The Lullaby Sky

by Carolyn Brown

  “Marshmallows toasted off someone that wicked would poison you,” Aunt Birdie scolded.

  “But what a way to go.” Miss Rosie held her glass toward Aunt Birdie. “Hit me one more time.”

  Aunt Birdie poured a healthy two fingers into the glass. “To the future, and may it all turn out the way we want before we die or go to prison.”

  Miss Rosie giggled. “Now that’s something we can agree on for sure. Just giving you a forewarning that Travis will be spending the nights over there again starting on Saturday.”

  “And how do you know that?” Aunt Birdie lowered her chin nearly to her chest and looked up at Miss Rosie. “We agreed not to meddle.”

  “It’s not really meddling. Not any more than you do when you make sure they’re sitting beside each other at the dinner table,” Miss Rosie protested. “There’s a new woman at the shelter, and they’ll be another week getting her papers ready. She has a couple of little girls. I think they’d benefit from a kind of halfway house like Hannah’s place before they’re sent to Florida to help run a T-shirt shop on the beach.”

  “Darcy and Cal?” Aunt Birdie asked.

  “What about them?”

  “You don’t have inside connections with anything to help them,” Aunt Birdie said.

  “I’ll leave that up to you, and you are welcome.” Miss Rosie giggled again. “Hot damn! This stuff packs a wallop. I’d best be getting on home while I can still walk across our yards.”

  Aunt Birdie put the top back on the bottle. “You never could hold your liquor.”

  “It’s the Indian blood in me. No, that’s not politically correct. It’s the Native American blood in me. We like the booze, but we don’t do too damn well with holding it. That damned old Irish your mother gave you means you could drink a barrel of cheap whiskey and still dance the jitterbug.” Miss Rosie tossed back the last of what was in her glass.

  Aunt Birdie did the same and pushed back her chair. “I’ll walk you home.”

  “I ain’t that drunk,” Miss Rosie protested.

  “And I ain’t listenin’ to you. If you fell and broke a hip, I’d have to stay with you at the hospital until you got well, and then all our plannin’ would go down the Red River.” She looped her arm into Miss Rosie’s.

  When they reached the back door, Aunt Birdie flipped on the porch light. “Only got a sliver of moon tonight, so we’d best have some artificial light.”

  “We’ve been across these two yards so many times in our life we could do it blindfolded.”

  Aunt Birdie gripped her best friend’s arm tighter. “But not blindfolded and drunk.”

  “Is that a skunk or did you . . .” Miss Rosie stopped suddenly and pointed.

  Aunt Birdie saw the skunk at the same time she stepped in a gopher hole and stumbled, taking both her and Miss Rosie to the ground. They lay there on their backs, arms still locked together and the skunk parading past their feet, taking his time to stop and check out each blade of grass on the way.

  “Be very still. He ain’t got his tail up,” Miss Rosie whispered from the side of her mouth.

  “Yet,” Aunt Birdie said softly. “Are you hurt?”

  “Hell, no! Drunks are limber as cooked noodles. Lord, that thing stinks. I wonder how in the devil he gets a lady skunk to lift her tail for him,” Miss Rosie said.

  “Shhh, he’ll hear you and spray us.”

  “Don’t shush me. If he sprays me, I’ll wring his sorry neck right here.”

  The skunk tipped his nose up in the air and sniffed for several seconds, then moved on into the darkness. Aunt Birdie waited a little longer and then sat up, unhooked her arm from Miss Rosie and smelled the sleeve of her shirt.

  “Dammit! He left his scent on the grass. We’ll have to burn our clothes.”

  Miss Rosie pursed her mouth tightly and then huffed. “I guess it’s a small price to pay for not breaking a bone, but I did like this shirt. Oh, well, I don’t expect they’d let me keep it in prison anyway.”

  Aunt Birdie giggled and then guffawed. “Ain’t life grand.”

  “Even with skunks!” Miss Rosie joined in the laughter. “At least I can strip off naked as a newborn baby and leave my clothes on the back porch. You got to wear yours in the house and smell up the whole place.”

  “Not if you loan me a robe. I can strip off mine on your porch, take a shower in your house, and wear one of your robes back home.”

  “Better go by the way of the road when you go home. If you bring my robe back smelling like skunk, I’ll never drink with you again,” Miss Rosie told her.

  Travis left the computer and pulled back the curtains so he could see across the street. The lights in Hannah’s bedroom cast a yellow glow out into the yard, but then they went out. He went back to the computer and typed in another scene in his newest book.

  He’d set out to write mystery, but so much of life and love came through in his voice that his agent told him that he was actually writing romantic suspense. His father was a big, burly carpenter with clear lines about what men and women did with their lives. Writing books was pretty much on the side of a sissy. Writing romance, even suspense, was not in the masculine wheelhouse. So he and his agent created a pseudonym for him at the beginning. He was Teresa Walters on the front of the book, and an actress’s picture graced the back. She also was paid to sign books for him when necessary, although the agent was pretty good at making up excuses for public appearances. Cal was the only person in the whole world who knew that he’d made enough money to retire by the time he was thirty-five.

  And yet he was driven to keep writing. He promised himself that when he finished each book he would take a whole week and do nothing but what he wanted to do. The first day went fine, but by the second evening he was pacing the floor, and by the third day he already had his notebook out, plotting the next book.

  What would Hannah think of his secret identity? She’d always accepted Cal’s fashion business, so maybe she wouldn’t think he was less of a man because he wrote romance books.

  He’d written two pages when he pushed back from the laptop. He needed a break, and Aunt Birdie’s chocolate cake called to him from the kitchen. The light was still on under Cal’s door, so he knocked gently. It swung open immediately.

  “Hey, want to join me in the kitchen for chocolate cake?” he asked.

  Cal raked his fingers through his hair. “I was just trying to decide if it would be wrong to go raid the refrigerator. I’m having trouble on my next design, and sometimes walking away from it is the only thing that helps. So yes, and besides, I would appreciate the company.”

  The light was still on in the kitchen, and there was a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle and two jelly glasses sitting on the table when they arrived. Travis laughed down deep in his chest at the expression on Cal’s face.

  “Looks like the two old gals have been celebrating something. Usually if they’re going to have a snort, they get out the Jack Daniel’s. This is only for really special times.” Travis took the cover from the chocolate cake pan.

  Cal reached for two plates and a couple of forks and carried them to the table. “So what could be that special? If it was me coming back to Crossing, then they should have at least invited me to have a shot with them. If it was Marty finding out about that airplane in the hangar, they should have invited all of us to have a shot with them.”

  “Who knows with those gals? It could be that they were celebrating the fact that they’d lived through another day. Big chunk of cake or just a little one? Milk, tea, or beer?”

  Cal pointed to the milk jug. “Milk. We have beer?”

  Travis nodded. “Aunt Birdie likes one every so often, and I still love a cold one on a hot night, so there’s always beer in the fridge and liquor behind the doors of the buffet in the dining room. But don’t touch the Pappy.

  “So are you going to finally tell Darcy that you’ve been in love with her since grade school?” Travis grinned.

  “Darcy deserves a big old he-man typ
e, not a fashion designer. She could never hold her head up in front of her friends with the likes of me. Can’t you just hear all the arguments she’d face? ‘No, he’s not gay. No, I didn’t marry him to give him an alibi. Yes, he really does make a living with a sewing machine.’”

  Travis nodded. “I understand. ‘He writes romance novels, so he must not be a real man. He makes his money telling stories about love and life, but he does do some carpentry on the side.’”

  “Does that mean you are in love with Darcy, too?” Cal asked.

  Travis set two plates of cake and two glasses of milk on the table. “Only as a friend.”

  “I can only hope and dream,” Cal said.

  “Hope and dream what?” Aunt Birdie brought a blast of hot air with her when she came through the back door.

  “Is that skunk I smell?” Cal asked. “I can’t remember the last time I got a whiff of that horrible scent.”

  “It is.” Aunt Birdie wrapped a big pale-pink chenille robe tighter around her thin body. “And this is Miss Rosie’s robe. We got a little smell on us when I was walking her home, and I don’t want to hear another word about it. Eat your chocolate cake and drink your milk like good boys. Good night!”

  She disappeared in a flash of pink, and then a loud voice filtered back down across the foyer. “And don’t you touch that Pappy Van Winkle. If you want a shot of something, get out Jack or Jim or even Johnnie Walker Red, but that Pappy isn’t for you.”

  “And my mouth had begun to water for a taste of Pappy.” Cal laughed.

  “Living in Crossing ain’t always easy, but it’s never dull.” Travis forked a chunk of chocolate cake into his mouth.

  The clock said it was well past midnight, but Liz continued to pace from one room to the other, from the living room into the kitchen, where she made a U-turn to go through the living room and down the hall to both bedrooms again and again.

  If it hadn’t been so late she would have called Travis. She touched her arm, remembering the way Wyatt had reacted when he went through her phone and found she’d talked to Travis one night. The bruises had been bad enough that time that she’d had to wear a different dress from the new, sleeveless one she’d bought for the school Christmas party. Wyatt didn’t even listen to her when she told him that she’d been talking to Travis about building a gun rack for his Christmas present. Oh, no! He’d just gone off on a tangent about her making a fool of him by talking to a man behind his back.

  Wyatt didn’t mind her visiting with Hannah, but he didn’t like Darcy and he’d never liked Travis, not even in high school. It was going to be a nightmare when he found out Cal was back in Crossing. She stopped by the refrigerator, but nothing looked good. Besides, her stomach felt like gypsies were dancing around a bonfire inside it.

  Now that she’d admitted that she was thinking about leaving Wyatt, she couldn’t think of anything else. The pictures of his family hanging on the hallway walls glared at her. That sheep in that painting above the sofa had eyes that moved so eerily that she’d taken it down and checked to see if there were hidden cameras. After what they’d found at Hannah’s place, she wouldn’t have been surprised at anything.

  When she couldn’t take the jitters any longer, she turned out all the lights, picked up her purse with both phones tucked inside, and made her way across the backyards to Hannah’s house. She rapped on the bedroom window and waited. In a few seconds, Hannah peeked out and motioned her around to the back door.

  “Are you all right? Did Wyatt come home early?” The questions started the moment Hannah swung open the door.

  “I’m fine, but I can’t sleep in that house tonight. Can I borrow your sofa?”

  “No, but you can take one of the rooms upstairs. First, let’s have a cup of hot tea to settle your nerves.” Hannah threw an arm around Liz’s shoulders. “You are shaking like a leaf in a tornado.”

  “I can’t live like this much longer,” Liz whispered.

  Hannah steered her into the kitchen, turned on the light, and pulled out a chair for her. “I’m here for you. Do I smell skunk?”

  “Probably. I got a whiff of one when I was crossing through Aunt Birdie’s and Miss Rosie’s backyards. Do I need to take another shower to get it off me?”

  “After the tea, a long, soaking bubble bath might do you a world of good, and then a really good night’s sleep. Don’t set an alarm and sleep as long as you can tomorrow.” Hannah set about filling a pan with water and taking down a diffuser pot. She added two tablespoons of loose chamomile tea to the basket, and when the water boiled, poured it over the top.

  “You were the lucky one, Hannah. Marty never came home through the week and then this last while he didn’t even come around on weekends,” Liz said.

  “Yes, I was, but when he was here, it was miserable. I couldn’t even fold a napkin right, but then I was only poor white trash and he couldn’t expect anything more from me. And we won’t talk about a speck of dust on the chair rungs or folding the towels the wrong way.”

  “Mind if I join you? I know exactly what you are talking about,” Elaine said from the doorway.

  “Come right in,” Liz said. “We’ll call it midnight group therapy. I thought you had moved to the shelter last night.”

  “Thank you. Gina is coming for me early in the morning. They had a glitch with the room I’ll be staying in. The lady who’s in there couldn’t leave until the morning. Seems like all I want to do since I got here is eat.” Elaine opened the cookie jar and took out half a dozen. “Dust on the chair rungs didn’t bother Jimmy. But he could go off in a rage over not folding the towels with the tags turned to the inside.”

  “That is page one in Abuse for Dummies,” Hannah said. “I got my first slap across the face over not placing the silverware on the table just right.”

  “My first whipping with his belt was over beer,” Elaine said. “Even an idiot child with an IQ less than a slug should know to buy beer before anything else at the grocery store.”

  “Page two is the control of everything,” Liz volunteered. “Like the checkbook and the phone and . . .” She paused and blushed, as if she’d said too much already.

  Hannah patted her friend on the back. “You can talk freely here, Liz. It’s okay. Consider this house Las Vegas.”

  “Anything that’s said in Lullaby Sky stays in Lullaby Sky.” Elaine sat up straight and nodded. “And the amount of shampoo it takes to wash my hair. The bottle holds sixteen ounces and I should make it last a whole month. If it runs out before, then I’m being extravagant and the next month I have to wash my hair with hand soap to learn my lesson.” Elaine sipped her tea, and silence hung over the room for a moment before she went on. “I swear to God and the angels, he was worse than my stepfather. I jumped right out of the frying pan into the blue blazes. I’m so damned happy to be getting a new life that I pinch myself every now and then to be sure I’m not dreaming.”

  “We won’t talk about even glancing at a book with a man on the cover. That means we’re lusting after someone else,” Liz said. “And if we argue, it’s an automatic fight and then apologies with vows that it will never happen again. By the end of summer, I will be Miss Andrews again and not Mrs. Pope.”

  “And how does that make you feel?” Elaine asked.

  “I can’t even explain it,” Liz said. “It must be what you felt when you saw the shelter sign after walking all night. Deep, deep relief, but even that doesn’t come close to the feeling.”

  “It was one pretty sight, for sure. If I could just get through the door of that house, I knew there was a chance I wouldn’t die. And”—she tucked her chin to her chest—“before tomorrow I want to thank you two especially for all you’ve done for me. I’m not good with words, but I can’t thank you enough.”

  “I should be thanking you, Elaine. You gave me this courage, and Hannah gave me the willpower to do this,” Liz said.

  “And you both are helping me,” Hannah said. “So this is a win-win-win situation.”


  Hannah sent up a silent prayer of thanks to Gina for going with her gut feeling and bringing Elaine to her house.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  On Thursday morning Hannah was up at the crack of dawn so she could tell Elaine good-bye. Sophie hated good-byes, so Travis promised her that they would grill hot dogs and hamburgers that evening out in the backyard. And when she asked for a movie under the stars, he said they could set up the television on a couple of sawhorses on the back porch. But when Hannah made her way to the kitchen, she caught a flash of lightning.

  She pulled the window blinds up to see a slow, soft rain was falling. She found the remote and turned on the television, found The Weather Channel, and learned that the storm had settled right over Crossing. Rain with occasional lightning but no chance of a tornado was the forecast.

  Time to change plans. They would have a picnic in the house with the red-and-white plastic tablecloth on the kitchen table instead of the picnic table in the backyard. She’d make the hot dogs on the cast-iron griddle and they’d have a movie in the living room. She lifted a window so she could smell the rain.

  “You didn’t have to get up this early.” Elaine carried a used suitcase that Miss Rosie had brought over into the kitchen. She set it on the floor and hugged Hannah tightly. “Gina says I’ve got a good job waiting and a new name with a new driver’s license. You all have given me courage. I feel like God has smiled on me.”

  “He has,” Hannah said. “We probably won’t ever meet again, but I’ll always remember you, Elaine.”

  “I’m hoping when it’s been six months that I will be like you.” Elaine was a pretty woman, but she’d be even more striking when she had the self-confidence to back up that sweet smile.

  Hannah looked at the time and date on the bottom of the television screen. “Today is June 16,” she said. “My husband made excuses not to come home for six months, but it’s been only two weeks and one day since I faced him in court. You’ll be surprised how much strength you get every single day.”