Twilight, Texas

by Ginger Chambers

  “This is a travesty! A complete and total travesty!” She could still hear Mae Parker, the family’s matriarch, announce it to any and all who’d listen.

  But it hadn’t been her fault! She’d done nothing except fall in love and agree to marry one of them! It was them, the Parkers, who’d—

  Memories came rushing back in an avalanche of pain—overwhelming her with recollections that she’d spent years avoiding because of their power to hurt. She saw herself as she had been then: barely twenty-one, dressed in her beautiful fairy-tale white wedding gown in a church packed with friends and relatives, following her attendants down the aisle, her hand resting lightly on her father’s arm—only to arrive at the altar to find the groom missing!

  She’d been startled at first, then calmed herself. Alex had been highly nervous the evening before, which she’d put down to prewedding jitters—something she also was experiencing. He hadn’t eaten all that day, he’d confided to her. She doubted he was in much better condition now. So when the minister leaned close to murmur that on hearing the first notes of the Wedding March, Alex had excused himself, Karen encouraged her father to go through with the traditional parting kiss before seating himself next to her mother. Then she’d waited, along with everyone else, for Alex’s return.

  As the delay lengthened, nervous movements could be detected throughout the church, along with self-conscious whispers. Karen smiled reassurance to her attendants and the groomsmen, but finally gave up when she herself became concerned. She remembered shooting a panic-stricken look at Alex’s older brother, Lee Parker; the best man. He had a similar slim, yet muscular, build, the same dark hair and strongly carved features, but with pale blue eyes instead of Alex’s near black.

  “I’ll see what the holdup is,” he’d responded, sotto voce.

  Karen’s gaze had clung to his tuxedo-clad back as he walked away. She didn’t much care for him, because shortly after their first meeting two days before, he’d made it plain he disapproved of the marriage. At this moment, though, he carried all her hopes. She didn’t understand what was happening, why Alex had hurried away and not come back. Was he ill? Did he need help? Should she go to him? What should she do? She glanced at the minister and, with a jolt, read compassion in his eyes. He felt sorry for her!

  Did that mean he thought Alex wasn’t going to return? But that couldn’t happen! Alex would be there!

  Strained moment followed strained moment. Whispers grew louder. Even the attendants and groomsmen had started to fidget. Then Lee Parker opened the side door and reentered the church... alone.

  As he walked toward Karen, his expression gave nothing away. In front of the suddenly hushed crowd he stopped and said quietly, “Alex is gone. I looked everywhere, but he’s—” His words ended on a shrug.

  Karen couldn’t take it in. Alex was gone? Gone where? Where would he go when—

  “He’s...gone?” she echoed, because she had to say something.

  Lee Parker’s lips were a thin line. He nodded.

  Karen would never forget his eyes, those pale blue chips of Arctic ice that sent a chill straight to her soul. They held hers steadily, condemning her for daring to think that she could be one of them. As if becoming a Parker had been her ultimate goal!

  “The Parkers” this! “The Parkers” that! Karen had had more than enough of the name during the past few months. Every decision her parents made about the wedding had been with an eye to impressing “the Parkers!” Wealthy, powerful, influential, an oldline Texas family... Karen had been blissfully unaware of the name’s significance until after meeting Alex. And even then, it hadn’t meant anything to her one way or the other.

  At first, both sets of parents had resisted the engagement, protesting that Alex and Karen were too young. But faced with the young couple’s determination, they had given in. It was afterward that the difficulties began, a direct result of her parents’ closer involvement with Alex’s parents during the early stages of planning the wedding. They seemed to sense a certain “disdain”—Gemma’s bitter description. As if, in the Parkers’ opinion, Karen would never measure up.

  From that point things had gotten a little strange. The wedding became a sort of proving ground, where no expense was spared. “Only the best,” became her parents’ watchword.

  Karen remembered the pain etched on their faces when she’d turned to look at them in the crowded church. The worst had happened. She’d been stood up! Every bride’s nightmare. Every bride’s parents’ nightmare.

  What happened after was a blur. She remembered a strong arm wrapping around her shoulders and then being whisked out the church’s side exit. She remembered being held, her face pressed into a solid chest. She remembered the muted roar inside the church as people reacted. Then her parents dragging her away. Their anger, their outrage, the blame...

  Karen took a deep breath, trying to recover from the terrible memory.

  It was odd, but even after all these years she couldn’t find it in herself to blame Alex. Just as her parents had at first pointed out, they’d been far too immature to make such a serious commitment.

  Alex was fun, irreverent. He’d brought the first sparks of real joy into her life since she’d been forced to trade her childhood summers for what she considered the steamroll into academia. Her parents had wanted her to follow in their footsteps. They’d insisted that she fill all her spare time during her teenage years with accelerated study programs, with any and all forms of preparation for her approaching college education. Then during college—at, of course, what they considered the state’s best university in Austin, where both had tenured professorships—she was expected to excel. They wanted to see a PhD attached to her name, just as one was attached to each of theirs. When she’d met Alex and he’d eventually proposed, she later realized she’d seen it as a way out. She didn’t want her parents’ life. She wanted her own!

  She had no idea, either then or now, what Alex had wanted. She wasn’t sure if he’d known himself. His mother had dreamed of him becoming a top-notch lawyer, with a partnership in a top-notch firm, and she’d been concerned that an early marriage would interfere. She’d also expected him to find a bride who’d bring something of substance to the union. Equally strong social status. Equal, if not greater, wealth. Karen brought neither. Her parents were respected experts in their field, which lent them a certain cachet, but their standing would be of only temporary interest to the social set of which Jessica Parker, Alex’s mother, was a devotee. Especially since they were as far from great wealth as most teachers.

  The weeks following the aborted wedding had been gruesome. The telephone calls, her parents’ mortified attempts at explanation, the need to return all the gifts. Karen had been drowning in the feeling that she’d somehow let down her parents. That in the end she hadn’t been good enough. And worrying about the money, most of it drawn from their savings, that her parents had funneled into something that had evaporated into thin air. All because of the haughty callousness of the high-and-mighty Parkers.

  Karen had never again heard from Alex. He might’ve dropped off the face of the earth. She learned months later that Mae Parker had tried to contact her the next day, as had Lee. But they had been turned away by her parents, who, incensed that their daughter had been treated so badly, were fierce guardians of her privacy.

  Karen glanced out the car’s window at the passing scenery. Somewhere between this narrow strip of road and those distant mountains lay the heart of the Parker Ranch. She’d never seen ranch headquarters, only heard about it from Alex. Since Alex descended from a Parker who’d years ago left West Texas to make his way in an opposite corner of the state, he, his brother, his parents and those like them were referred to as “off-ranch Parkers.” This was in contrast to those who continued to live on the ranch.

  But a Parker was a Parker, off-ranch or on. They were all extensions of the same arrogant clan. People she had good reason to never ever want to come into contact with again.

  C
HAPTER TWO

  KAREN ARRIVED TO FIND Twilight unchanged. Weathered wood buildings, some set side against side in a single row, some standing alone—most fronted by covered plank sidewalks, low-railed balconies and the occasional hitching post at the edge of the street. The tiny town looked like exactly what it was—a relic from the days of the Old West.

  If she hadn’t been leaning against the open door of her late-model car, she might have thought herself transported back in time to another age, when Twilight was a popular stopping place for late-nineteenthcentury travelers. Any second now, a wagon piled high with a settler’s wordly goods might lurch up the hard-packed road. Or a stagecoach, coated with dust, could roll to a stop and disgorge its passengers—also coated with dust—whose first destination would be the much needed refreshment of the well. Soldiers, trappers, Indian fighters, railroad men. Twilight had been a godsend in the arid and hostile land...until the spring failed.

  A hot August breeze kicked up swirls of dust, peppering Karen’s bare legs. She could do with a little water herself, she thought. Where was everyone? Doors were closed, not a soul was about. From the summers she’d spent here, she knew visitors were always promptly greeted.

  She stepped away from the car and called, “Hello? Hello!”

  A dog trotted out of an alleyway, stopped short and barked, the dark hair at the back of his neck bristling.

  Karen clapped her hands. “C’mere, boy. It’s okay. I’m a friend.”

  The dog barked even louder, before turning to run back the way he’d come.

  A hand-lettered sign, faded by time, hung from the balcony of the nearest building. The Twilight Mercantile, it proclaimed proudly. Karen glanced from it to the neighboring establishment on the right. The Lady Slipper Saloon flowed in Spencerian script down a pair of plaques on either side of a matching set of doors.

  Karen knew both places well. The saloon was owned and operated by John and Bette Danson. The mercantile, closed since the owner got fed up and abandoned it in the spring of 1910, had been one of her favorite haunts as a child. According to local lore, the mercantile’s owner had walked away with only his hat. Much of the original stock remained—bolts of cloth, shelves of cooking supplies, buttons and brooms and a very old cash register. Karen had played there for hours, pretending to be the clerk, waiting on customers only she could see.

  When hunger or thirst intruded, she’d run next door to the saloon, hopping up on one of the red leather bar stools to eat a snack of ice cream, pop and chips—or whatever surprise Bette might produce—or hurry for a meal at her aunt’s apartment above the antique shop, which abutted the mercantile on its other side.

  In comparison, the sign announcing Augusta’s shop was simple—Antiques was all it said. Karen hadn’t seen the place in years. Too many years, she now realized with a pang of nostalgia as she walked toward it.

  On a whim she tried the shop’s door, only to find it locked. Frowning, she tried the mercantile’s, then the saloon’s. They, too, were locked. Odd, she thought, her frown deepening. People didn’t secure their doors here. The only person who might steal from them would be a neighbor, and that just didn’t happen.

  She’d written a letter to John and Bette, telling them of her plans to come claim her inheritance, and she’d received a reply. From them. From Twilight. She hadn’t told them the exact date of her arrival, not knowing it at the time. But she hadn’t thought it necessary. Twilight didn’t run on a time schedule. Things happened here when they happened, and that was that. No one worried, no one cared. So... where was everyone?

  Karen returned to the antique shop and, shielding her eyes, tried to see inside. She was disappointed when her view was blocked by what looked to be the back of a very large chest.

  “Hello?” she tried again, turning to project her voice into the distance.

  A series of barks answered. It sounded like the same dog.

  Her frustration mounting, Karen returned to her car and plopped down in the driver’s seat. What was she to do? What else could she do? Wait, of course. But for how long?

  It was as if Twilight suddenly had become what her aunt had always affectionately termed it—a ghost town. With only her and the dog to—

  “You that TV-show person?” a gruff voice demanded from nearby.

  Karen almost jumped out of her skin. She jerked her head around to see a scruffy desert rat staring at her through the open passenger window. He was old and bent with an unkempt white beard, leathery skin, a ragged hat jammed low over flyaway white hair and the brightest of blue eyes peering at her through a squint.

  Old Pete Tunny! Twilight’s eldest citizen. No one knew exactly how old Pete was. He could easily be anywhere from sixty to a hundred. Just as no one knew where he’d come from or how long he’d been there. It was as if he’d always lived in Twilight, a leftover from the old days. He had a ramshackle shack on the far edge of town but preferred to spend his time wandering the distant foothills. Karen had gotten to know him well the summer he’d broken a bone in his foot and had to stay put so it could heal. He was a natural storyteller and had taught her to whittle while she listened to his tales.

  His bright eyes narrowed even more. “You look kinda familiar. Like maybe I should know you. But I don’t watch TV. Don’t hold with it. Rots a person’s brain. Turns it to vegetable mush!” He waited for a reply, obviously hoping for a spirited defense.

  Karen grinned, the dimples in each cheek deepening. “I should look familiar to you, Pete. I’m Karen...Karen Latham! Augusta’s niece.”

  Pete Tunny blinked, then the white hairs around his - mouth quivered into a smile. “You’re Karen? Nah! Little Karen’s no bigger than a bar of used soap!” He paused. “You sure got her dimples, though! And her big brown eyes.” His smile grew wider. “Karen, you say?”

  He hurried around the car to meet her as she stepped out. She was examined up and down—from her shoulder-length chestnut curls and slim body in shorts and a white cotton shirt to the sandals encasing her feet. “Still not much bigger than a bar of used soap!” he decreed. “But you’re her, all right! All growed up!”

  “It’s been a lot of years, Pete,” Karen answered, giving him the quick hug she knew was all he’d allow. Pete wasn’t much on shows of affection. “Too many years,” she continued. “How are you? Still up to the same old things?” She was happier to see him than she would have thought possible even this morning. He was someone from Twilight. He made the town real again. Brought it to life.

  Pete had to clear his throat. “Yeah...yeah...same ol’ same ol’. You know how it is. I get restless if I don’t make it out often enough. Had to stay put more’n I wanted this summer. But somebody had to be here to try’ bang some sense into these fools’ heads! If your aunt hadda been here I coulda lit out, but she wasn’t, so I had to stay.”

  “I don’t—” Karen began, when he interrupted her.

  “She‘da told ’em right for right, that’s for sure! Then they wouldna gone off with those movie folk, lettin’ ’em wine ‘em and dine ’em so’s they can sweet-talk ‘em into doin’ whatever it is they want!”

  Karen was more confused than ever. Frowning, she said, “You’re going to have to start from the beginning, Pete. I don’t understand.”

  Pete waved a hand. “Aw, that stuff turns my stomach if I even think about it! When they get back they’ll all be ready to talk, don’t you wony!” He motioned for her to follow him. “C‘mon. Come to my place and I’ll fix you up with a nice strong cup of coffee and you can tell me what all you been doin’ with yourself since you growed up.” His expression sobered. “We were all cut up terrible about Augusta’s passing. It was like the best part of this town went with her. Not been the same around here since. And from the looks of it, it won’t be for some time to come, neither. Maybe never. Not if certain people get their way.” He threw Karen an estimating look, grinned and patted her shoulder. “But you’re here again, ain’t ya, gal? Maybe you can change things back to the way they were. Yep,
maybe you just can!”

  Movie people, TV people...what was going on? Karen wondered as she tried to keep up with Pete’s. shuffling gait.

  KAREN WAS SITTING in Pete’s one-room shack, a cup of freshly brewed coffee in her hand, chuckling at one of his outrageous stories, when the rumble of a large engine broke into their conversation. It drew closer, switched to idle, then shut off.

  “That’s them back,” Pete said in answer to her questioning look.

  “Back from where?” she asked.

  “The big city. Come on. You can bring that with you, if you want.” He indicated her chipped cup. “I wanna see their faces when they find out you’re here.” He took hold of her arm and pulled her across the room.

  “They’re my friends, too, Pete,” Karen sputtered, managing to leave the cup on a rough wood table by the door. Something was wrong in Twilight... out of kilter. Something she knew nothing about. Something she wasn’t sure she wanted to know about.

  The dog who’d barked at her earlier jumped out of the way as Pete pulled her outside. They’d disturbed his nap.

  “Don’t make no difference,” Pete replied, dismissing her protest as he brought her back to the spot where he’d found her.

  A large charter bus was now parked in front of the saloon, not far from Karen’s much smaller car, and passengers had started to climb out. They were led by a woman and two men—all in business suits, their hair cut in the latest styles—whose flashy confidence branded them as outsiders. Those who followed had more recognizable faces. John and Bette Danson, Joe and Rhonda Peterson, Isaac Jacobs, the Douglases, Mary O’Conner and her son, Benny, Carmelita Lopez and a strikingly pretty young woman with dark eyes and dark hair who was laughing up at an equally dark and handsome young man carrying an infant.

  Seemingly content, they remained in a loose cluster around the outsiders. The woman, a sleek blonde with a smoothly cut bob and large gold earrings, was speaking to them.