Between Heaven and Texas

by Marie Bostwick

  Lydia Dale rolled her eyes. “That’s what you say about all of them. Remember the plan. We can only afford to order five hundred bolts to start, so we need to focus on simple patterns that most anyone will like in basic colors that most everyone needs. Later, once we start making some money, we’ll bring in more specialty prints.”

  She took the swatch from her sister and made a face. “But we will never, under any circumstances, order this. Looks like wallpaper from a two-dollar bordello.”

  “Here,” she said, handing Mary Dell a stack of white-on-white fabric swatches, “you work with these. Pick any five you want.”

  Mary Dell frowned and began flipping morosely through the fabrics. “You sure know how to take the fun out of shopping.”

  “We’re not shopping, we’re buying—for the shop, not for us. What about this?” Lydia Dale held up a white-and-bright-yellow windowpane check. “It comes in six different colors.”

  “Better,” Mary Dell said.

  Mary Dell took one of the windowpane swatches, a bright blue one, and placed it on the floor directly between Howard and Rob Lee, who were lying stomach-down on the carpet, which was strewn with toys, rattles, and stuffed animals.

  “What do you think, boys? Should we order some of this?”

  Howard pushed up on his little arms, his face turning pink with effort, and smiled. Mary Dell laughed.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Seems you inherited your aunt’s good taste.”

  “He’s sure holding his head up good now,” Lydia Dale commented, smiling at Howard as she pushed a blue rattle with a teddy bear on it a little closer to Rob Lee, who was struggling to reach it.

  “Yep,” Mary Dell said with pride. “He can keep it up for fifteen seconds. I timed him.”

  Mary Dell put the fabric aside and got down on her stomach, almost nose to nose with Howard, who pushed his head up again so he could see his mother’s face. “Now we’re going to work on rolling over. When did Rob Lee start rolling?”

  “Last week. It’s not a competition, sis.”

  “I know,” Mary Dell said, reaching out a finger for the baby to grasp. “Howard is doing great. But it helps me to know what Rob Lee can do and when he started doing it so I can see what’s on the horizon for Howard. Hey, speaking of children, how are Cady and Jeb? I haven’t seen them as much since the end of lambing.”

  “Cady is fine. Nagging me about wanting to go to cheerleading camp this summer,” Lydia Dale said, examining a stack of small-scale floral prints in muted shades of blue, red, and brown. “Even if we could afford it, she’s still too young. But I guess one of the Benton girls from her class is going. She keeps rubbing it in Cady’s face.”

  Mary Dell shook her head. “Meanness just runs through that whole family.”

  “Seems to,” Lydia Dale agreed. “But don’t forget my babies are half Benton, too.”

  “Tudmore genes trump Benton meanness any day of the week,” Mary Dell declared. “Your children are proof of that.”

  “I hope so,” Lydia Dale said, “but some days I have my doubts.”

  “Jeb giving you trouble again?” Mary Dell placed a ring of plastic keys in Howard’s hand, waiting until he had a good grip before sitting up to face her sister.

  “A little. Jack Benny’s the real problem. As usual,” Lydia Dale muttered. “Jeb hates going to see his daddy on Fridays. He keeps begging me to let him stay home.”

  “Why don’t you? Sounds like Jack Benny isn’t all that interested in seeing him anyway.”

  “He’s not. But if I tried to change the visitation, Jack Benny would take me to court just to make life miserable for me.” She sighed. “I shouldn’t complain. Jeb’s actually doing better. He’s passing his classes. Not by much, but it’s an improvement. Graydon said that if he failed any of his subjects, he wouldn’t let him help with the horses after school.”

  Mary Dell laid out eight swatches of white fabric on the carpet, considered the choices, took away two, and considered some more.

  “And that did the trick?”

  “Uh-huh. Jeb loves to ride now. Graydon is teaching him how to rope too. They’ve been making some noise about Jeb entering the breakaway roping event at the fair this year.” Lydia Dale smiled to herself. “We’ll see.”

  “Graydon is good people,” Mary Dell said, noting the wistful look in her sister’s eyes. Lydia Dale nodded.

  “I saw the two of you walking to the west hills the other day.”

  “Graydon wanted to see the bluebonnets.”

  “Well, that sounds awfully romantic,” Mary Dell said knowingly.

  “Stop it.” Lydia Dale tossed a swatch at her sister.

  “I mean it,” Mary Dell said. “It does sound romantic. Is something going on between you two?” She leaned forward, eager for an answer. “Are you falling in love?”

  Lydia Dale made an exasperated noise, picked up another stack of swatches, and started flipping through them.

  “Don’t be silly. I’ve got three children, one of them an infant, and I’m trying to help you open a quilt shop. I don’t have time to fall in love. I don’t want to fall in love.”

  Mary Dell reached out, grabbed her sister by the wrist, and looked her in the eye.

  “Love isn’t always about what you want. Sometimes it just is. That’s why they call it falling in love, because sometimes you just can’t help yourself.”

  “Like the Fatal Flaw?” Lydia Dale asked in a mocking tone. “You’ve been spending too much time with Aunt Velvet.”

  “No, not like that,” Mary Dell said urgently. “Falling in love is different. You know it is because you fell in love once before, with Graydon. Is it happening again?”

  Lydia Dale’s cheeks flushed pink. She pulled her hand away and started sorting fabric swatches again, deliberately avoiding her twin’s penetrating gaze.

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” she said softly. “He wants to take me out.”

  Mary Dell’s eyes went wide. “Out? Like on a date? A real date? What did you say?”

  A mischievous little smile bowed Lydia Dale’s lips.

  “I said I’d love to. If the kids can come too.”

  By the end of the afternoon, the sisters had put aside 716 swatches to consider as possible candidates for their initial order. It had been 715, but Mary Dell quietly slipped the purple-rose print back into the stack while Lydia Dale’s back was turned.

  They would have happily continued with their task, narrowing their options to the final five hundred, but Lydia Dale wanted to be home in time to meet the school bus.

  Lydia Dale was changing Rob Lee’s diaper, and Mary Dell was picking up toys when she heard the familiar sound of tires speeding too fast over gravel and an engine backfiring.

  “There’s the mail,” Mary Dell said.

  Lydia Dale looked up from her task. “Why is Wanda Joy so late with the delivery?”

  “This is her usual time,” Mary Dell said. “At least it is now. I’m the last one on the route.”

  Lydia Dale looked perplexed. “She delivers to the big house before nine every morning, and we’re just a quarter mile up the road. Why would she deliver to everybody else in town and then come all the way back out here?”

  “Because I’m being punished,” Mary Dell said, then tossed a musical teddy bear into the toy basket. “Don’t worry about it. Would you mind keeping an eye on Howard while I run out to the mailbox? I’ll be right back.”

  “Sure.”

  Mary Dell kissed Howard on the nose, telling him to be a good boy for Auntie Lydia Dale, then hopped to her feet and jogged out the front door.

  Lydia Dale finished putting on Rob Lee’s diaper, grabbed one of his chubby feet, and pretended to nibble on his toes, making the baby giggle with delight.

  “Oh, you are delicious, Rob Lee Benton! And so are you!” she exclaimed, scooping Howard up from the floor and giving him a squeeze. He smiled at her, drooling his delight. Lydia Dale squeezed him again, lifted him up high and, after a quick
sniff, decided that her nephew could also use a clean diaper.

  She’d just finished changing Howard when she heard her sister shouting her name. Lydia Dale stood up with a baby in each arm and looked out the front window. Mary Dell was running at top speed down the driveway, waving a piece of paper over her head, her big bosoms bouncing so hard they almost hit her in the chin.

  “What in the world?” Lydia Dale muttered to herself. She walked quickly to the front door, opening it just as Mary Dell came bounding in and collapsed with her back against the door.

  “What is it?” she asked, looking down at the letter Mary Dell held in her hand. “Is it from Donny?”

  Still too winded to speak, Mary Dell just shook her head. She closed her eyes and took in several deliberately big breaths.

  “C. J. Evard.”

  Lydia Dale’s jaw dropped. “The magazine editor? The one you’re always going on and on about? The one who rejected all your quilt designs?” Mary Dell bobbed her head. “What does she want?”

  “Me!” Mary Dell exclaimed. “She wants me! She wants me to come to Dallas and bring my quilts. Ahhh!!!”

  Mary Dell squealed with excitement and Lydia Dale joined in, her delight matching Mary Dell’s and her squeals even louder. The sisters danced a celebratory circle in the middle of the living room, their babies held between them, Rob Lee giggling at this impromptu ring-around-the-rosy and Howard expressing his pleasure with a wide and toothless grin.

  This went on for some time. Each time Mary Dell would quit squealing and get hold of herself, Lydia Dale would shout, “Dallas! You’re going to Dallas to meet C. J. Evard!” and the party would start all over again.

  When they finally calmed down, Lydia Dale said, “I can’t believe it! This is fabulous, Mary Dell. I’m so proud of you! You never gave up. Just think, after all this time and all those submissions, she finally sent for you. What do you think changed her mind?”

  Mary Dell’s eyes got very wide and her complexion turned suddenly pale.

  “The letter . . .” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, no. That stupid, stupid letter.”

  “What letter?”

  “The letter I wrote one night when I was mad, after Donny left. I’d had about all I could take and then I got another of those form-letter rejections from the magazine and I . . . well, I kind of went off the deep end. I wrote this terrible, terrible letter to C. J. Evard, calling her all kinds of names. It was crazy, but I was mad, and I’d accidentally taken one of Donny’s old prescriptions, thinking it was an allergy pill. Then I had a couple of beers and . . .”

  “Beers?” Lydia Dale laid Howard back down on the floor, then settled Rob Lee into his car seat. “You hardly ever drink beer. And I’ve never seen you drink two.”

  “Yes,” Mary Dell replied grimly, “and there’s a reason for that. Because it makes me do stupid, stupid things!” She smacked herself on the forehead and groaned.

  “This is a nightmare. I’ve waited years to meet C. J. Evard and now, when I finally get the chance, it’s only because she wants to holler at me in person. Well, I’m just not going to go,” Mary Dell said, setting her jaw. “I’ve humiliated myself enough for one lifetime.”

  “Are you crazy? Give me that!”

  Lydia Dale snatched the letter from her sister’s hand, pulled the sheet of thick, creamy stationery from the envelope, and read a portion of it aloud.

  “ ‘Upon reviewing the body of your submissions during the past seven years, we are intrigued by your technique and would like to see more. . ..’ Mary Dell, this woman isn’t mad at you. Look here,” Lydia Dale said, pointing to a paragraph, “it says they booked you a hotel room. Nobody pays for a hotel room just so they can holler at somebody else.”

  Mary Dell bit her lip, considering this. “Do you think so?”

  “She’s interested in your quilts and wants to see more. Here,” Lydia Dale continued, moving her eyes to the final paragraph. “She says she is greatly looking forward to meeting you in their offices at two o’clock on the twenty—”

  Lydia Dale stopped in mid-sentence. She flipped the envelope over and examined the postmark.

  “This was mailed almost two weeks ago. The mailman could have walked it from Dallas to Too Much in that time.”

  “Two weeks?” Mary Dell took the envelope from her sister, looked at it, and scowled. “Not the mailman. The mailwoman. I bet Wanda Joy has been holding on to this for days. You know, I’ve had just about enough of this.” Mary Dell’s fingers curled into a fist. “Next time I go into the post office, I’m going to . . .”

  “You don’t have time for that!” Lydia Dale said, throwing up her hands. “Aren’t you listening? Your appointment with C. J. Evard is at two o’clock on the twenty-fourth. You’ve got to be in Dallas the day after tomorrow!”

  “The day after tomorrow?” Mary Dell grabbed the letter back from her sister and scanned the final paragraph.

  “Well, I can’t do it,” she said weakly. “I just can’t. There’s no way I can be ready by then. I . . . I’ve got to pull my quilts together, and I’d have to pack. I don’t have a thing to wear. And I’m supposed to see the lawyer about drawing up the papers for the quilt shop. And they made a hotel reservation?” She looked at the letter again. “What am I supposed to do about Howard? I can’t take him to some hotel in Dallas.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Lydia Dale said. “I’ll go see the lawyer. And you can leave Howard with me and Momma. It’s just for one night. And you have plenty of pretty clothes. I’ll help you pack your suitcase and the quilts. We’ll do it first thing tomorrow.”

  Mary Dell shook her head. “There’s not enough time. And I hate big cities.”

  “How would you know? You’ve never been to one.”

  “That’s not true,” Mary Dell said with a jerk of her chin. “I went to Dallas on my honeymoon. Didn’t like it.”

  Lydia Dale sighed impatiently. “As I recall, the only things you saw on your honeymoon were the emergency room at Parkland Memorial Hospital and the inside of your hotel room. I’m guessing that Dallas has a little more to offer than that.”

  “No,” Mary Dell said. “It’s too much. It’s too soon. It’s a waste of time. And who cares about C. J. Evard anyway? Who does she think she is? Sending me rejections for seven years and then thinking she can just snap her fingers and I’ll come running up to Dallas on a minute’s notice. As if I don’t have more important things to do.”

  “But you don’t have more important things to do! Not the day after tomorrow, you don’t.” Lydia Dale grabbed her sister by the shoulders. “Mary Dell, you’ve waited seven years for this moment. Don’t let it slip through your fingers just because you’re scared.”

  Mary Dell swallowed hard, knowing that her sister had read her right. She was scared, scared that after so many years spent dreaming of exactly this, the dream might be too wonderful to come true. It would be terrible to come so close . . .

  “What if she doesn’t like me? Or my quilts? What if it’s just another rejection, but this time she’s planning to deliver it in person?”

  Lydia Dale shrugged. “Well . . . then at least you’d know the truth. And at least you’d be able to look in the mirror and know you tried. That’s got to be better than spending the rest of your life wondering what might have been, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe. I suppose,” Mary Dell said hesitantly. “But what if . . .”

  “No,” Lydia Dale said stalwartly. “I’m not going to listen to any more of this. I was born three and a half minutes before you; that gives me seniority. So you listen to me, Mary Dell. I don’t care if I have to beat your butt with a mesquite switch, or hogtie you and put you on the next bus to Dallas, you are going to that meeting. You can do this, Mary Dell. You hear me? You can!”

  CHAPTER 46

  “Stop it, Jeb,” Cady said in a voice that was halfway between a giggle and whine. “Mom! Make Jeb stop!”

  Lydia Dale turned around to face the backseat. “Jeb, stop th
rowing popcorn at your sister. And, Cady, you quit egging him on. Settle down and watch the movie.”

  “She started it!”

  “I did not!”

  “I don’t care who started it,” Lydia Dale said in that particular tone of voice the children knew signaled imminent punishment. “Both of you, stop it. You hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they chorused glumly.

  Lydia Dale turned back to the movie. Mr. Miyagi was showing Daniel how to “wax on” and “wax off” his car, and Daniel was questioning what this had to do with learning karate. Keeping her eyes glued to the screen, Lydia Dale’s fingers crept across the front seat until they met Graydon’s, and he took hold of her hand.

  Graydon glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Cady stick her tongue out at her brother. Jeb quickly returned the sentiment.

  “You know what would taste good right now? A cherry slushie.” Graydon reached into the back pocket of his jeans. “Hey, kids. Would you run to the concession stand and buy me a slushie? Get yourselves one too.”

  The children broke into cheers.

  “You already bought them popcorn,” Lydia Dale reminded him.

  “Popcorn makes you thirsty,” Graydon said as he handed a bill over the backseat to Jeb. “Besides, it’s the first day of summer vacation. We’re celebrating.”

  “Could be a long summer,” Lydia Dale mumbled. Graydon scratched his nose and grinned.

  “Get your momma a drink too. Lime, right?”

  Lydia Dale nodded, wondering how he’d remembered.

  “Okay, lime slushie for your momma. Cherry for me. While you’re at it, get some red licorice and Milk Duds, too. Got that, partner?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jeb said. “Does Cady have to come?”

  “Somebody’s got to help you carry it.”

  Jeb sighed and opened the back door of the sedan. “Come on, runt.”

  “Don’t call me runt. Mom!”

  Lydia Dale turned around again. “Go!” she commanded.