Just like mine."

  "Okay." Hank hurried off around the corner and down the hall to the small bedroom he'd shared with his baby sister and mother since Julie lost her job.

  "You go rest, Mom." Joe lifted the baby out of her arms and tucked her against his chest. "I can manage for a while."

  "Tell me what Julie said first." She smoothed the baby's T-shirt over her plump tummy and Libby, pink and round and smiling, reached for her glasses. "No, sweetheart, Grandma needs those."

  "She said she's not coming home until Sunday, like you said, but she's not sure about the future. I think she's having trouble talking her new boyfriend into playing Daddy to her two little kids." There'd been more, lots more, but Joe didn't share it with his mother. She hated to think her only daughter was a lousy mother with no conscience and very little self-control, but Joe figured his sister was also on some kind of pathetic search for love. And she wasn't real fussy about where she found it or what she had to do to keep it.

  "That girl has a heck of a time with men," his mother said. "They can't resist her and she can't resist them and you know what happens next."

  "Yeah." Babies. Like the one in his arms.

  "You sure you're all right with Libby?"

  "I can manage just fine," he lied. "When is she going to get hungry?"

  "Not for a couple of hours, but she gets cranky in the afternoons sometimes." Betty smiled. "Like you used to."

  "Go rest," he said. "I'll put the food away. And your medicine is on top of one of the bags."

  "Thanks, honey." She went over to the table and rummaged through the plastic bags until she found the little bag that held her medication. "I kept meaning to get to town, but each day something would come up."

  Like baby-sitting two little kids. And waiting for Julie to show up. A sixty-nine-year-old woman with arthritic knees and a lifetime of hard work etched in her face should damn well have the right to take it easy. He knew darn well she was trying not to limp, just so he wouldn't worry.

  "You know I'm glad to help," he said, and the baby pulled on his ear and screeched. He went over to the sink and poured his mother a glass of water. When he handed it to her, she smiled again.

  "You're a good boy, Joseph. Haven't I always said so?"

  "Yeah. You always said I was your favorite," he teased, which made her laugh. She was still a pretty woman, plump and good-natured. She'd married a rodeo man with a loud laugh, a mean temper and an amazing ability to lose every job he ever got hired for. The years hadn't been kind, but somehow his mother kept a smile on her face.

  "I'll just put the milk and eggs away." Before he could stop her, his mother had unloaded three of the six bags on the table and had found everything that needed to be refrigerated. He tried to help, but holding Libby was slowing him down.

  "Who lives across the street?" He moved closer to the window. He didn't think he recognized the white Cadillac sedan, but it had Texas plates. There had been a similar white Cadillac in Delia's driveway yesterday, but he hadn't paid much attention to it. Still, the coincidence was unsettling.

  "No one, not now," she answered. "Hank? Are you coming?" The boy yelled that he was "goin' potty," which seemed to make Betty very happy. "Good boy," she called. "You take your time and let me know if you need help in there."

  "There's a car over there now and I saw a woman going inside."

  Betty stood beside him to look, too. "Well, old Horatio died a couple of weeks ago. Maybe somebody bought the place. Or maybe that's his niece. Horatio was a sweet old man, but he didn't like company much."

  "But he had a niece? Who would that be?" Joe had the sinking feeling he knew what she was going to say.

  "Georgia Ball, the English teacher."

  "The woman I saw was definitely not Mrs. Ball." The woman he'd seen was Delia, then, probably cleaning out her uncle's trailer. Made sense.

  "If we have a new neighbor, I should go over and say hello." His mother went toward the door, but stopped. "Maybe I'd better put some brownies on a plate for her. It wouldn't be right to show up empty-handed."

  "It wouldn't be right to show up at all, Mom." He shifted Libby to his other arm and took his mother's elbow. Once she was seated in the rocking chair, he continued. "You know who Mrs. Ball's daughter is, don't you?"

  Betty frowned and rubbed the tops of her thighs as if the muscles ached. "Who?"

  "Martin Drummond's wife. Ex-wife. I don't think she's going to want a visit from us."

  "Oh, dear."

  Joe looked out the window again and saw Delia's cute little ass bent over the opened trunk of her car. Would
you like to have wild and crazy sex? she had asked him. Yes, dammit, he would, but Delia had always been too good for him. Even yesterday, when she was drunk, divorced and looking for trouble, Delia had a smile that made him want to protect her from men like himself.

  "We're going to mind our own business," he told his mother as she reached for Libby. "And we're staying away from that trailer."

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  «^»

  "Beer or brownies?"

  Delia was in the middle of lugging garbage bags out of the trailer's door when she saw J.C. Brown standing next to her car. A little boy stood beside him, his thumb stuck in his mouth as if he was uncertain about his whereabouts. Delia's first thought was that J.C. "call me Joe" Brown was even more handsome than she'd remembered from yesterday. And her second thought was that she should have guessed he was married. It was something she should have asked him yesterday, before she propositioned him. "What did you say?"

  He smiled. "Would you prefer beer or brownies? I brought the beer and my mother baked the brownies," he said, indicating a plate wrapped in foil. "And she was determined to give them to you. She wanted me to tell you how sorry she was about your uncle."

  "But how—"

  "She lives across the street."

  "Oh." Delia quickly tossed the bags, filled with kitchen rejects and old boxes of food, onto the dirt beside the metal stairs before making an effort to brush the hair off her face. "That's really nice of her."

  "On the other hand," he said, holding up two dark bottles of beer between his fingers. "I know how much you like a drink in the afternoon. But to be safe, I only brought two. One for you and one for me."

  "A woman makes one mistake and she's branded for life." She smiled at him, though, and held the door open. "Why don't the two of you come in and I can apologize again for yesterday."

  The little boy's eyes grew wide and the thumb popped out of his mouth. He was a cute little guy, with all that hair sticking up on his head as if he'd never been tormented with a hairbrush. "Me, too?"