The Wedding Gift

by

Kathleen McKenna

Published by Night Publishing, Smashwords edition

Copyright 2010, Kathleen McKenna

ISBN 1453701974

EAN 9781453701973

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All characters are fictional, and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is accidental.

To discover other books by Kathleen McKenna, please go to http://www.nightpublishing.com/id38.html.

AP News Oklahoma City 12/23/75

Manson-like slaying rocks small town Christmas festivities

Last evening, based on an anonymous tip, authorities were called to the home of Roger Willets in Dalton, Oklahoma.

Upon entering the mansion, authorities discovered all seven members of the Roger Willets family slain. The walls were covered in cryptic messages, possibly written in the blood of the victims. “It was the most grisly overkill you could imagine,” stated Deputy Riffler of the Dalton Sheriff'’s office.

Deputy Riffler is a man not easily rattled, having just returned to Dalton a decorated hero from his second tour in Vietnam. However, it was obvious to this writer that even this war hardened veteran was left shaken and stunned by the carnage he had viewed. The police have no suspects at this time, but state that they are following numerous leads.

Kathy Robells- Oklahoma City.

AP News Oklahoma City 12/25/1976

Authorities in the town of Dalton, Oklahoma have released the following statement regarding the recent slaying of the Roger Willets family: “New evidence has come to light showing that the murders were committed by Robina Willets, wife of Roger, age 35, and mother of Emily, age11, Dalton, age 10, Savannah, age 7, Ryder, age 5, and the infant George, age 4 months. Robina Willets, age 29, after slaughtering her husband and children, then took her own life. This is something we have never seen here in Dalton, and do not expect to see in the next thousand years or so. Roger Willets was a fine man and the largest employer here in these parts. His wife was a gal from somewhere up north, and we don’t know, and can never know, what made her do such a thing. Mrs. Willets was a strange girl, and no one really knew her. We think she might have become unhinged after her last baby, but it's no use speculating any longer. The best thing to do is put this behind us and let the town start to heal - most particularly the Willets family, who has had a terrible shock and loss,” stated Deputy Riffler of the Dalton Sheriff's office.

The bodies will be released for burial, as all autopsies have been completed. The burial is planned for Saturday at 3 P.M. at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow in Dalton. The remaining family members could not be reached for comment.

Kathy Robells- Oklahoma City.

Dalton City Tri-Area Weekly January 3 - 10, 1976

Services are being held Saturday, January 5th at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow in Dalton for Roger Willets, age 35, his daughter Emily Willets, age 11, son Dalton, age 10, daughter Savannah, age 7, son Ryder age 5, and son George, age 4 months. Roger Willets was the owner/director of Willets Petroleum Services, a fourth generation oil and drilling operation founded in Dalton by George Willets in 1931. Roger is survived by his brother George III and his sister-in-law Bethany. The Willets family has asked that donations be made to the George Willets Memorial Foundation in lieu of flowers.

AP News Oklahoma City, Oklahoma - October 30, 1986

Halloween high spirits take a turn for danger in Dalton, OK. Dalton City, Oklahoma is a small, bucolic town, located ninety-three miles east of Oklahoma City. “Nothing much happens in Dalton, and that’s the way we like it,” states Dalton businesswoman, Orla Nashbone. But recently there have been a spate of unexplained fires and two boys were injured at the former home of Roger Willets. The Willets mansion is Dalton’s finest historical property; it was built by George Willets in 1932 following his takeover of the Chumley Brother’s oil claim, and the subsequent start up of Willets Petroleum. The mansion is a stately white colonial, boasting three stories and some fifty manicured acres. The mansion, known locally as Willets House, has been empty since the 1975 slaying of the Roger Willets family, and has become something of a local target for children hunting for adventure. Despite the posted warnings and high wrought iron fence around the property, “Kids will be kids, and they dare each other to go on in and find a ghost.” states Sheriff Riffler of the Dalton Sheriff's Department. Two nights ago, such innocent mischief went badly when a passing neighbor heard screams from the property and called the Sheriff's office. “I was walking Teddy, my keeshond, by the Willets place, when all of a sudden I heard the most horrible screaming, and then a crash. I was too afraid to look myself but I ran right on home and called Sheriff Riffler. I hope I never hear a sound like that again as long as I live,” stated local woman Darlene Riggits. Upon arriving at the stately home, Sheriff Riffler and two deputies found local residents Charlie Worthier and Donald Readle, unconscious and badly injured at the bottom of the empty pool on the property. “The boys were up on the third floor of the house. They had broken in and I suppose they thought the fastest way out was climbing down the old oak on the side, but the branches could not hold them and they both fell into the pool. We’ll sure have some questions for them when they are feeling better,” stated Sheriff Riffler. The Willets family has not responded to questions from this reporter, but has issued the following statement through their family attorney, Richard Channing of Dalton:

“The Willets family is distressed to hear of the injuries of these two young boys, but states that they do not feel liable for said injuries as they occurred during the commission of a crime - that of trespassing. They send their prayers and thoughts to the families at this difficult time."

Kathy Robells - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Dalton City Tri-Area Weekly October 31 - November 6 1986

Services will be held on Tuesday November 1st at John the Redeemer Baptist Church for Charlie Worthier aged 14. Mr. Worthier was a lifetime resident of Dalton City. He is survived by his parents Charlie and Elma Worthier, his brother Randy, and sister Leeann. The family has asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the George Willets Memorial Foundation.

Halloween Festival biggest and best ever. Mayor Stoddard urges everyone to come on down tonight to the Dalton City Fairgrounds for the forty-fifth annual punkin' and pie dance celebrating Dalton's Halloween. “We will have music and food for everyone and their uncle.” This event is sponsored by Willets Petroleum Services. Mrs. George Willets will be judging the 45th annual costume contest, and states that this year’s prize is a two night stay at the Oklahoma City Hilton, with a dinner for two, so get your duds out folks, this one's going to be a barn burner.

Jakely Sims -Tri-Area Weekly

Dalton City Tri-Area Weekly May 2 - May 9 2004

Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Worthier of Dalton are proud to announce the engagement of their daughter, Leeann, to George Willets, also of Dalton. The couple will wed on June 15th of this year at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow in Dalton, Oklahoma. They plan to honeymoon in Hawaii and then make their permanent home right here in Dalton. Miss Worthier is a graduate of Dalton High, and former Homecoming Queen as well as Miss Corn Maiden for 2004. She enjoys riding horses and sewing clothes. The groom to be is the only son of George and Bethany Willets. George is a graduate of Dalton High and Oklahoma City Junior College. He works in the family petroleum business and is vice-president in charge of new development. Mrs. Willets, the groom’s mother, chairs the Dalton Ladies Gardening Club; and is a proud sponsor of the Dalton Cotillion and the Dalton Flower Show. Mrs. Willets is also an active member of the Halloween dance committee, and teaches Sunday school classes at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow.In addition, she is the president and secretary of the “Keep Dalton Pretty” committee, devoted to the historical preservation of our town. Mrs. Willets will be hostessing a luncheon at the Dalton City Country Club in honor of the bride on Saturday May 15th. Mrs. Dalton states that she is “Thrilled to bits by the upcoming nuptials, as I have never had a daughter, so had not believed I would get to plan a wedding, but Leeann just begged me to take over, so I am having the time of my life." Mrs. Willets will be wearing a cream chiffon suit at the luncheon and a rose St. John ball gown at the upcoming wedding.

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Leeann:

Well, if I didn’t want to cry, I guess I would be laughing. I like that, don’t you? My engagement announcement and I rated what … two lines? Meanwhile old lady Willets had her whole boring life story told again and what the hell? “Leeann just begged me to take over.” Like hell I did.

I wanted no part of her high-handed advice, and “Oh Leeann, sugar, if you would just let me do this, I think it will be so much prettier, don’t you, Honey?” Prettier my high round ass! She meant better, nicer, not so low class, like me.

Apparently every idea I had was just not pretty. I had wanted to have my bridal shower at Tully’s where I worked all last summer and where my best friend, Jessie, is the hostess now.

I love Tully’s. They have done the whole place up to look just like Hawaii, with a mural of the ocean and leis hanging everywhere, and they got all these great drinks, like “get lei’d” which is made from rum, pineapple and coconut juice. When you drink it, it don’t taste like rum at all, and if you drink three of ‘em in a row you get a plastic lei to keep that says "I got lei’d at Tully’s".

But oh hell no, I was not going to have me a party at Tully’s with my mama, and sister-in-law throwing it, and my four best friends who had all been my attendants when I was the Corn Princess. No, no, no, that wouldn’t be pretty at all. What was pretty, I found out real quick, was a luncheon at Miz Perfect Willets' perfect country club.I don’t like that place one bit. That snooty old place wouldn’t even hire me last summer, and I was already Homecoming Queen by then!

They said that they only hired college girls - except that was a bold faced lie 'cause I knew for a fact that the other two girls who was working there were Missy Lane and Audrey Stepps, and they were most certainly not in college. Both of ‘em were attending Dalton High, same as me.

Of course their daddies played golf there, and my daddy … well he had only used the facilities there, so to speak, when he got pretty tight a few years ago and went joyriding in one of their silly old golf carts. Daddy drove it around the grounds for a while, just whooping and hollering, and when he got bored a doing that, then he drove it right on into the pool. He got out all dripping wet, and saluted the golf club patrons by lowering his pants and showing them his white ass.

Well, I say good for you, Daddy, and I wish I could do the same. Of course at the time, I thought I liked to have died of shame. Back when it happened I was certain that it was gonna ruin my chances to be Corn Princess.

I got real dramatic following Daddy’s arrest, and told Mama that I wanted to spend the rest of high school in Norman with Uncle Jerry and Aunt Maddie. I said I wasn’t never gonna see her or Daddy again. But Mama she just laughed and said it would all blow over by supper time and that, near as she could tell, people mostly thought it was funny.

Well some people mighta thought so, but not them tight-assed people at the Country Club, and most certainly not God Almighty Bethany Willets who almost fired Mama over it. But mostly Mama was right - it did blow over. Everyone loves Daddy, and I did become Corn Princess anyway, so who cared, right?

Of course, now I have to relive the whole unfortunate incident on account of where my bridal shower is going to be. Shoot, it gets even better 'cause now Miz Willets says I can only invite Mama, Sarah Beth, my sister-in-law, and one girlfriend to my very own bridal shower!

My monster-in-law-to-be said it was because it was a luncheon for eight only and so I said to her, I said, well great then, eight is me, Mama, Sarah Beth, Jessie, Lurlene, May, and Britney, that makes up eight, right? But Miz Bethany, she just laughed like I was joking, which I purely was not. She said to me, her voice sweet as poison:

“Oh Leeann, aren’t you a card?” whatever that means, and then she told me that I was forgetting about Missy and Audrey who “of course had to be in the wedding,” so they had to be at the bridal shower too, as did her best friend Donna Dee Riffler. Well I say "What? Huh? Let's review":

My bridal shower, and three of my best friends get knocked off the invite list so that those two humongous losers, Missy and Audrey, can come? And along with them comes old Miz Riffler who I don’t know from Adam.

And, God help me, what did she mean, do you think, about Missy and Audrey being in the wedding? Being in my wedding as what - the world's biggest flower girls? Or maybe not, since my baby niece Tallulah is most definitely going to be the flower girl - the only flower girl! I wonder if Miz Willets is planning on putting those two mutants into tuxedos and making them walk down the aisle with Junior as his attendants. Oh darn me for the fool I am; there I went again calling George 'Junior'.

George is the name of the man I am marrying in one month - no more calling him by that stupid name ‘Junior’. I’ll say it again, and this time I really don’t care what his mama says back to me, George is his name and it's what I am calling him.

She is all, “Oh now, Leeann honey, George is Junior's daddy's name and I will be so confused if there are two Georges in the house.” Well I didn’t say it to her face, but you can bet I was thinking to myself all the time; I was thinking, don’t you worry your old bleached out head about it none. Because that is the one other thing that is strictly non-negotiable - there will not be two Georges in her house - just the one; her George can be in her house, and my George will be in mine.

Well George, me, and our little baby when it comes, will be in our house. Now my George balked a little at first, saying, “Sugar, there are ten bedrooms at Bethany House, and you don’t even have to see Mama if you don’t want to.” Riiiggghhhtt George - God help me, but can’t men be fools? I didn’t say that of course; I just used my feminine powers of persuasion and he came around right quick.

Me and my George are buying one of those darling townhouses right over by the new mall that’s opening this spring. And I will have lavender wall-to-wall carpeting in every room if I want it, which by the way I do. Well, maybe not the baby’s room. I won’t do a thing in there till I find out if it’s a boy or a girl, though I know it’s a boy, and I know something else to; we, that is me and George, are going to name him Charlie … Charlie Willets, after my daddy and after my brother who died when I was a baby. Ma Willets will poop a brick, but it’s my baby, and I am not naming him George, which is an ugly name, if you want to be strictly honest, and most of all I am not naming him Roger, which is the other name Miz High and Mighty Willets suggested, if you can believe your ears. Roger is the name of George's dead uncle who was killed in the biggest, nastiest scandal to ever hit our little town.

Everybody still talks about it. Roger’s wife was some crazy girl from California or somewhere. I ain’t calling her crazy or nothin’ just 'cause she weren’t from here. I mean she must have been as crazy as a bit snake to do what she did. She up and cut poor old Roger’s head clean off and then, Jesus save her, she killed all their kids before finally doing herself in. Well, I like that! That’s a real fine legacy to give a baby, isn’t it? Anyhow, to make matters worse, George, and even my own mama said that they thought naming the baby Roger, if it’s a boy, was a real fine idea. They told me it was a fitting way to remember Uncle Roger. Well hells bells, I say, who wants to remember stuff like that?

If it is a boy, and I know it is, then naming him Charlie is also a way of remembering, but remembering people in my family, who may not be all rich and smart like the Willets is, but we don’t got no nasty-ass old psycho killers in our family tree neither; you name babies to remember good people, that’s what I say … people like my poor dead brother, to name one, who was a fine boy that was not killed in some icky way, but fell out of a tree on a Halloween dare before I was even a year old. Besides, Charlie is my daddy’s name too, so that’s it as far as I am concerned. You know, I’ve been thinking if we have us another son down the road, I think I will call him Worthier; Worthier Willets has a nice ring to it.

See the thing is, old lady Willets will pretty much poop herself a brick no matter what I do for the rest of my natural life as far as I can see, so I might as well just go ahead and do what I want anyway. George, he will go along with stuff I want, 'cause he is as crazy about me as her old George is about her. With poor Mr. Willets Sr., it's all “Yes, Sugar, and whatever you want, Bethany” all the time at their house. So I figure things will run real smooth if that’s how it’s going to be in my house with me and my George.

I think in a few years, when we have more than one little baby of our own, then George can build me a huge old mansion and we’ll call it Leeann House. That naming houses after themselves is a Willets' tradition, one I may just take up myself seeing as how I am going to be a Willets soon.

See, here is how that naming houses got started: Back almost a hundred years ago, the first George Willets - who everyone in Dalton calls George the First, built Willets House, which is a humongous, real life Southern plantation house. It looks like Tara in ‘Gone with the Wind’, only a lot bigger. Mr. Willets the First then passed it onto his son Roger and his new wife, who got it for a wedding gift. And then they lived in it, until their son Roger got married. That Roger, who I named in my mind “Roger the Last”, which I know is real disrespectful and whatnot, but it’s also true. Well then, Roger the Last and his wife Robina took it over upon their marriage and after the murders that was it for Willets' occupancy, so to speak.

Of course, the current George, who is known as Big George Willets, well he refused to sell the ancestral home, or better yet burn it to the ground, and since the current Mrs. Bethany Willets refused to live there, he built her a big house on the golf course, and named it Bethany House.

Now the original Willets palace just sits there year after year, all empty and taking up a whole city block for nothing. The family keeps it up, of course, so it’s still beautiful and grand, but for all its being so fancy and perfect looking, it ain’t stopped it from being our local haunted house for as long as I can remember.

For a long time after the murders, I guess that local kids used to sneak in there on Halloween and bring stuff out, and tell stories about what they’d seen in there. But the last time someone broke in there - at least as far as anyone knows - was when my brother and his buddy, Donny, went inside the house seventeen years ago.

Charlie was killed and Donny was hurt real bad and even when he got better, he would never tell anyone why he and Charlie were up in the tree together. People talk, like always, and stories grew up around the house even more after my brother was killed.

These days, it’s still the place that kids cross the street to avoid walking too close to. So it just sits there big and white and beautiful behind these fancy wrought iron gates with all those huge oak trees growing up the sides of the driveway. Mama says that it looks like a movie set, and she always expects to see ladies in hoop skirts on the lawn, but to my mind …well, I don’t like to look at it at all. I kind of always expect to see something too, but it's not ladies in hoop skirts.

There is a room on the second floor of that house, and when you walk by you get this feeling like you want to look up at the window, but I never do … I can't even say why. But I’ll tell you this, it's not my brother's face I think I’ll see if I do ever get brave enough to look up. I think it’s her face, Robina. Jessie said she saw her up there once, and now I wouldn’t look up for all the tea in China.

Chapter 2

Darn it, I have gotten all off track here. What I meant to be writing about is my story, not about some creepy old murders and a haunted house.

My Grandma Belle gave me this journal when I told her about me and George falling in love and planning to get married and all, and she said I should “Write down my story for future generations of Worthier-Willets to read.” I thought that sounded fine and, besides which, if I write down my story, the real story, then no one will have to rely on Miz Willets’ version, which might not be so nice, if you know what I am saying. So this is the true story of me and George, and the babies we are going to fill up our townhouse with.

My name is Leeann Corrine Worthier. I was born right here in Dalton, Oklahoma to Charlie and Elma Worthier. My mama and daddy sure weren’t expecting me; they had their two boys, Charlie and Randy, who were already thirteen and twelve. Mama always said she had been done with babies for years, and since her boys were mostly grown, Mama had even started working for Miz Willets two days a week as a part-time maid to bring in more money. Mama said she started feeling peculiar and believed that the change had come upon her early, but it hadn’t … it was just me.

Now I don’t know if they were happy right off the bat about a surprise baby, but I know that my daddy has been crazy about me as long as I can remember. Anyway, my mama always said that if it weren’t for me, she would have gone crazy after Charlie died. She said me being born gave her a new reason to live and that she has thanked the Lord above for me every day since I got here, which to be strictly honest, I never get tired of hearing.

I know my brother Randy loves me, too, but he isn’t so good at showing it … not to me or to his wife, Sarah Beth, either. Mama says Randy used to be the sweetest, most affectionate little boy in the world, but that he got real withdrawn and quiet after he lost his big brother and he ain’t never been the same since.

I don’t know about any of that; it's hard for me to imagine people being any different than how I have always known them to be. Anyway, after Charlie died, my Grandma Belle was so worried about Mama’s fragile mental condition, that she is the one who got her started entering me in beauty pageants as a way to interest her in new things. Since my mama is a genius at making fancy clothes, she sewed all my dresses for the pageants and then, after a little while, the other mamas started asking her to make their daughters some dresses too. So before you knew it, Mama had a little business going - 'Elma's Pageant Dresses and Gowns' - and heck, now she has a web site.

All the pageant stuff was real good for a couple reasons: first off Mama got happy and involved in the world around her again, and also Elma’s Pageant Dresses and Gowns has mostly supported our family since daddy has only worked a little off and on since losing Charlie. But the point about all that is that, as you can see, my coming saved the family in many ways, and they have always treated me like a princess on account of that; well saving the family, and then …well, don’t think I’m being just terrible for saying this, but it’s also on account of how I look. If my mama ever read this, she would say God would strike me down for my pride, but if I want to be strictly honest here, then I have to talk about the way I look. And anyways, it’s on account of my looks, which to be strictly honest ain’t none of my doing, so I don’t know why it’s sinful to be proud of them, and, for certain, the way I look is why George wants to marry me. I am “the prettiest girl that was ever born in Dalton City, Oklahoma.” See, that’s not being prideful an' ugly; that’s just repeating what everyone says. And I do mean everyone.

I was crowned ‘Tiny Miss Dalton’ when I was three, and then ‘American Miss Beautiful’ in Dallas, beating out three hundred other girls when I was seven. I became ‘Little Darling Dolly’ in Abilene at nine, and so it goes right up till my last win as ‘Corn Princess’ last year. I thought I might go on to try for the ‘Miss Oklahoma’ crown, but of course now I am retired, so to speak, as I will be Mrs. George Willets the IV. I will be a pillar of the community and not ‘Miss Oklahoma’, or even ‘Miss America’, not that I mind, 'cause I am real happy about the way things turned out.

Still and all, I don’t think anyone around here will ever just think of me as George’s wife, as I am somewhat famous in my own right, as you can see. Also, people have always just liked to look at me and I don’t imagine that will change any time soon unless something horrible happens and I get real fat on account of being pregnant, as I now am.

I stand at five feet five and my daddy never let anyone cut my hair even an inch, so it goes down to my bottom and it’s almost silver it's so blond. I have the biggest blue eyes and a tiny little nose. When I smile, Daddy says you could put quarters in my dimples. All this is what old George IV is gonna be getting when I become his bride, and me, well what am I getting? I’m getting George. George is “a fine figure of a man" - that’s what his mama says, and mine does too, though that could be because he’s the father of her next grandchild.

I don’t know if anyone except his mama would be saying what a fine figure George cut if he weren’t the heir to Willets Petroleum, but he is … the heir, I mean. And there ain’t no one in town, me included, who can separate the actual man from all those millions of dollars because if he weren’t, well, like our very own Prince William, then people might be more inclined to notice other stuff … like that George is only half an inch taller than me and already going to fat. He has him a real round face and it gets red awful easy too. He has his mama’s pretty brown eyes; unfortunately they sit above his daddy’s potato nose and there is a fairly dire receding chin situation going on that makes me hope he’ll grow himself a beard after we’re married.

So the way George looks and all, that’s just another reason I hope this baby is a boy, because then, even if he is a dead ringer for his daddy, everyone will say that he is a fine figure of a man one day, too. But shoot, if the baby’s a girl - an ugly fat girl - well then, and you know it’s true, that even with the Willets' millions, that’s all she will ever be. I will illustrate the sad story of Audrey Stepps to prove my point. That poor girl …Jesus love her, she got hit hard with the ugly stick and all her daddy’s money, which isn’t as much as the Willets have, but it’s a lot, won't buy her a husband unless she can find one who is as blind as a bat, and everyone knows it.

Of course I realize that it is possible that my looks will outweigh George's lack of them, but history doesn’t seem to offer me much hope in that direction. After all, Miz Bethany, to give the devil her due, was once ‘Miss Missouri’, and she is still awful pretty, unless you are comparing her to me - ha ha. I’m just pulling your leg. Anyway, look at how her son turned out - so yes, I do hope I just have boys.

Chapter 3

I am just a teeny bit pregnant … well, all right … ten weeks if I am paying strict attention to the truth, and our wedding is in a month. So then I will be fourteen weeks along, which sounds awfully pregnant and I am beginning to worry about my dress fitting. Oh, that dress! It is the most fabulous dress in the world. It's by Vera Wang, and it’s a strapless lace dress with a teeny tiny waist and a big skirt. Every inch of it is covered in this fantastic Belgian lace and, to make it totally stunning, there is a little teeny dusty green satin sash which ties around the waist and trails to the floor.

My perfect dress was nearly fourteen thousand dollars! Of course Mama wanted to make my wedding dress, and I wouldn’t have hurt her feelings for the world, but after I saw this dress, the dress in a Vogue magazine, I knew I had to have it and no other!

The really smart thing is how I paid for it. See, a few months ago when George made his courting intentions serious, he gave me an American Express black card. Those are the kind that only really rich people have; them and movie stars. I mean hardly anyone alive has one, but I do, or if I am paying strict attention to the truth, the Willets family has them, and George put me on his account. So now I am just like Jessica Simpson, who by the way, people say I look just like, except her eyes are brown … mine are blue, and she is a lot older than me of course.

Dang it, this is so darn funny. Here I look and see that I have been writing and writing. I’ve done more writing in this here book now that I look at it, than I did during all four years of high school.

Chapter 4

Of course I was way too busy in school for any silly writing; I had cheerleading, of which for the last two years I was captain of the squad, and then I had student council, and homecoming court to attend to. Then there was my acting. I was Laurie in 'Oklahoma' in the Lion’s Club production for four years straight. And then I was Guinevere in 'Camelot', and Maria in 'West Side Story'. That last one was real funny because, see, Maria is supposed to be of Hispanic origin, which I, of course, am not, and when Daddy heard I got the part, he became all heated up, and said his little girl was not going to be a “damn wetback”. My daddy is not a racist man but he’s just not a real educated one either.

And I said to him, “Daddy, it’s art and to please not to call Latino Americans wetbacks neither”, but he would not be moved from his position about that play. So we went to see Mr. Avery, who was my English teacher and the drama coach all rolled into one. Mr. Avery listened to my daddy’s reasoning and, I must say, he looked like he had swallowed a lemon 'cause he was trying so hard not to laugh.

But then what did he go and do?

Well I’ll tell you what he did. He changed the entire story, so that I could still be Maria, and do it with my own blond hair; the two gangs were changed from Hispanic and white gangs to two white gangs, all just so I could be the leading lady which, to be strictly honest, was not as much of a surprise to me as it might have been to others. Mr. Avery is really old, but he sure did like to stare at me just the same. The play was real stupid, of course, on account of the changes and Jessie said they should have renamed it 'A Redneck’s Story', or maybe 'White and Whiter in Oklahoma', which, to be strictly honest, I might have to say I agree with her about.

So then I also had my responsibilities in Christian Youth, and what with being ‘Corn Princess’, you can see that there were just not enough hours in the day for writing or math or whatever.

Jessie, heck she was about a billion times worse than me; she had no extracurricular activities except for cheering, and still I don’t think that girl can spell a thing but her own name. Now my point about all that was the writing; I see that I have just gone on and on, and not said a word about my darling George, except as to how I have gone and saved him from a life of being called Junior. That is real funny, not saying much about him and all, because George is the man I am going to marry, and whose baby I am carrying. Why anyone reading this would think that I hardly love George at all … which is so wrong, because, of course, I love George more than anything, though if I am paying strict attention to the truth, my being all madly in love with him, as I certainly am, was not always the case.

I had always known who George was, of course. Anyone that wasn’t born under a rock, at least here in Dalton, knew who he was, who his family was. The Willets pretty much own the whole dang town. They have Willets Petroleum, of course, and that is housed in the only five stories building downtown. Shoot they even have another office in Dallas which, by the way, is my favorite city on earth. But beyond the building, there is … let’s see, the George Willets Memorial Golf Course, which adjoins the George Willets Memorial Rest Gardens.

Daddy says that they is arranged that way so’s the Willets’ men can keel over on the golf course and be buried two yards away in sight of the greens, and also so “that those cheap bastards only have to employ one poor groundskeeper for everything.”

I don’t know anything about that as I have never played a bit of golf in my life, though now, of course, I will have to take lessons after the baby comes because Miz Bethany says “All the Willets women play golf; it's expected of us,” which just makes me laugh out loud. What the hell is she talking about, 'all the Willets women’? At my last count she was the only Willets woman. But gee, what do I know? Maybe she meant poor Robina once played golf, and maybe that’s what set her off to slaughtering everybody in sight too.

At any rate, I think I will find excuses to avoid learning golf as long as it’s humanly possible, though I do kind of like the idea of being at the country club all dressed up from Neiman Marcus and inviting Jesse and the girls there as my guests whenever I feel like it. Oh my, Jessie will liven up that bunch! Wait till they get an eyeful of her. Actually since Jessie is so pretty, I am hoping that she will find her own rich husband there, and then later we can build houses right next door to each other out by the new lake, though not right next door to the Bethany House, for heaven’s sakes.

So, as I was saying, the Willets family either owns everything in town worth owning or has their name on the building memorializing the first George Willets. And that is how the present George and me came to be a couple. See, it was last football season, and the scoreboard at the field was just getting more broke down and sadder looking by the day. Why, right before Homecoming, the old rusted struts holding it up just gave out and our team, the Dalton Bulldogs, was humiliated by the visiting team, the Rush Wolves. They were laughing at it and saying as how we had it jerry-rigged to only show home team scores. They laughed even harder at crazy old Walt, the janitor, who stood up there on a ladder turning over the numbers manually.

We got our butts kicked that night, and I think the condition of the scoreboard was the reason why. Now you got to understand that scoreboards for football stadiums are not cheap. A real nice one like the kind we wanted was nearly thirty thousand dollars and the only people in Dalton with that kind of money are the Willets, the Steppes, the Lanes, and a handful of others whose names do not come to mind at the moment.

The Steppes and the Lanes would never have donated the scoreboard, as their own awful ugly daughters had no school spirit whatsoever; no doubt on account of everybody hating them and trying to pretend they did not exist. The Willets, well they were always a possibility, and they had actually donated the original scoreboard back ten years ago or so when George had been attending the school.

George had not exactly cut a wide swath through high school, even though our high school is named - you guessed it - George Willets High. But after his mama and daddy not only paid for a new scoreboard, but for a whole new football field, then George was invited to play for the Bulldogs, which he did, but mostly by being suited up and sitting on the new benches that his parents had paid for.

As I believe I have mentioned, George is just a hair under five foot six, so he is not really built for the game. But despite George not getting much (well zero) playing time, the student council figured that the Willets might have a proprietary interest in the condition of the football field and our pathetic scoreboard. The council hoped that they might want to donate some more money to fix it up. I was the secretary of the student council last year and though mostly that meant just sitting there and giggling with the treasurer who was Jessie; darn if the rest of them did not nominate me to go and ask George Sr. for the money for our new scoreboard. They said this was on account of being captain of the cheerleading squad as well as a student council member, because I could really explain just how bad the situation was, being on the front line, so to speak.

Well heck, I said I’d do it. I had met Mr. Willets previously when those of us on the short list for Corn Princess were being photographed for the weekly paper. He was one of the judges, naturally. He said his reason for being there that day was to make sure we looked as pretty in person as we had the day of the judging. But Jessie, who was also a nominee, even though we all knew, Jessie included, that she was too mean to win, well Jessie said that he was just another dirty old man looking for a reason to stare at young girls.

Maybe she was right, I didn’t much care, as men of all ages had pretty much been staring at me since I started to get my bosoms at around twelve. Anyway, I said if I had to go to his office and ask for money, then Jessie had to come too, for moral support. Jessie said okay, what the hell, and after school that day we went back to my house to plan our speech and what to wear too.

Chapter 5

When we got to my house, Daddy was home which, to be strictly honest, he usually was unless he was down at Downey’s Bar planning to fix the country up. Mama said they was really just a bunch of useless middle aged men who just loved to hear themselves talking, but she always laughed when she said it. She didn’t really care that Daddy didn’t work; we had enough and she loves him fiercely no matter what. Everyone loves my daddy, even Jessie, and she pretty much hated everyone or she always says she does anyway.

When Jessie and I walked in, Daddy was watching one of his old football tapes and screaming curses at the screen as though he did not know every single second of what had happened a million times over. Daddy had played one season for the Sooners before he hurt his knee and had to give up forever his dream of being a professional football player. My brother Randy had played for Dalton for three years and had made all conference running back in his senior year, but he had never played for a college or the pro’s, so daddy was still the only real football star in our family.

Jessie stepped right up in front of the TV and started to do a fake cheer. “Who the man? Charlie is. Charlie, Charlie he’s our boy, if he gets up off the couch, he’s gonna destroy!” Daddy started to laughing so hard that I had to pat him on the back so he didn’t choke to death on his Coors.

“You little hellion,” he hollered at Jessie. “Why, if I do get off this couch you won’t be able to set down for a week.” Jessie just looked at him in that way she has where she raises up one of her black eyebrows real high, until he settled down, and just shook his head grinning at her.

“What are the two ugliest girls in Dalton up to today?”

Daddy always called us that, the two ugliest girls in Dalton, and it was hilarious on account of us being the prettiest girls in Dalton and everyone knowing it. Jessie launched into the story of the poor old scoreboard and how we had been picked to go ask George Sr. for the money, and daddy’s face got real dark red, the way it always did when anyone mentioned the Willets, who he hated and who he blamed for Charlie Junior's death.

All these years he had kept this old clipping from the paper where Mr. Willets’ lawyer had basically blamed what happened to Charlie and Donny on them, and I guess he up and did it again at Charlie’s funeral when Mr. and Miz Willets came to pay their respects.

People said that it took four men to keep daddy held back from punching Mr. Willets in the face. I had been hearing the stories from Daddy all my life about “how that rich piece of shit George Willets had paid off the sheriff and his little dog too, to cover up the death of Charlie.”

But Mama had always told me to never mind what Daddy said. She said that it was just an accident and that God had wanted Charlie to be with him a little sooner than she and Daddy had been ready for on account of what a good boy he was. So I didn’t really hate the Willets even though daddy surely did.

After all, the way I saw it was that Charlie and Donny were trespassing that day, and why they decided to climb up that old tree, I don't know, but I was pretty sure that no one had forced ‘em to do it. Daddy always said that Charlie’s face had been all torn up on the left side. He said that someone had scratched him up real bad and then pushed him out the window on the third floor.

But Donny always maintained that they had never even gone in the house at all that day. He said that they had just climbed up the tree to look in the window; then the branch broke and they fell down into the empty pool below.

When they landed, Charlie hit his head and Donny broke his legs. Donny said that if Charlie’s poor face was all scratched up, why then it must have been from the branches hitting him on the way down. That’s what Donny said, and I always believed him; after all he was there. But daddy never believed his story. He always said that more had happened that night, but that Donny just couldn’t or wouldn’t remember because he was too afraid.

I usually always agreed with my daddy about important stuff, but not about that. I knew that Donny Readle wasn’t afraid of anything in this life or the next, and you can take that to the bank! So if he said it was an accident, then that is just what it was …a horrible accident, like everyone said, and it must have been, like Mama said, that Daddy “could find a conspiracy in a beaver dam.”

Chapter 6

Together Jessie and I got Daddy sweet again, Jessie most of all by saying that the best way to get even with the Willets family was to make them pay through the nose for everything that went wrong, and Daddy was nodding like that was just right. After a little bit, he put on his old sheepskin coat and headed off to Downey’s to “sink a few”, and Jessie and me went up to my room, which is the prettiest room in the whole house.

Mama had made a lavender silk canopy for my bed and matching lavender Priscilla’s for my window. I loved lavender and even the walls were that color. Jessie always said it was like being inside a stomach, which was so stupid that I didn’t even bother to fight with her about it anymore; after all, who was she to talk? She had painted her own bedroom pitch black. Jessie sprawled out on my bed checking out her toenail polish while I brought out my mint green dress and asked her if she thought this would be good for seeing Mr. Willets in.

She made a face at me. “Christ on a crutch, Leeann, a sleeveless cotton dress in November? You’ll look like an idiot. Just put on a sweater and let’s get this over with.” She gestured down at her jeans and said “It's not like we're going to church, for God’s sake; just over to old man Willets’ to ask him for money. Just wear your new jeans; they’re way too tight so he can stare at your ass. That’ll make him happy enough to write a check for sure.”

Well that made me so mad, her saying that. My new jeans were not too tight and, even if they were, a girl’s best friend is supposed to lie to her about such things.

So, just to be contrary, I put on my short green dress with no stockings, which was okay, because I had been tanning, and I slipped on a pair of high green pumps and did not add a sweater. Jessie was right … I would freeze. But she was wrong too, as I did not look like an idiot. I just shook my head at her when she started to say something, and she shrugged as we headed out the door. Jessie drove because I didn’t have a car.

Our family did okay with Mama’s shop, but the money did not go far enough to pay for another car. Jessie’s daddy worked on the pipeline up in Alaska, so she had got a new truck last year on her sixteenth birthday, and since that time she and I had ruled the road. Jessie having a truck was almost as good as me having one since we were always together anyway. When we got in the cab she looked over at me, shook her head, but because she is my best friend she cranked up the heat to high anyway.

As always, Jessie had to pull right up in front and park in the handicapped spot. A year ago she had driven her grandma to Tulsa for a doctor's appointment and she had stolen her handicapped sticker and, ever since then, Jessie being Jessie, it never failed to give her a kick to park in handicapped spaces using it. And me being me, it never failed to make me mad, but I had given up trying to make her see how wrong it was. That day, though, I was just awful glad that we didn’t have to walk across the street because it was freezing outside and I nearly turned blue before I got inside the Willets Building.

The Willets Building was real fancy inside. Miz Bethany had decorated it herself, and she had based the whole design on a plastic surgeon's building in the Turtle Creek section of Dallas, so it was all pink marble and fake antiques and pictures in them fancy gold frames like museums have. Jessie looked around at the lobby and sneered when we walked in.

“Where the hell does that woman think she is - Beverly Hills?” I nodded like I agreed with her, but secretly I thought it was beautiful. We crossed over about two yards of pink marble to get to the fancy desk of the receptionist and, as luck would have it, there was Miz. Bethany Willets in the flesh. She was talking to the receptionist in this real snotty voice and telling her some boring story of how her new Escalade was in the shop and that her replacement Escalade wasn’t an LS series, or something.

She was wearing a full length black mink coat, and though it was maybe forty outside, it wasn’t near cold enough for that kind of coat. I nudged Jessie and whispered that maybe the crappy replacement Escalade didn’t have heat in it. Jessie was cracking up and, just then, Miz Bethany turned around and saw us. She knew who we were, everyone in Dalton knew who everyone was, and besides, my mama had worked for her part-time when I was little, before the dress business took off. But being Miz Willets, she had to pretend like she didn’t know our names, and just gave us this snooty puzzled look and tilted her head.

She said, “Girls, can I help you? You look lost. You know we don’t have public restrooms in here.”

Well Jessie just doesn’t take that kind of crap, so she gave Miz Willet a real puzzled look in return, and said “Oh shoot … well that’s all right, I’ll just pee outside. I have to go real bad.”

The receptionist behind Miz Willets was trying so hard not to laugh that I figured I would have to pat her down like I had with Daddy earlier. This happened a lot around people and Jessie, but Miz Willets, she looked like she had swallowed a snake.

“What? What did you say? I know you, don’t I? You’re that little girl of Jerry Sands and his drunken whore of a wife, aren’t you?”

Oh my God, I could not believe my ears. I had never heard or met an adult who would talk like that to a kid. I mean, yeah, Jessie had a mouth on her, but so what? She was just a kid …we both were. How could anyone say that about her mother to her face?

Jessie got real pale and said in this little tiny voice “Leeann, you go on ahead and talk, I don’t feel good. I’ll wait in the truck. Take as long as you need.”

I turned to follow her, but she was already outside. The receptionist was just staring down at her desk then, her mouth all pursed up, and Miz 'Bitch of the Century' Willets just stood there with this little puzzled look on her face, like what did I say?

If I had been older, or just different, then I would have gone up and hit her, but all I did was walk by her like she was invisible and ask the receptionist if Mr. Willets was in. Miz Willets looked like she wanted to ask what I was there for, but I just looked her in the eye and damned if she didn’t look away first. Then she just shrugged like it didn’t matter, like I didn’t matter, and looked past me at the receptionist and said “Alice, you tell Mr. Willets to be on home by six, you hear? We are having the Steppes over for dinner and I don’t want him to be late. I hope his important appointment with this young lady doesn’t keep him.”

She smiled at me all proudly like, and I just smiled back and didn’t say nothing. To be strictly honest, I sort of felt sorry for her then. It was embarrassing to see a grown-up trying to impress a kid, 'cause talking about who you’re gonna see and what you’re gonna do in front of other people, that’s stuff like I do.

Also, if she was gonna name drop, she shoulda picked someone’s name better than them sorry old Steppe family to brag about. I don’t know about the grown-ups in Dalton, but if you were a kid like me, then saying you was gonna go to Audrey Steppes’ house would a been the kiss of death socially speaking. Maybe she knew that, though, old as she was, 'cause she looked real awkward for a minute there; then she gave this little one shouldered shrug and walked outside without saying goodbye to the receptionist.

I just looked at the receptionist and she shook her head. “Yeah, ain’t she something? Well, I’ll tell you, Honey, this is about the only job in town that has dental insurance, and my boy is going to need all the help I can get him. I just try real hard not to think between nine and five, you know, and then I pray about it a lot. I’ll ring upstairs for Mr. Willets for you. I’m sure he’ll see you right away, Honey. I happen to know he isn’t doing a thing right now and, hey, can I get your little friend a coffee or soda or something? She looked kind off peaky. I don’t mind taking it outside to her.”

I just thanked her for asking, but I said no, not to bother. I told her Jessie would be fine. I thought that Jessie might be having one of her rare episodes where she let go and cried, and Jessie would have killed me dead and then murdered me, if I sent a stranger out to see her like that.

Chapter 7

After the poor receptionist had called upstairs, I was sent over to the elevator to go up to Mr. Willets’ office. The funny thing was that, when I got into the elevator, the buttons were the usual ones - G, 1, 2, etc. - but instead of the number five for the fifth floor, the top button said P1, for 'Penthouse One', I guessed. It struck me as pretty hilarious; I mean, a penthouse?

This looked to me like another of Miz Willets’ silly old decorating schemes and doesn’t a building need to have like fifty floors before you could have a penthouse? I made a note to tell Jessie about this when I got outside; it would cheer her up. We could make fun of the old bitch and her fake penthouse ideas all the way home.

When I got off the elevator, there was another big fancy fake antique desk in front of me with another not very good looking woman sitting at it. I guessed that Miz Bethany really tried to lure women who needed that dental plan of hers into working for her husband so as to avoid any possible temptation he might have to run for the hills at the first opportunity. Though, let me tell you, if I had been a man, I would have looked right past Miz Bethany’s pretty botoxed face and grabbed this gal, or Alice downstairs, and started over again.

But if there was one thing that being the prettiest looking girl in town had taught me, it was this - men never looked beyond how a girl looked … well except maybe Donny Readle, and he was strictly not part of what I needed to be thinking about right then.

The secretary looked up at me through her thick glasses and smiled real nice. “You just go right on in, Honey, he’s waiting for you.” I thanked her and opened up one side of the huge double doors to his office and sauntered on in. I nearly died when I saw what Miz. Bethany’s idea of an executive suite was. The office was humongous and it had real high ceilings too. But she had covered every inch of it in dead animal heads. Along with all the poor dead animals, there were lariats and cowboy hats and cow patterned rugs on the floor, along with the biggest Texas style desk I had ever seen.

Heck, there was even a river rock fireplace, in an office (a penthouse office) in downtown Dalton, which, by the way, our whole downtown consists of about fifteen buildings altogether. I smiled real wide at Mr. Willets sitting behind this huge ole desk; he wasn’t a very big man and the desk made him look even smaller than he had to be.

He stood up and came around the desk towards me. “Well, Miss Worthier - our next Corn Princess - to what do I owe this honor?”

I smiled real wide at him. “Well, Mr. Willets, I just got to thank you so much for taking the time to see me and all. I came here to see you on business from Dalton High actually.”

He laughed a little at that. “Oh, business, huh? Well, Sugar, if its business from the high school, I imagine it’s about needing something, so before you say another word, I best get Junior on in here. Junior, he handles all our endowment money and such.”

I tried to protest that I would just take a minute of his time, and he didn’t need to bother Junior. I didn’t think a little old scoreboard seemed like something that needed an endowment, whatever that was, and, besides, I didn’t want to drag this out too long and leave Jessie out in that truck all day. But he had already hollered out the door to Robin, his secretary, to “tell Junior to get on in here.”

He kept on smiling real wide at me; he told me he didn’t know how to use the damn intercom system that his wife had insisted on which he said seemed real stupid to him as it was just himself, Robin, and Junior up here in the penthouse. It seemed real stupid to me too, but all I did was flutter my lashes and say I was real bad with gadgets myself. He lit up even more then and started sidling over to me so, after all, I was pretty glad to see young George coming through the door.

George was twenty-six last year when we met and, like I said, he is not tall, but he isn’t a little scrawny guy like his daddy either. He is pretty stocky, and that day he filled out this sort of sharp looking navy suit at the shoulders real good. He smiled all wide when he saw me and came over and took my hand in both of his. George has real small hands himself, which I could not help but notice.

“Well if it isn’t the prettiest girl ever born in Dalton.”

I smiled back at him, pleased that he had called me by my unofficial title. I gathered right then that he had noticed me around town. I myself had not noticed him so much as the beautiful Jaguar that he drove sometimes and the Humvee he drove the rest of the time.

But I wasn’t interested any in flirting with anyone so old, and so I launched right in to why I was there and how, as the school secretary and head cheerleader, I had been chosen to ask them for help.

George, he just kept looking at me and grinning like an egg suck dog, till his daddy interrupted and asked him what he thought they could do for the school. Finally he looked away from me and turned to his daddy and I walked off a little ways to stand in front of some poor stuffed bear to let them talk more privately.

I’ll admit I was a little flattered by his attention. George was a lot older than me, true, but he was rich, rich, rich! Every girl in town wanted him to talk to them, and he had looked at me with eyes that burned just as hot as any boys at school did. So while he was talking to his daddy about the scoreboard, I used the chance to really look at him. He was short like I said, but stocky and he had a head of real thick sandy hair, and his mama’s big brown eyes which, on him, didn’t look hard like river pebbles but warm and sparkly.

I decided I liked George Junior after all, and when I like a man, I flirt with him. My daddy says I came out of Mama and started flirting with the doctor. I dimpled up at him (well not up exactly) and told him that since he was one of Dalton’s old football heroes, he should want to help the school for sure to keep the field where he had come to greatness alive. This was laying it on pretty thick, since I later found out that in three years of playing, poor George had been in like one game but, here in Oklahoma, you can’t say anything better to a man than that he can play football well.

It didn’t take but five minutes of this kind of talk until young George was telling his daddy that it was their obligation to help out their old school and I had a check for thirty thousand in my hot little hand. That was about ten thousand more dollars than we needed, so I was already imagining my hero status back at school and thinking we could put in new vending machines or maybe even a steam room in the locker room.

Anyway I was in such fine mood then, that I had clean forgotten about Miz Bethany and what she had said to Jessie. When I noticed out the big window in the office that it had gotten dark outside, I went into my full blown Southern Girl charm routine and, thanking both Georges as sweet as I could, I said I had to run on home though and help my mama with supper and that they were just heroes - well you know all that sort of thing. Young George he insisted on escorting me downstairs and outside.

As soon as we got into the elevator, he made his interest clear. “Leeann, Sugar, I am so glad you came by today. I have been wracking my brains for a way to really meet you, and then you just showed up here. You know I see you around town all the time, and I swear, Girl, I can’t take my eyes off of you, so now here you are and I ain’t letting you out of this elevator till you agree to have dinner with me tomorrow night.”

Shoot, I was truly taken aback by that. I mean he was old and he was a Willets so I knew my daddy would kill me dead and then murder me if he found out about this. And, to be strictly honest, he just wasn’t all that attractive to me. But I didn’t want to say something that hurt his feelings, 'cause I thought it might just make him reach out and take back the check I was holding. So, to buy time, I just looked down pretending to be all bashful, which I purely am not I can tell you.

I shook my head and said in this real little girl voice “Oh, Mr. Willets, that’s so nice of you, but I can’t. This is only Tuesday and I am not allowed to date on school nights.”

For some reason that seemed to make him even more heated up about me, which was not my intention at all. “Well, Leeann, then how about we make it this Saturday night? We can take the plane to Dallas and eat us some dinner up at Turtle Creek and, Leeann, please call me George. Mr. Willets is my father.”

Oh shoot, he got my attention then. I said like a perfect fool, which I purely am not, “The mansion at Turtle Creek in Dallas? You have a plane?” I was babbling, and he liked it, of course. All men do, 'cause they always hope that their woman is more foolish than they are themselves. At least that’s what Jessie says, and I do think she is right about that.

“Yep, I got me that old Gee four down to the airfield and I got me a lazy ass pilot with nothing to do. He just sits around on our payroll watching the grass grow. Shoot he’ll be almost as happy as I will to fly you to Dallas. What do you say?”

To tell the strict truth I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I gaped up at him, and I must have looked about as smart as a shocked calf, but he mistook my confusion for some sort of negotiating tactic. I guess he thought I was holding out for more goodies to entice me onto that plane, because the next words out of his mouth were the ones every girl want to hear.

“Now, Leeann, if you are worried about not having the right clothes for Dallas, then why don’t we go up a couple hours before supper time and hit that old store Neiman Marcus. Hell, my mama always says if they don’t have it at Neiman’s, then you don’t want to wear it anyways.”

I laughed like I was in perfect agreement with what he said; just like I was one of those girls who got to use the world’s most expensive store like my private closet. I think, looking back now, it’s the only thing Miz Bethany ever said that ended up being true.

I acted real flustered, and by that time we were standing in the lobby; the receptionist, Alice, was trying real hard to look like she wasn’t listening to every word we were saying.

I knew I was going to say yes. I didn’t much want to go to dinner with him, but I sure did want to go to Neiman Marcus and pick out the kind of dress I had only seen on TV and don’t you judge me. I had been wearing the clothes my mama sewed for me my whole life. They were real pretty, but I have to say it had galled me every minute of my life to hear from those sad cows Maddie and Audrey about their old shopping trips to Dallas and how they had seen Mariah Carey in a magazine wearing the same jeans they had on …always talking real loud about how their Cotillion dresses had set their daddies back a packet, though I have to say it, it didn’t much help them - but on me? Oh, what would those clothes look like on me? So yes, yes is what I said right then “Sure, George, I would love to go to Dallas with you.”

Right about then Jessie started honking up a storm and he was asking me what time should he pick me up, and I had to think real fast about that because he could not pick me up as daddy would shoot him dead and then murder him, and there would be no Neiman Marcus for me for sure. So I said to him “Here George, you give me your cell number real quick and I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He looked real puzzled then, as I’m sure he did not see me as the kind of girl who had to call boys, but the other way around.

I made up a story quick about how I was grounded and not allowed to have phone calls this week, so then he asked for my cell number, and of course I didn’t have one. Nobody in my family owns a cell phone, unless you count my brother Randy who has one from his company on account of being a plumber and them needing to get in touch with him at all hours.

Before I had to come up with another whopper for him about my non-existent cell phone, Jessie was coming through the doors, yelling up a storm about how she had been stuck outside for a month of Sundays. When she saw me talking to George, she gave us a real funny look and so I just stared at him with this kind of desperate expression and he grinned back at me real cute and pushed a card into my hand. I curled my fist around it so Jessie wouldn’t see and waved goodbye and ran outside on the double.

On the way home I meant to tell Jessie about my date, but she was so fired up about Miz Bethany that I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. When we got to my house, I asked her if I could sleep over at her place on Saturday, and that shut her up right quick because we always slept over at my house, on account of her mama being somewhat irrational, and somewhat mean as a water snake as well. I didn’t give her any time to question me. I just said thanks, that was great, like she had agreed, which she had not, and gave her a quick hug and then I scampered inside my house.

Chapter 8

God almighty, you never heard the like of the fight Jessie and I had that Saturday afternoon. She called me a gold digging little whore, and I called her jealous white trash, and hell it went on for about two hours all during which I was busy getting ready. I had told George that I would get a ride to the airstrip and meet him at three. I had assumed Jessie would just be happy for me, but that girl went nuts. She was all “He’s a hundred years old, short and ugly as sin. What if your daddy finds out?” Shoot, I thought she would never calm down. I finally had to grab her by the shoulders and slam her down on the bed and talk to her straight.

I said to her “Listen Jessie, it’s okay for you …you have Mark, and he is your soul mate and all that, but I don’t have anyone. I think George is real nice and cute too and he ain’t a hundred, he’s not even thirty. And anyways, every girl likes an older man, and I’m going to do this, and if you’re my friend, you’re going to help me.”

She calmed down then, but Jessie being Jessie she just had to needle me a little more. “Okay, Leeann, y’all go for it, and have a ball, but you just make sure to remember that you’re loaning me whatever you get him to buy for you today. But I gotta know something though. Since when did the older man you been thinking about become fat old George Willets and not Donny God almighty Readle?”

Oh sometimes I just hated Jessie.

Donny Readle had been my brother Charlie’s best friend, “his brother from another mother” is what we kids called him. Donny and Charlie, they had always been together. Mama said if you saw one the other weren’t but two feet away, and the day Charlie died they had been together then too.

Donny had been around the house a lot when I was growing up. He would come over to eat Mama’s pies, and help out Daddy with projects around our house. I guess he didn’t have any parents of his own because he lived with his Uncle Hank in a nasty looking trailer down by the river. After Charlie died, I guess Donny must have missed our family almost as much as he missed Charlie because he was always there.

Mama and Daddy loved him; so did Randy, and so did I. But I never, ever loved him like a brother. From as far back as I can remember, I loved Donny Readle and planned to marry him. While other girls in fourth grade were writing down the name of their future husbands who in most cases was the boy sitting in the desk in front of them, I was writing down 'Mrs. Donald Readle' or 'Leeann Readle'. He was so beautiful …Donny. Not that you call boys that but he was - he is - beautiful.

Donny he cleared six foot by the time he was fifteen and he got another couple inches after that. He has this thick gold hair that goes almost white in the sun and these real long narrow green eyes that always looked like they were squinting. You want to know how pretty he is, well think Heath Ledger only better. He’s got the whitest teeth you ever saw on a person when he grins, which wasn’t very often when I was growing up, and so when he did, I nearly died each time he smiled.

Even though Donny had that real blond hair, he was always tan, even in the winter. Daddy called him a blond injun, and that always made Donny laugh. He may have looked at me like Charlie’s baby sister, and his unofficial little sister, but I knew all my life that he was it for me; the one and only man I would ever want or need. And see, because I knew that, in that deep way that I think only a girl can know, I was patient.

You always hear that old line guys say to girls … “I’m waiting for you to grow up”. Only this time it was me; I was waiting for me to grow up, and when I did, I would tell him, and, oh hell I would show him too! I had been planning how to do just that since I was about eleven years old, so after all these years of planning, I figured I could make that boy forget ever looking at me like a little sister again.

And then, last year, when I was almost there … almost ready, he got married. It happened out of the blue. He was up in Kansas City on a job (he drives long haul) and he met Carlene in a bar, and married her a week later.

Mama and Daddy were shocked and Randy, he thought it was funny. Me? Well I think I died right there and then and I have just been haunting my old life now. Mama said Carlene was trash and I guess she was but it didn’t matter none. Mama said if I wanted to look for proof, why just look at that nasty tattoo of Donny’s name she had on her shoulder. I pretended to agree with Mama but, oh shoot, I would have loved to have his name tattooed on me, and have his hands on me at night too.

Thinking on all this, I just looked at Jessie when she said that. I looked at her long and for once she dropped her eyes first. See Jessie had been in love with Mark Smokels since they were both about five, I think, and she had known her whole life just where she was going and with who. Since grade school we had planned how it was going to be; she would marry Mark, and I would marry Donny in a double ceremony the day after we graduated from high school and then we would get apartments right next door to each other. And she would support Mark while he went to school, and wait to have babies for a few years. I would have my babies right away because my man was already an adult with a career and everything. I would, of course, have at least one baby when Jessie did though - a girl - so our daughters could grow up together and be best friends forever just like us.

Instead of that, I had the rest of my life to wonder what Donny would have said if I hadn’t waited to grow up. Shoot, I had all the time in the world to lie around crying and wondering what might have happened if I had just gone to him last year when I was already “the prettiest girl in Dalton ”… gone on up to him and told him straight out what was true, and told him that it always would be. But I didn’t do none of that, so he married trashy Carlene and I was fixing to go on my big adventure with George.

Knowing how I felt about all this, Jessie she backed down real fast then, and even lent me her zirconium earrings to go with my jeans and lace blouse and Frye boots. I could tell Jessie felt real bad about bringing up Donny 'cause, about halfway to the airfield which was nearly thirty miles outside town, she pulled the truck over and said with this big poop eating grin “Shoot, Leeann, don’t be all nervous; that ole boy may be richer than God but he’s still just a damn man and when he gets a look at you, he’ll drop his teeth down his throat. Here let’s have us a little J and T to calm you down.”

J and T was Jessie’s way of being funny 'cause her mama was always saying “Oh I need me a G and T to calm me down,” which in Jessie’s mama’s case was a gin and tonic, which is all she drank on account of she said it was a way to stay thin and still have fun. In our case, Jessie’s and mine, J meant a joint and T was a shot of Wild Turkey from the flask with her initials on it which had been Mark’s gift to her on her seventeenth birthday; it matched the one he had. So I told her hell yes, that was just what I needed, and we fired up the J and drank a couple long swallows of the T and I started to feel pretty good. Jessie hollered “hell yeah” real loud and then she cranked up the radio and drove us to the airstrip at about a hundred miles an hour.

When we got there, she turned down the radio, and looked over at the plane which was really a small jet, and just grinned and shook her head. “All right, Girl, you go on and do this thing up right. I’ll be waiting right here at midnight to pick you up and hear every detail, so don’t do nothing I wouldn’t, you hear?” Then she hugged me real tight, and in the rearview I saw George driving up real fast in the Humvee which I guess was his winter car; the Jaguar being what he drove all summer. I hugged her back and got out of the truck and walked towards him.

George looked real good; he had on faded jeans and a white shirt, and he grinned from ear to ear when he saw me. “Hey, Leeann, don’t you look like something? Well come on in, and let’s get this show on the road.” I looked back for Jessie but she was already driving off, and then the pilot came to the door of the plane.

“Hey, Mr. Willets, Ma’am, shall we be heading out? I have a landing scheduled for four p.m. in the Big D.” I followed George up the little stairs and into that plane and, oh my lord, it was something. Instead of rows of seats it had suede couches and there were these real fancy paintings of nude women and flowers in big old gilt frames. The plane had its own bathroom with a pink marble shower, and there was even a bedroom with a mink spread on the bed. I backed out of there real fast, though. When we sat down on the couch, George reached into a little refrigerator and pulled out a whole bottle of champagne, and that’s how we started.

Chapter 9

By the time we landed, I was more than half way drunk, but George, he just thought it was cute. When we got out of the plane there was the biggest damn limo you ever saw waiting for us at the private airstrip. It wasn’t a rental either; it had the Willets Petroleum sign on the door. George said they kept a car and a suite in town as they did so much business in Dallas.

Before I knew it we were in downtown Dallas and pulling up at the Galleria. When we got inside Neiman’s it was so beautiful and smelled so good, that I figured heaven must be a lot like a good department store. (God help me if my mama ever reads this). And what with me not being any too sober, it all seemed like a dream.

There was this real pretty salesgirl and she acted like she knew George. She took us into this real fancy room called a private dressing salon where she made a huge big deal, raving over my figure and my hair. Then she brought out like twenty dresses for me to try on. George just sat outside my dressing room in a big chair like a damned sultan and, shoot, they even brought him a whiskey and poured me more champagne - which I did not need - while I modeled the dresses for him.

In the end he bought me five of them, and the total was almost twenty thousand dollars; then the saleslady added a pair of high black heels that she called Jimmy Choos which both George and I thought was hilarious, and a black Kelly bag. The total for all this was another five thousand dollars. So when George suggested that we have a drink in his suite at the Mansion on Turtle Creek before dinner, I knew what was coming all right, but by then I was awful drunk, and I was pretty giddy, what with thinking about my clothes and all. I didn’t much care about what he was gonna do to me and anyway I needed to lie down right about then, which I did. I just sprawled out on that pretty gold duvet like Marie Antoinette or somebody. That hotel room was the fanciest room I had ever seen and George, well he was real nice, but he was pretty drunk so he didn’t even bother to get my jeans all the way off or his own either.

I wasn’t a virgin. Even though I always only loved Donny, well last year at homecoming I had way too much of everything and I let Billy Danwood, my date, have his way with me. It didn’t matter … I hadn’t really cared about being a virgin, and being one was never a part of my big seduction plan with Donny anyway, which to be strictly honest played out in my head more like a naughty schoolgirl in 'Girls Gone Wild' than the whole virgin sacrifice thing.

So it wasn’t like George defiled my innocence or nothing. But there was one thing; even though. I was drunk, well I had been drunk last time too, and I specifically remembered Billy messing around for what seemed like an hour with his damn condom, and George hadn’t done none of that. Right before I passed out, I remember thinking that maybe he had put one on ahead of time knowing this was going to happen.

After that first time, George and I started meeting up at his daddy’s hunting cabin, mostly on Saturday afternoons but sometimes after I got out of school too. The hunting cabin was the one place that Miz Willets hadn’t gotten her nasty French manicured nails into. It was just a little one room place with a pot bellied stove and two old camp beds that we would push together to make one.

I liked it though … the little place sat right at the edge of Lake Injun. The lake wasn’t really named that. It had some long Native American name that none of us could pronounce worth a damn. Lake Injun was just what we called it. I have always loved being at that lake more than anyplace in the world. I used to come out with my daddy and fish for wide mouth bass sometimes. It’s kind of funny, but back when I was still planning out my life with Donny, I would see us out there in a boat a lot of times in my head.

That sort of thinking didn’t help me much now that I was with George. What helped with George was the Wild Turkey we would drink, and sometimes the line or two of coke which George almost always had on him.

George, he was different too at the cabin, more relaxed, happier. He acted more like a guy my age than his when we were out there. He told me it was his favorite place in the world and said it had been his daddy’s favorite place too. His daddy and his brother Roger used to come up there all the time to fish and shoot at grouse.

George said his daddy had hardly come up here at all in all the years since his Uncle Roger got killed, but that it was “sacred” to him, and that the cabin was the one thing he said no to Miz Bethany about changing; her having wanted to turn it into an A frame house and put up a dock so she could have parties out there, but George said his daddy and George, too, had overruled her. I didn’t say anything when he told me that story, but I thought that the little house must have been something real special to both of them for them to ever say no to Miz Willets.

Chapter 10

Last February, right before Valentine’s Day, I met George behind the Piggly Wiggly store like usual and climbed into the Humvee. It was real cold that night and I was shivering. George reached behind him and put this huge white Neiman's box on my lap. I acted all like, oh you shouldn’t have and everything but, to be strictly honest, by that time I almost expected something real nice whenever he saw me.

I already had a pile of clothes stashed at Jessie’s, though I could not resist wearing my new True Religion jeans even at the house, figuring rightly that Mama and Daddy wouldn’t notice the difference between them and my 501’s to save their lives.

But the girls at school noticed and I loved it. The present that night was a three quarter length Persian lamb coat dyed pale pink. I started screaming and jumping around in my seat. I nearly put my elbow in poor George's eye because I was struggling so hard to get my ratty old puffa jacket off and that beautiful pink coat on. When I got it on, I preened at him and asked how I looked. George, he got him that real intense look on his face that he sometimes had when he was staring at me. He said all serious like “Leeann, you look just like an angel. Girl, you are too pretty to be real. I want you to wear pink for me all the time. You know, don’t you, Leeann, that I just want to give you the world, and this ain't all there is neither. I got your big Valentine's gift out at the cabin You just wait, Sugar.”

Well, to be strictly honest, I had mixed feelings about what he had said. I did like the presents and sure, hearing that this perfect coat wasn’t my “big” gift got me real excited too, because by then I knew enough about the costs of fancy clothes to know it might be ten thousand dollars just for the coat alone. And shoot, yes, I liked hearing that I looked like an angel and nice compliments of that sort, but I strictly did not like being told what color to wear all the time. Why, I loved all my new black clothes he had given me, and I thought that black was the most sophisticated color I could ever wear. And then I didn’t much like that look he was giving me either. George had started looking and acting recently like he wanted to lock me up just for himself and keep me forever. Well I just didn’t like that much.

See, I liked George fine … most of the time. Well, to speak the truth and shame the devil as Mama said, I liked him mostly when I was drunk or high or both, and I liked it when he gave me things. The sex stuff… well mostly when that was happening I tried to pretend I was somewhere else, and it took hardly any time anyway. But I knew I wasn’t in love with him. Being in love was Donny, and though all my dreams had been shattered by his marrying someone else, it didn’t make my feelings for him stop. I knew that I would have to marry someone else myself one day. I just wasn’t ready to think like that yet. After all, I had been planning my life with Donny Readle since I was seven years old, and I couldn’t just change it up on a dime, even though I knew that I would have to one day.

I wasn’t quite eighteen yet, and it seemed to me like there should be time, but I didn’t say any of what I was thinking to George. I just leaned against him in the car and said “Thank you, Sugar, you're so good.” I said it real soft and sweet like. I mean just because I couldn’t see myself with George forever like I had with Donny, it wasn’t like I had someone else or somewhere else to go to. I just decided not to worry about any of it, and look forward to my present instead.

When we got out to the cabin, George started hurrying around building up the fire and then he put out a few lines on the old camp table and poured us both a shot from his little flask, which was silver, unlike Jessie’s leather one that she was so proud of. When he had the fire going real good, George pulled me down beside him onto the bed and reached into his pocket and handed me this little bitty blue leather box and said real sweet “Happy Valentine's Day, Sugar, I hope you like this.”

My hands were shaking a little by that time, I think from the coke, but it might have been from the look on George’s face too. I opened up the box and there were two diamond studs and I didn’t know for sure then, but I do now, that they were three carats each. They were huge, each one bigger than any diamond I had ever seen in my life except for the boulder that his mama wore on her finger and shoved in everyone’s face every chance she got.

To tell you the strict truth, I did not have a word to say. I sure wished Jessie were there; she would have made a joke or done a cheer. I thought maybe I could pretend to faint, but it was okay because, George, he knew exactly how I should act. He told me in this real thick voice that he wanted me to show him how I looked in the earrings and nothing else. When I was buck naked and standing there, George looked at me with his eyes all popping out of his head and making these little panting noises and, I have to say it, because it's what I thought at the time, that he looked just like this old rabid raccoon that had got trapped in our garbage pails one night. Randy had to shoot it so it wouldn’t bite Muffin, our cat.

I knew I should be acting all loving and jumping into the bed with him, but I used delaying tactics instead. I decided right then, and don’t ask me why, 'cause I don’t know myself why I did it, but I picked that moment to discuss with George why he didn’t ever use a condom. It was not very nice of me, considering what he had just given me, but somehow I didn’t feel too nice right then.

George didn’t mind, though. He just laughed and said he liked to really feel me, but then I got mad and asked him what I would do if I got pregnant, and did he expect me to just walk in bold as brass to the pharmacy where my friend Lurlene’s mama worked and try to buy some kind of birth control? I was getting pretty heated up by then, and I told him that I thought maybe we wouldn’t be doing nothing of a carnal nature that day until we had settled this whole contraception question.

But I should have known that I wasn’t getting out of doing it that easy, 'cause George, he just chuckled like I was being adorable, which I purely was not. He pulled me onto his lap, me being naked except for my earrings, and I just sat there real stiff while he told me how he had mumps when he was little, and his mama had told him that made you sterile, which stupid me, I believed. Like Miz High and Mighty Willets was a baby doctor amongst her many other accomplishments. So since there was no way out, I took another slug of wild turkey and we went to it.

Chapter 11

I guess that was the day it must have happened, though it could have been the Wednesday previous, but I think it was that day for two reasons: one, for some reason, I really hadn’t wanted to do it, which was funny because we had been doing it twice a week for a couple of months already so I think my body was just trying to warn me, like 'Red alert girl, this is a bad time'. Jessie says that’s how she can tell when it's not a good time, her body just tells her and then she gets even meaner than usual and won't let Mark near her with a stick. But then this other thing happened too.

After we done it, George went straight to sleep like he always did. But I was wide awake because of the coke and the diamonds and maybe still being a little mad too. So I pulled on my beautiful new pink coat and started looking at the books on the shelves in the cabin. I don’t like to read much so it was just something to kill time till George woke up because there is no TV in that cabin.

Mostly the books on the shelves were those old Reader's Digest kind that my mama has at our house, but there was this one big green book that I could see wasn’t a book at all … it was a photo album. I don’t know why, but I tried to be real quiet when I took it down. George probably wouldn’t have given a damn, but I wasn’t sure … it felt like prying.

The first few pictures were just old ones of two little boys, some fishing, some with a pretty woman that I figured was their mama, and a couple stiff ones of them sitting on the steps of a real big house that at first I did not recognize.

But then I did … it was the Willets Mansion, the murder house. I figured out right then that the two boys were George’s daddy and his Uncle Roger. Roger was a lot taller than his brother and, as I turned the pages, they both got older, and heck, for every year older Roger got, he got hotter and hotter, which I must say came as quite a surprise. Because see, the Willets men seem to have more money than God, but the ones I had seen at least weren’t going to make Brad Pitt real nervous. Roger was real dark too. He must have got his looks from the pretty woman that I had guessed was their mama. The expression on his face in the pictures made him look kind of like Jamey Skaggs who is the baddest boy at Dalton High. You know the type - they are all black leather and attitude, which to be strictly honest can be awful sexy to a certain type of girl, though I am not that type, of course.

I kind of whistled under my breath 'Well, well, ole dead Uncle Roger was a smokin' hottie… who knew?' I wished I could steal a picture of him for Jessie to see, but I was too worried to do it, in case George or his daddy noticed. The last two pages of the album were stuck together so I unpeeled them real careful and quiet, and saw that they was wedding pictures, wedding pictures of poor hot dead Uncle Roger and this really beautiful girl. Believe me about her being a super pretty girl because, since I look like I do, I am not one to dish out compliments lightly, but this girl was a knockout.

She was real tall and slender, with long dark hair and she had her just a perfect face. I couldn’t tell what color her eyes were, but they were big beautiful eyes ... and even in those old pictures you could see they were shining, looking at Roger … and him, Roger, well it was real sweet 'cause he was just grinning at her like she was a horse who had won the Triple Crown. They looked so beautiful and young and filled up with pride in each other that I felt like starting to cry for some reason. Standing beside Roger, wearing a pair of too short tuxedo pants, was George's daddy, old George Sr. But he was just a scrawny young boy and you would hardly recognize him now. He had on this big old grin though, like he was happy for the pretty couple. And standing beside Roger, there were their parents, who did not look like they were happy at all. Actually, Roger's mama looked like an egg sick dog, if you want me to be strictly honest, and for about one second I felt sorry for the bride, even knowing as I did that she turned into a crazed murderess later on. I could still sympathize with any girl who had a bad mother-in-law situation.

Right then I heard George stirring and before I could put the album back he asked me what I was looking at. Since I didn’t see a way out of it, I just took it over to the bed and showed it to him. He didn’t seem mad ... he acted like he had never seen it before and he just looked at the pictures. When he was done he sighed real heavy and closed it. I knew I shouldn’t ask him, it being something I’m sure was a real bad subject in his family, but I just had to know, so I did ask him.

I said straight out “George, Honey, does your daddy ever talk about his brother and all them kids that got killed?”

He didn’t seem offended, but he didn’t say much either. He just said that his daddy would sometimes tell stories about him and his Uncle Roger when they were kids, but all the stories usually ended about the time his uncle left Dalton to go off to architect's school somewhere up north. I know I should have shut up, but that is not my strong suit as anyone would tell you. So I kept at him, asking if that was where his uncle had met Robina, and if he had ever seen any other pictures of her? Were there any pictures of the kids they had? I could tell he was getting kind of annoyed with me, 'cause he answered all short, like telling me that yes, he had seen other pictures of Robina and that for some reason, and “No, he sure as hell did not know why!” that the pictures were all over the mansion still, where she and Uncle Roger had lived, along with pictures of all his dead cousins, and that yes, he had been in the house a few times over the years with his mama who for “some goddamned reason" liked to oversee the upkeep of the place herself whenever a crew would have to go in for painting and such. George said he didn’t know for sure if his uncle had met Robina back at the architecture school, because his daddy would get all red when he asked questions about her, so after awhile he had stopped asking.

I felt real bad then and told him it was just the same at our house, that whenever Charlie’s name got brought up, Mama would cry and Daddy would start ranting and raving. Telling him that was a mistake though, 'cause George got real curious and asked me why the mention of his dead son would make my daddy rant and rave?

Hell, I had stepped right into that one, as the last thing I wanted to tell George, if he was not already aware of it, was that my daddy thought his daddy was “a negligent asshole". Worse, even way back after Charlie died, the Willets' lawyer had come to our house offering money, not, Daddy said, as a way of taking responsibility for the house being something called “an attractive nuisance” but as “hush money." Daddy said they only offered the money so that he would stop telling everyone and their brother in Dalton how my brother must have been attacked in that house to get those scratches.

Well, my daddy did not have any money back then, but he was real proud, so he turned that money down; I guess he did it so he could keep telling his friends at Downey’s what a bunch of rich lying assholes the Willets were. But obviously I did not want to say any of this to George, so I just lied and said that was how daddy handled his grief, by acting mad all the time. George, he laughed real sweet and said that maybe his mama had a secret grief he didn’t know about 'cause she was mad all the time too. Well I knew to quit when I was ahead, so I didn’t share my thoughts on what I thought of how and why Miz Bethany acted like she did all the time.

Chapter 12

Four weeks later, all the poop in the whole world hit the fan that was my life and I was about splattered from here to hell.

I was late, maybe only a few days, but I had never been late before. I told Jessie, of course, and she was real good about it. She didn’t start in on me that minute ‘cause she said she was waiting to see how much of a dumb ass I was. She said she was waiting to “share her thoughts” with me until we established whether or not I was a pregnant dumbass or just a regular dumbass. I was feeling real scared and humble so I actually told her ‘Thank you’, if you can believe it.

Me and Jessie knew that we could not just saunter on into the pharmacy to buy a pregnancy test as, if we did that, we might as well just go ahead and take out an ad in the Dalton Tri-City Weekly, for heaven’s sake. Lurlene's mama, who was the cashier there, was the biggest damn gossip in Dalton and that was saying something I’ll tell you.

So, Jessie, she just went on in there and shoplifted a first response pregnancy kit and two wet and wild lipsticks, because it was like she said … what the hell, might as well get her money's worth.

Now anyone alive who wasn’t a fool should understand why I was glad every day of my life that Jessie was my best friend. We went back to her house for me to take the test as I nearly went crazy at the thought of doing such a thing at my house with my own sweet daddy sitting downstairs all innocent and still thinking I was his baby girl and all. As my increasingly horrible luck would have it, Delilah, Jessie’s mama, was home.

Her real name was Susan, but starting last year she started telling everyone to call her Delilah which, if it had been my mama, would have embarrassed me to my shoes, but if Jessie was, she never let on. So there was Susan/Delilah sitting there on the couch with a G and T in her hand and, just like always when she saw me and Jessie together, she had to act like she was our best friend.

She was all “Hey girls, whass up? Ya’ll want a little drink with your good buddy Delilah? ”

Under normal circumstances, and not a twelve alarm fire emergency like this, me and Jessie would have said ‘Hell, yeah’ at the drink offer and then Jessie would have needled her until we peed ourselves laughing. But this was not the time.

So Jessie just said like she was being all serious “Well hell, Delilah, much as we would like to just sit here in the living room at three in the afternoon and start drinking with my mother, I am afraid I must decline for both of us. Just today Leeann and I went to an assembly at school and it was all about a program called Alanon. Do you know what that is, Delilah? ”

Jessie’s mama just shook her head, her lips tight as a drum.

“No? Well, I’ll tell ya. See that Alanon thingy, well shoot it's about family members of alcoholics and how they can get as messed up as the people who are doing the drinking do, if you can believe it? And now me and Leeann, we have to go write us a paper about it, and I don’t know, but it seems to me we should be sober when we do it, don’t you think so, Leeann? ”

Oh, that’s my Jessie! Her mama looked fit to spit nails and I was having such a hard time holding back my laughs that I thought I might have already peed a little, and I needed to save it all up for the test because I didn’t want to mess it up and make Jessie go and have to steal another one for me.

After we got upstairs to the bathroom and I shoved down my jeans to pee and Jessie stood guard, I asked why she always had to go after her mama like that, but when she answered me I knew I should have just kept quiet.

Jessie said in a real hard voice “Oh fuck her and the horse she rode in on.”

See, that was Jessie too; she could be real hard if you crossed her, and both me and Mark knew when it was good for us to shut up, so that's what I did.

It was real hard to pee with Jessie standing there glaring at me like the deadly wrath of God, but I managed it, and then, just for fun, I chased her out of the bathroom and into her bedroom waving my pee stick at her. She hollered at me and threatened to punch out all my teeth, and then we sat on the edge of her bed and waited for three minutes which, let me tell you, can seem like three days if you are anxious, which I purely was, I don’t have to tell you.

It didn’t even take three whole minutes, though That old line turned my favorite color lavender, and then Pepto Bismol pink, and there was no way to see it any different.

Of course then, when I needed Jessie to be mean and funny to snap me out of my shock, well instead she got real quiet, the contrary thing, and sat there looking at me like we had found out I had cancer and two days to live or something. I smiled at her a little to start us talking.

“Well hey, Jess, I guess you’ll be Auntie Jessie now, huh? So if it turns pink, does that mean a girl, you think? You know, I guess if it is a girl, I’ll call her Jessie Lavender after you and my favorite color; what d'ya think?”

Oh that got her started all right.

“Leeann, I swear to God, that you are the stupidest bitch to ever fall off the turnip wagon. Honest to God, you are dumber than a box of hair. How in the name of anything could you let that fat, ugly-ass old man make you pregnant?”

Well I was real relieved to see Jessie snapped back to herself like this, but I was a little mad too, ‘cause George is not fat. To be strictly honest, I could see a day where not too far in the future that might well be the situation, but right now he was just stocky, and twenty seven is not old … it's just older.

So I told Jessie as much, but she just shrugged like she didn’t care and said “Whatever..Hell, Leeann, what are we gonna do now?”

I have to tell you that just her saying “we” relieved me so much that I threw my head into her lap and started bawling like I was my niece, Tallulah, with a skinned knee, and, Jessie, she can be so good - she just patted my head and told me we would figure it out, and that “Hell, yeah, we would figure it out right this second of the day.”

I always worried when Jessie said “Hell, yeah”, as it usually meant doing something crazy, like letting the llamas from the agricultural farm into someone’s house for fun. And that time was no exception. She made me call George right then on his cell phone and tell him to meet us both behind the Piggly Wiggly Supermarket right quick.

The Piggly was about the only place in Dalton where you could talk to anyone right in town without a fear of being disturbed. See, Sandy Jacobs, who is our friend Britney’s dad, he ran the Piggly Wiggly store in town, and he had got into a terrible fight a year previously with Lurton Smits, the local garbage man. And because of that heated disagreement, now Lurton would not pick up garbage from the dumpsters from behind the store. And Mr. Jacobs, he didn’t get around to doing it more than once a month, so the place stunk like the bowels of hell. And, in addition, the rats started coming around, so while it was real disgusting back there, it was also real private, and privacy was not something that came easy in Dalton.

Chapter 13

George was already parked in his Humvee behind the store when we pulled up, on account of the Willets' Building being three doors down from the Piggly.

It was raining outside, which was good as it made the rats hide. I purely did not like rats, and that always made Jessie laugh at me, ‘cause she was not afraid of them one bit, and liked to pitch rocks at them whenever we came back here during lunch break at school to smoke a J.

Anyways, we both jumped out of her truck and into George's Humvee real quick. Only Jessie shoved me out of the way and got into the shotgun seat, forcing me to sit in back, which made me real mad, and I told her so, and she told me to shut up, this was her meeting and she was doing all the talking.

Like I have said before, Jessie is real pretty too, so instead of finding her all high handed, I could tell George thought she was cute as a button. He grinned at both of us and called us ladies, asking what he could do for us, and had we called him to a meeting at this “real nice spot” so we could attack him or something? He said normally he wasn’t into threesomes, but for us he would make an exception. Can you believe it? Of all the times in his life for George to try to act like some bad ass guy, he had to pick then. I thought Jessie’s eyes were going to pop right out of her head she was so mad. Hell, I think she might have been growling even.

So instead of breaking the news to George, all nice and subtle, she just got right in his face, and said in a real mean voice “Leeann’s pregnant, you fat asshole, and I am real sad to have to say it's yours so, now that I have told you this fine news, you might wanta tell your mama that her dumbass little mumps story wasn’t such a good idea after all. Now, what are you going to do about this?”

So help me, I swear that if there were a manual for a wrong way to tell a man bad news, then I guess Jessie would have written it.

George was pissed and I mean big time. Sadly I think it was more about Jessie having the balls to say straight to his face that his mama was wrong than it was about me being in a delicate condition. He started ranting and raving - he’d run out of steam for a minute and then he’d start it up some more. He just went on and on, all about his mama knew everything about conception and sterility and did we think he “was so goddamned stupid as to have sex without protection if he did not know for a goddamned fact that he was sterile?”

Then George, he said this real ugly thing about how I must have been “chippying around” on him and I must have thought it would be real clever to try and pass off “some no account, loser’s bastard off on him to give it the Willets' name.”

Of course then Jessie socked him in his ugly eye, which was no surprise to me, but it sure was one to him, and I jumped out of the Humvee and took off running for Jessie’s truck. And then Jessie and him both jumped out of the Humvee and came barreling over to me. George's eye was already swelling up and his hair was all flat from the rain, and I decided right then and there that Jessie was right, he was a fat, ugly ass old man, and I would get me an abortion one way or another before the week was over, and I guess I didn’t just think it, I said it too because, when me and Jessie peeled out (splashing him with garbage on the way), he looked like he might have been crying.

Me and Jess drove around for about an hour doing some J and T, and trying to figure out how to come up with a story for going to a women's clinic in Oklahoma City, and then we went back to my house and that was a mistake, too, because my daddy was home. And when we walked in, he switched off the TV, which was something that he never did even on Easter Sunday when mama would beg him to shut off “that damn idiot box” so we could eat in peace.

Daddy got up off the couch and walked over to me and Jessie who were just standing there dripping rainwater onto Mama's clean floors. He had this terrible look on his face and he was holding something in his hand. He said in this real funny voice I had never heard him use before “Jessie, you need to go on home now. I got to talk to my daughter about something in private.”

I knew it was going to be bad and right then everything else was so bad that I didn’t think I could take one more thing and live to tell about it. So I grabbed Jessie’s hand real tight and begged her not to go. That made Daddy madder, I could tell, but I figured it didn’t matter much by that point. I knew that whatever he was going to say would be bad either way, so I just looked him in the eye and said “Go ahead and say what you are going to say, Daddy … Jessie ain’t leaving.”

He shrugged. “All right then, Leeann, sure Jessie can stay, what the hell … she’s probably in on it anyway.”

That was bad hearing him calling me ;Leeann’. My daddy had called me by my given name maybe twice in my life, mostly I was just “Baby Girl”. And when I sneaked a look at Jessie standing next to me, I could tell she flat out would have made a break for the door if my hand wasn’t clutching her wrist like the way Godzilla held onto Naomi Watts in the movie.

Daddy didn’t say nothin’ else, he just opened up his hand and dropped my diamond studs on the linoleum where they rolled a little before stopping in front of my feet. He looked at me like he didn’t even know who I was, and I know it would have broken my heart under normal conditions, but right then I was too numb to feel much of anything; just like them poor boys in Iraq or Iran or wherever they is, who get hit upside the head with them nasty I.E.D. things Randy told me about.

Daddy’s voice was fierce when he spoke to me. “You tell me this, Leeann, how did my seventeen year old daughter, who don’t even have a job, get diamonds, huh? How, Leeann? You been whoring? My own daughter been whoring? Oh shit girl, you’d best speak up right now if you want to live to see Thursday.”

I was shaking so hard, and I started to speak. I tried to, but when I opened my mouth, instead of words all this vomit just came spilling out. I had never seen so much vomit ... it was like a horror movie. It splashed Daddy and Jessie, and it just covered those cursed diamonds right up. I remember thinking, and this is so stupid that I’m embarrassed to write it down here, but what I thought is ‘Will the vomit make the diamonds less valuable now?’

I know that was some crazy thinking, but see, while Jessie and I were in the car, we had decided to pawn the damn things to pay for my surgery, and then spend the rest of the money on a spring break trip to Tallahassee to make ourselves feel better. So, right then, that’s all I could think of.

Daddy looked like he had been shot, and Jessie, well Jessie she is the girl to be in a fire or any natural disaster with, ‘cause she just straightened up her little shoulders (Jessie is real tiny) and said real brave like “Charlie, Leeann, well she ain’t feeling too good. I think she better go upstairs, and you and me we’ll talk; we’ll talk about everything. I’ll tell you what's been going on, but you gotta let Leeann go upstairs now, all right, Charlie?”

It’s funny because my daddy is not one to have a female girl child tell him what to do and, when he’s mad, he doesn’t listen to nobody, not even God, Mama says. But right then, he just nodded his head. It must have been the dim light in the room because it was early dark and raining to boot, but my daddy's face looked so old right then.

I started to head to the kitchen for a towel to clean up my mess, but Jessie stopped me. She said, talking real quick before daddy could lose it again, “It's all right, Leeann, you go on up, I got this. I’ll just get a rag from the kitchen and clean this up. Hey, I think I’ll pull a beer for Charlie while I’m doing it too, and maybe one for me too, if that’s okay, Charlie.”

My daddy just nodded like a dumb bull at the end of a cattle prod, and I reached out my hand to him and, God help me, he backed away from me, my own daddy who had loved me “more than he loved the sun” every day of my life.

He backed away from me.

Jessie just shook her head at me and pointed her little chin to the stairway.

I went upstairs because I didn’t know what else to do and, truth to tell, I was feeling sick - sick and tired, more tired than I had ever felt. I climbed those stairs like an old, old lady, and I must have been sicker than I knew because, as I got to the landing where it was real dark, I swear on the bible I heard someone laughing … laughing at me. It was a woman’s laugh, but not a happy one; it sounded like how you laugh when you are kind of hysterical, like when you are on a real scary ride and want to laugh to make yourself feel better.

I jumped like a scalded cat when I heard it, and looked around me real fast, but there was no one there. Of course there wasn’t, and then I looked down and I saw Muffin; damn was I glad to see that cat. I scooped her up and carried her into my room.

“Geez, Muffin, you gave me the fright of my life, you stupid cat. That sound you just made sounded like a crazy woman laughing. I don’t know how you did that, but don’t ever do it again, you hear me.”

I turned on the lamp in my pretty lavender bedroom, and curled up in a ball. I didn’t even take off my coat or go take a shower, even though I stunk of vomit and felt dirty deep down. I just wanted to lay there until my mama came home and took me in her arms and told me that it would be okay. She always said that whenever anything went wrong for me, and she was always right. But to be strictly honest now, I thought maybe this time Mama wouldn’t want to put her arms around me anymore, that maybe she would back away from me too, like Daddy did.

I wondered what Jessie was saying to Daddy downstairs, and what he was saying in return, and then I wondered about how Muffin had sounded like a grown-up woman laughing in the dark at the top of the stairs, and why she had waited eight years of her cat life to make such a horrible sound. And then I had to go and wonder what Donny Readle would think of me if he could see me right then, and then I fell asleep still crying.

Chapter 14

It was full dark when I woke up. Someone had been in my room and turned off my lamp and covered me up with my favorite purple patchwork quilt that my Grandma Belle had made for my thirteenth birthday.

My mouth tasted horrible, and I pushed back the quilt and went down the hall to the bathroom. I just meant to brush my teeth, but once I was in there I needed to get all the way clean. I shampooed my hair twice and scrubbed down my skin with shower scrub till I was pink. I brushed my teeth in the shower and then tilted my head back and filled my mouth with hot shower water about ten times, spitting and swallowing until I got that bad taste out.

When I got out of the shower, I realized I had forgotten my robe and nightgown and I had to run real fast down the hall to my room naked and it happened again … that horrible laughing, just as I was getting to my room. I slammed the door real loud, and damn it if Muffin wasn’t still right where I had left her laying on my bed.

I had to figure then that now, on top of everything else that had gone wrong, I was probably crazy as a rabid coon to boot. I had just gotten into my favorite flowered p.j.s when Mama opened the door and came into my bedroom. I was so glad to see her that I started to jump up and run to her to be hugged. But she just waved me back down and sat on the side of my bed real heavy. Her eyes were bright red, and she had funny little splotches all over her face.

Somehow I knew it would be best if she never started talking. I guess I knew before she did that whatever she was going to say, that it would make it all be over - my girlhood, the life I had now - and that what was waiting for me in return …well it wouldn’t be as good as what I already had.

I wanted to stop her speaking by telling her then that I was so sorry and about how I felt sick to death thinking about the things I had done with George, the clothes and the money, and the cocaine. I wanted to tell her everything bad right then so that she could make it all go away … especially the baby in my stomach that I hated right then so bad that I wanted to scrub it out, like I had just scrubbed the dried vomit out of my hair in the shower.

But Mama stopped me from my telling, and took me onto her lap like she had when I was tiny. She started rocking me back and forth saying “Shh, baby, it’s all right, it’ll all be fine soon. This was a real shock to your daddy and me, and he’s taken it awful hard. You know though, Honey, he’ll be better in time. He just needs to get used to everything. He’s got to get to thinking about his little girl being a woman now and that ain’t easy, not for any man, and you know your daddy, he takes to changes worst than most. But he’ll come round, he always does, and when you’re married and you put his grandbaby into his arms, why he’ll be just as proud as he was the day the doctor put you in his arms. I think the day you were born was the best day your daddy ever had.”

I pulled back and started talking real fast.

“No, Mama, what are you saying? I am not gonna get married; I’m not having this baby! I know I did a real bad thing, and I know you think abortions a sin, but it’s not, Mama. It’s not even a real baby yet. We saw a film in health sciences about this. It’s not even the size of a fingernail yet. Mama, don’t you make me ruin my life for a goddamned fingernail, no Mama, I am not marrying George and having this baby. I hate George and I hate his baby too.”

And then my own mama, who had never even tapped me on the bottom in my life, hauled off and slapped me so hard across my face that I felt my teeth rattle. I fell back against my headboard. After a second I sat up and started to scream, but she just said in this real hard voice that I had never heard before “Don’t, Leeann, just don’t. I’m sorry I hit you, but to hear my own child, who was raised a Christian girl, calling a baby a fingernail, and hearing you saying that you hate your own baby, well I couldn’t bear it. And I’ll tell you true, Leeann, that after the night I have had, that your daddy and I have had fixing your mess up, and us having to listen to the things Bethany Willets called our family, well that was just too much you saying those things to me.”

I got real quiet then. I said “Sorry, Ma’am” and I waited to hear what I had to be told.

Here are all the things that happened while I was asleep. First Jessie told Daddy the whole story (except about George giving me cocaine, but that was all she left out). She told him about Dallas and the clothes and the hunting cabin; he already knew about the damn earrings, which I had hid up top of the refrigerator where no one ever cleaned, knowing that if I left them in my room, Mama would find them. Of course, as luck would have it, Daddy had been stashing his chewing tobacco up there too so Mama wouldn’t find it, and that’s how he found those cursed earrings.

After Jessie gave him all the sad facts, I guess Daddy went crazier than a wounded bear and he drove straight down to the Willets Building and went right on into the penthouse without asking for no appointment. He about tore the place apart in front of George and his daddy, and when he was done screaming and flailing, then he made them both get into his pickup and, all squashed together, they drove to Doc Miller’s office. Once they were there he made Doc Miller examine George right then.

While all this was going on, George’s daddy, Mr. Willets, had been calling Miz Willets who high tailed it down to Doc Miler’s like a cat on fire. I’ll tell you true, that if all this hadn’t been about me, it would have been funny as all get out. I can only imagine what Mama’s best friend Nancy, Doc Miller’s nurse, must have been thinking as well as poor Doc Miller.

Anyhow, since the test on George took about an hour, Daddy, and Mr. and Miz Willets was all stuck together in the waiting room, and God knows what insults must have been exchanged.

Then finally poor Doc Miller called in the whole motley crew, George included, telling ‘em all to head on into his office because they needed to hear some facts. Doc Miller explained real sternly to them that George was most certainly not sterile, and wondered why in the hell anyone thought he was. George and good ol’ Miz Willets herself started talking at the same time about mumps and how it makes you sterile. They was trying to make Doc Miller take back the news, I guess. Daddy told me later that Doc Miller looked at them two like they were the biggest set of fools to ever darken his door, and he told them that mumps only sometimes makes you sterile if you get it as a man not and not at six as George did. And then, because he is a real funny guy, Doc Miller, he reached into his desk and handed George a cigar, and said “Congratulations, Daddy.”

When Doc Miller said that, my own daddy went all nuts again and told George he was going to marry me right quick or he’d be spending the rest of his days at the bottom of Lake Injun. Then Miz Willets told Daddy that their little trashy bleached blond daughter (can you believe she said that about me?) would be lucky if they would even pay for an abortion as “Who knows who the father really is.”

The weirdest part of the whole sad affair is that George turned to his mama and told her to shut up, which she did, being in shock. And then George’s daddy tells him to apologize to his mother, and George said “No, I won’t.” And then he turned to my daddy and said nice as pie “Sir, I am real sorry about taking advantage of Leeann behind your back. That was awful wrong of me, but I am aiming to make it right. I love her, and I want to marry her as soon as we can, and raise our little baby together.”

Well, poor daddy, you can only imagine his feelings; here he was getting all happy about getting to kill George and then murder him and everything, and then George goes and says that nice thing, which must have took the wind right out of daddy’s puffed up sails.

I was pretty surprised to hear about what George said myself, to tell the strict truth. I still hated George of course for how he had acted that afternoon, but then it made me feel kind of warm to think of him standing up to his mama like that, and talking to my daddy so nice about me in front of everyone.

Mama saw I was softening up and she laughed a little, and said that when she first got home from the shop and saw George and Mr. and Miz Willets sitting in her living room, she thought the world must have ended because, by the time Mama got in on things, they had changed and everybody was trying to act all chummy. With the help of the bottle of Johnny Walker Black that George had brought along, he and Daddy and Mr. Willets was all best friends by then; only Miz Willets still looked like a snake bit yard dog.

I guess Miz Willets must have known she was beat that day, and was just sitting there plotting how she would get me later for this when I became a legally wedded Willets, because Mama said she tried to act real gracious, even though she did ask for a towel to sit on, saying in a voice sweet as poison “Because your furniture is just covered in cat hair … My Lord.”

So after Mama was brought into the loop, they all decided that George and I would get married on June Fifteenth, which was the first Saturday after my graduation, and that the Willets would pay for the reception because, as Miz Willets said (this is her being gracious by the way), “They couldn’t let their only son have his wedding reception in the basement of some church and serve Twinkies and spam for the food.”

Mama was laughing when she repeated that, but I would bet my hair that she didn’t laugh when Miz high and mighty Willets said it to her face. When Mama finished talking I just nodded, mostly because I could see she was still on the edge of a huge old nervous breakdown and I wasn’t looking to get slapped again.

Since I had gotten up that morning, I had had a full day at school, which on its own is pretty demanding. All day long, every day, I have to smile at everyone who wants to say “Hey, Leeann,” to me, which is just about everyone and the janitor at Dalton High. If you want to know the truth, being popular is an awful lot of work; well not for Jessie, but she’s crazy. Why, once she said out loud in class that she wondered if the only reason our school hadn’t had itself a Columbine was because there were just too many assholes for anyone to know where to start shooting. That little speech landed her on a shrink’s couch for a week, but I guess the poor man either gave up or ended up needing a shrink himself ‘cause we didn’t hear no more about it.

But this isn’t about school, it’s about my horrible day, so, anyway, after school I had to watch for Jessie during the commission of her crime at the pharmacy. I found out I was pregnant, I heard George say things it would surely take me fifty years or so to forget. After all them good times, I had to have that awful scene, complete with vomiting just like that girl in the movie ‘The Exorcist’ in the hallway with my daddy looking on. Shoot, and then my perfect day was topped off by hearing my very own cat laughing at me in the dark, like another scene out of some horror movie, and, just to ice my cake, then my mama about knocked my teeth down my throat.

Yes it had surely been quite a day. If I had any thoughts right then about still trying to get those diamond earrings to a pawn broker and maybe having myself a little old termination procedure and running off forever to parts unknown, but most probably Hollywood, then I was going to keep those thoughts all to myself and, just like Scarlett, I would think about the whole mess tomorrow.

But oh hell no, 'cause there was Mama still sitting there on the edge of my bed, looking at me like isn’t this all so wonderful … how her and Daddy fixed everything up for me. I then and there decided to just give in and start crying. It seemed the best plan and, anyway, I had a hell of a lot to cry about!

So that’s what I did. I started bawling like a scalded calf, and finally Mama started acting more like herself. She started crooning and stroking me, telling me that I was still her good girl, her darling girl, and that was more like it, I’ll tell you.

It was too good to last, cause then, oh hell, if she didn’t ask me if I wanted to maybe wash my face and go on downstairs and see George. She said he was just sitting there “so sweet and patient, waiting for you to wake up.” That really tore it for me … See George? Oh poop no, not then anyway, and I thought maybe not ever, at least not till I could see Jessie anyway.

I shook my head real sad-like at Mama, and said I felt so bad and so tired, and could she please just send him home and tell him to come by tomorrow after school instead? But if Jessie was still downstairs could she send her on up?

Mama told me that Jessie went home hours ago, but that, yes, she would send George home for the night … that I did look terrible peaked, and she was just going to go down and send him away and she would bring me up some supper. Well, if I couldn’t have Jessie, then supper sounded pretty good to me as long as there was no George for dessert. I ate, and then turned off my light. I guessed that tonight anyway I would get away with not taking down my dishes and, besides, I just was not ready to see my daddy.

I wanted to give him a chance to cool down and remember how much he loved me first. I was bone tired, but too anxious to sleep. I did not know what the hell to do. I could run away, but where to? Jessie would help me, but she wouldn’t come with me. I knew as long as Mark was here, that was where she would be. For a tiny minute I just laid there hating him for having such a big part of Jessie. I didn’t have any money and I figured by now Daddy had hidden those diamond earrings somewhere where I would never find them, like at the bottom of Lake Injun or in the dumpster behind Piggly.

My daddy may have hated the Willets but he would have hated the idea of an unwed pregnant daughter more. And since Daddy and I were two of a kind, he must have guessed already that I was thinking of using the diamonds as an escape hatch. I damned my stupid self for a fool for leaving those rocks in the hallway covered in my vomit. I had a small last hope, though. I thought maybe Jessie had saved them for me. So, okay, that was one possible plan, if Jessie had taken the earrings, I could pawn them, end the pregnancy and head on up to California, and do something.

Oh, but I knew I would be so lonely if I left Dalton. I had never been away from Mama and Daddy for more than one night at a time in my whole life. Even thinking about how it would be to never see them or Jessie, or my brother and Sarah Beth and little Tallulah again made me feel like I might die of loneliness. Why, just considering leaving made tears start up again.

No, I didn’t really want to go to California where, anyway, Mama was always telling stories about beautiful young girls just like me being “swept up into pornography, and then never being heard from again.” What I really wanted was just to go on being me, Leanne Worthier, “the prettiest girl ever born in Dalton, OK.” Why I was a shoo-in for Corn Princess next month, I knew I was. That was all I really wanted, just to stay at home and graduate from school, and then marry Donny Readle. It was that last thought which brought me up short and back to my senses. Donny was married and therefore forever out of my reach. And me? Well I was pregnant … pregnant with George Willets’ baby. I knew my mama would never in a million years let me have an abortion, so what were my real choices if California was out? I knew my mama and daddy would never throw me out into the cold. Nope, I could stay right where I was. I could have the baby and keep sleeping in my pretty lavender bedroom, just with a crib beside the bed. Of course, if I did that, then instead of being the girl everyone in town wanted to be, I would become a living cautionary whale instead. Shoot, if I played my cards right, maybe after a while I could even have a career at the Piggly, since Britney’s daddy ran the place and I knew he liked me. Yep, I could just see myself now standing at the cash register wearing my little maternity smock and a boatload of humiliation as an accessory, taking out cartons for the dumpster and trying not to get rat bit.

I could watch all my girlfriends having their big fancy weddings and maybe, after I got my figure back, I could even be a bridesmaid for one or two of them, that is if anyone would still talk to me, Dalton not being exactly progressive in its views on unwed girls. I knew Jessie would always be my best friend, but I thought she might end up being the only one in town who would not be pointing and whispering every time they saw me.

Then there was choice number three: marry George and become part of the richest family in town. I could have the biggest damn spit-in-your-eye wedding anyone ever saw, and pretend like this was a honeymoon baby.

If I did that, then every girl in Dalton would be green as glass with jealousy. I figured that everyone in town would think it was just fitting if the most beautiful girl married the richest boy, and lived happily ever after; lived happily in the big old house that George would build for me. Shoot, I didn’t really hate George. Heck before yesterday, I had liked him fine. And since I knew I would be spending my whole life living without the only man I could ever love, why not marry George? He was a lot better than the stupid boys from school who looked at me all pop-eyed. I had never agreed with that saying “money can’t buy happiness.” Hell no, I agreed with the other saying, the one that went “people who say money can’t buy happiness aren’t shopping in the right stores.”

I felt better after I had worked out all the pros and cons of my situation. I knew I could sleep then. There was just one thing I wondered about before I finally went out like a light: had that really been Muffin laughing in the hall earlier? I certainly hoped it had been, even though owning a cat who could laugh like a girl would be odd to say the least. I hoped after a million years of living in this house that we weren’t getting all infested with ghosts all of sudden. I would not like that one bit, and Mama, whoa, she would hit the ceiling. I knew if she thought we had a ghost she would make poor Daddy start going to church with her. I could just imagine what she would say.

“Well, Charlie, see there, do you see what your God ignoring ways have brought on us? Now we have ourselves a demon living upstairs in our hallway and you are going to start going to church with me and letting me have Reverend Lawton over for dinner too! You brought this on us and you are going to repent.”

Course I knew if she said that, then Daddy would for sure tell her that he would rather share his damned house with a demon than crazy ole Reverend Lawton who had bugs in his head and was always looking behind people’s furniture to see if the devil was hiding there. I hate to be all disrespectful about a man of God, but I got to say that I tended to agree with Daddy when he said that he “thought old scratch might have better things to do with his time than hide behind a respectable man’s Lazy Boy recliner like some kind of garden toad.”

Just thinking about the two of them arguing over a demon in the hallway made me start to laugh, and then finally I was asleep and the world’s longest day was over.

Chapter 15

The next day at school Jessie kept eyeing me up and down all morning long. She acted like a big nasty tom cat just waiting to eat some poor canary, and when she finally got me alone at lunch, she just started in like there was no tomorrow.

“Christ on a crutch, Leeann, you sure sunk us in it this time. Do you know that when I told your daddy about you and old fat ass George, I thought he was going to kill himself or maybe me, and then what the fuck if I don’t get dragged off to old Doc Millers along with the rest of the circus, just so I can find out if fat George can shoot live rounds or not. You want to talk about too much information, you try sitting and listening to something like that. It’s real sad for you but I guess he can, huh?”

Jessie paused for breath,getting ready to start again, but I cut her right off by putting my arms around her and telling her that she was the one good thing still left in my life, and that I loved her more than anything in this world. That shut her up but good! Jessie can’t take stuff like that; it broke her up a little bit too, because she pulled away all rough like and in this gravel voice she just told me “Damn straight, and don’t you ever forget it.” Then we got down to the business of me telling her what everyone had decided about my future.

Jessie said it sounded awful and horrible both to her, but she said she guessed that if I could stick it out for a couple of years, then “them ugly ass Willets would give me a shitload of money to divorce George and let them keep his mutant baby.”

I had not previously considered this aspect of the situation, but it did sound exactly like something Miz Willets might do after all. And who knew, maybe by then I would have some ideas of what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, or even better, maybe Donny would get a divorce too … Carlene being such trash and all, and then …well … yeah, anyway, I thought what Jessie said sounded fine. I told her hell yeah, that might work out real good and meanwhile would she be my maid of honor? She said hell yeah, but only if she could wear black, and I told her she could wear black leather if she wanted to. Jessie said she might just do that so as to make Miz Willets shit herself. We were both laughing by then, and the ugly day I’d lived through before seemed like it all happened a million years ago, or to someone else.

I was just getting ready to tell her how Muffin was now apparently possessed by some laughing demon which was living in our upstairs hallway, when Jessie cut me off and pointed over my shoulder.

“What the hell, Leeann? Look at that. The Willets done parked their hearse at the curb! Shoot, I think Miz Willets must have decided to have ya’ll kidnapped and buried so as not to face the disgrace of having such white trash as yourself in her fine ass family.”

I punched her in the shoulder and asked who she was calling white trash? But shoot, Jessie was right. There was the Willets Petroleum limo just sitting there at the curb. The limo was attracting no small amount of notice, I can tell you, and kids were already pointing and staring when, what the hell,out gets George, big as life, wearing a freaking tuxedo at eleven a.m. in front of George Willets High. Oh hell, he looked like an awful fool in that suit and, of course, his pants were too short. I liked to have died of embarrassment. Then Lurlene and Britney had to wander over all curious to take in the show, nasty things. Lurlene hollered out in her girlish voice, which sounds just like the bell at pig feeding time “What’s going on? Is that George Willets? What’s he doin’ here?”

Jessie, being in usual form, answered her in real innocent voice “Hell no, girls, that there’s old George Bush himself. I think he’s here to ask Leeann to be his next vice president. Why, I’m almost for sure he is, what with Dick Cheney done having run off with Halle Berry.” They just rolled their eyes at her, which is somewhat of a surprise when you think about it, as they are both certainly dumb enough to have believed Jessie. Anyways, the upshot of my story is that we was all standing there gaping at George like the fools we were.

George was real nervous, I could tell. His face was bright red. I suppose to be fair that it was real embarrassing for him to have to walk up in front of everyone and their brother like that, dressed in a tuxedo and everything. But, to be strictly honest, all I could think was that I wished his pants weren’t too short, and I also wished that he had picked somewhere else to do this to me.

But see now, it’s just like that saying, “what a difference a day makes”, or, in my case, Lord above, what a difference three minutes could make, because when George made it up to where I was standing, he got down on his knees, which I hated, and then all rushed like, he said “Leeann, will you marry me? Here, this is for you.”

He shoved this blue leather box in my hand. I opened it and, hell, I don’t know with all the screaming - me, Jessie, Lurlene, Britney, and old Miss Taylor, our principal who had come outside to see what all the fuss was about - which of us was the loudest. It was the biggest, and I mean the biggest, damn diamond anyone had ever seen in their whole lives. The diamond George gave me that morning well, shoot, it made Miz Willets' boulder look like a damn pebble. I did not know then, but I do now, that my diamond was ten and one half carats; total cost four hundred and sixty thousand dollars, cash American!

Well when I saw that ring, all my feelings of indecision and still being mad at George from the day before, them bad feelings just melted right away like they had never been there at all. Jessie had to help me get it on my finger because I was shaking so hard, and poor George, he couldn’t get near me for all the people crowding around to eye that ring. But I caught his eye over Jessie’s shoulder and said “Hell, yes, I’ll marry you, George Willets.” Everyone just about died laughing, and then I was in his arms and he was whooping like Daddy did when his team had just scored a touchdown. Miss Taylor wrote me an excuse to get out of school for the rest of the day, and I jumped on into that limo with George and he told the driver to take us out to the hunting cabin, and “don’t come back for two hours.” When we got there it had about fifty dozen bouquets of lavender roses covering every inch of it.

Me and George drank a whole bottle of champagne as, being so excited; we totally forgot that I was pregnant in the heat of the moment. Later on I got real worried about it, but George said I shouldn’t worry. He said that all the Willets men knew how to hold their liquor, which seemed hilarious to me at the time.

It’s funny but ever since I had told George yes, and got my ring, and everyone at school had acted so happy and excited, well it made me realize that, after all, I was pretty sure I had loved him and wanted to marry him all along. He got real emotional when I told him what I was thinking, and he said to me “Leeann, I realized last night that I had been the biggest asshole in Oklahoma to you when you told me you was pregnant. So, when you wouldn’t see me last night, I got afraid that I had lost you and our little baby forever. That’s why I got my sorry ass up at the crack of dawn this morning and I had my pilot fly me to Harry Winston up in Dallas You know, Sugar, when I got inside old Harry’s place, why I decided to break the bank and get the biggest, most beautiful ring for the most beautiful girl, which you for sure are, Leeann, even if you ain’t the biggest.”

He told me that when I had said "Hell, yes" to him, why he realized he had never been happier in his life than when he was with me, and now that he knew how happy I made him, why, if I had said no, he was gonna come out here and look at all these roses he had got me, and then blow his brains out.

I thought that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me, so I said to him “Hey, Georgie, I know you like to look at me when I am just wearing diamonds, so how about I model this one for you right now?” I had never called him Georgie before on account of me not realizing I had loved him all along. He must have liked it too, because he just grinned like a pole cat, and nodded up and down real fast. Then he reached into his pocket and handed me my diamond studs. He said I better put “these on too, so I wouldn’t catch a cold.”

I was pretty happy to see them and asked him how the heck he had gotten them back. He got this kind of sad expression on his face then and told me that after he convinced my daddy that he loved me, and wanted to marry me, well then him and Daddy, who were both real drunk at the time, went dumpster diving out back of the Piggly.

I started to laughing so hard that I could barely get my earrings on, and my clothes off. George, he got real offended, and said to me “Hell, Leeann, I don’t know why you’re laughing. Shit, it was the most disgusting thing I ever had to do. Your daddy's a crazy man, throwing them diamonds into the garbage like that. Those goddamn earrings cost me nearly a hundred thousand dollars.”

I was buck naked by then, except for what I now know was nearly six hundred thousand dollars worth of diamonds, so I sauntered on over and sat down on his lap still laughing and said, “I know baby. That is just awful what Daddy did; it’s just that, see, the last thing I was thinking of last night was that I bet Daddy either put my earrings in the Piggly’s dumpster or that he threw them in Lake Injun, and I was right, see, so that’s what I’m laughing about … not at you.”

Well, looking at me sitting there naked as the day I was born, George didn’t seem to much care anymore what I was laughing at. And right before we got started doing stuff, he told me that he loved me so much and that he was gonna see that I got to have everything in the world I wanted every day of my life. That sounded real fine to me and, to be strictly honest, that was the first time that George and I ever did it when I liked it too.

Chapter 16

George went inside with me that night for the first time. Daddy was sitting in the living room looking like a dog’s dinner. I knew about his little trashcapades the night before so I wasn’t too surprised. He looked up at me standing there wearing all my bling, and at George in his (real rumpled now) tuxedo and he just grunted. But George, well hell, he must have been taking hero pills that day, because he went right on in and sat down next to Daddy on the couch and said nice as pie “Mr. Worthier, Sir, I just wanted to thank you for agreeing to give me Leeann’s hand in marriage. Today she said yes too and, I’ve got to tell you, I am feeling like about the luckiest son of a bitch in Oklahoma right now. I am hoping that you will step outside with me and get into that limo and we can go down to Downey’s and sink a few in honor of this special occasion.”

Daddy looked like he had been hit up side of the head with a baseball bat.

“Son, I appreciate the sentiments, and I think it’s real good that you are standing up to your responsibilities as a man should do, but, boy, if we get out of that limo and walk into Downey’s with you dressed like that, we are liable to both get killed dead and then murdered.”

George threw back his head and laughed. “All right then, Mr. Worthier, I’ll just leave the jacket here with my bride to be and this damn bow tie too, and we can ride on down in your rig if you want.” While he was talking, he ripped off the jacket and the bow tie which I noted was not a clip on like the one Randy had worn at his wedding. After he did that, George looked just like any man in a plain shirt and black pants - which were too short still - but now that I realized I loved him and everything, well I just made a note to myself to let the hem out one day, as I sewed real nicely thanks to Mama.

Daddy looked George up and down, like he was the mayor of clothing town and said in a kinda choked up voice like he was trying not to laugh at George ”All right, Son, you’ll do, and I’ll tell you what, you can call me Charlie. We’ll be family now, and family don’t call each other Mr. this and that. Leeann, Sugar, tell your mama not to wait supper. I got to show my new son here how to drink like a Worthier.”

I was awful happy to hear my daddy calling me ‘Sugar’ again, and I was damn proud of George for getting him to do it. To show my happiness at these events, I kissed them before they got out the door, a big long wet one for George and then a short hard hug for my daddy, who didn’t pull away. Mama was always saying “what a difference a day makes”, and wasn’t that the truth?

Chapter 17

Tomorrow is the wedding and our whole house has been in an uproar for the last two weeks. Mama made - insisted on making - all the bridesmaid dresses. I really wanted to buy them from Couture Brides, which is the same store that I got my perfect dress from, but I never told her that because it would have killed her.

Jessie said if I even suggested it, I would be acting just like Miz Willets, and that the whole town would have stopped using Elma’s Occasion Gowns if her own daughter didn’t have them in her wedding. She had a point, so I just acted real excited about Mama’s designs which, to be strictly honest, looked like every other bridesmaid dress she had ever made; in other words, big and taffeta. This meant that in addition to Jessie and Sarah Beth’s fittings, we had Lurlene, Britney, May, my twin cousins Polly and Molly, and those freaks Audrey and Missy traipsing in and out of the house constantly. Daddy had pretty much moved into Downey’s to avoid all the females in his house, and Jessie and I wished we could go with him. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the new lavender carpet for our townhouse had come, and it wasn’t lavender at all … it was some horrible cranberry color. When I saw it I just cried and cried. George got so flustered, he kept saying “Come on, Sugar, I’ll get 'em to fix it, you know I will.” But I couldn’t stop crying. Finally he just rushed me back to Mama who told him not to worry, that it was just pregnancy hormones, and that it “would get worse before it got better” which did not seem to reassure him a bit.

Speaking of pregnancy, I had not been able to go to the bathroom for an entire week. I think the last time was right before my graduation six days before. The situation of me not being able to poop had made me as bloated as that fat Audrey. I’ll tell you this too, being bloated from being constipated was just too much to take in addition to being pregnant. Being constipated made me cry too, and I wanted to go to Doc Miller about it, but Mama said I was overreacting and it would all come out in the wash, which in no way applied to my situation.

The day previous to my wedding, I couldn’t take how bad my stomach felt, and I barged on into Doc Miller’s office. He was real nice to me and told me that constipation was perfectly normal in pregnancy, and then he told me to try an enema. Well, to begin with I think I will never be able to look at Doc Miller again after that little conversation, and I was sure too embarrassed to be asking him how to use an enema. So the upshot of this is that I had to attend my own wedding rehearsal, and the dinner afterwards, as a huge gassy, bloated freak. I looked more like a damned float than a girl who was used to sitting on top of one of ‘em.

Poor George is not getting much of a bargain in me. Shoot, even my engagement ring was tight. Jessie, in order to cheer me up, said that I looked real cute with a double chin, and I just looked back at her and let some of my pregnancy gas rip, which made her shut up right quick.

The rehearsal dinner was going to be at Downey’s. My daddy had to pay for the rehearsal dinner, so he said we would all go where he wanted. Downey’s isn’t really a restaurant, but they do serve burgers if you ask for them. Mama said we would all get ptomaine and be dead before the wedding. Jessie said going to Downey’s was the best part of the “whole horrible idea so far.” George, well he just loved my daddy and seemed to want to hang out with him at Downey’s every chance he got anyway.

Surprise, surprise, when Miz Willets found out where the rehearsal dinner was, she made up some excuse and stated that she will not be attending, though George’s daddy said he was coming. When George broke the tragic news to me about his mama being a no show, I decided maybe Jessie was right after all about Downeys being the best part, though I felt strongly that she was dead wrong about how me marrying George was still a horrible idea.

PART II

Chapter 18

Mama sure was right when she said what a difference a day makes. Today is the day after my wedding, and I am not in Hawaii at the Diamond Head Beach Resort; I am not even in the suite at the Mansion in Turtle Creek where George and I were supposed to spend our wedding night. Nope … none of the above. I am in the hospital in Oklahoma City.

I spent my actual wedding night in surgery, so instead of one of my new negligees or bikinis packed for the trip, I am wearing a hospital gown while I write about my romantic adventures. My mama tried to get me into a new nightgown and robe that she brought for me, and to get me to brush my hair, but all I really want to do, if I am going to be strictly honest, is lay here and look at the wall, and not the one with the window in it either.

Yesterday morning I got up real early, even before Mama, because my stomach was hurting something awful. I went and sat in the bathroom for about an hour, and nothing, so I decided I might as well just go on and shower and start my day, since I knew I wasn’t getting back to sleep again. Mama heard me and came to check up on me. She asked me if the pain I was having felt like cramp pain, or like the tummy pain you get when you have gas.

I told her it was the tummy pain kind, and she looked real relieved. Then she told me how to use that nasty enema of Doc Miller’s, which I did, and then a little later I had some results and I felt enough better to eat breakfast with her and Daddy and my brother Randy, who just to be sweet had shown up alone at seven a.m. “so we could have one last breakfast together, just us four.” Well I call doing that, being a real good brother, don’t you?

At nine Jessie showed up. She was filled up with piss and vinegar and insisted on putting on her Maid of Honor dress immediately. All the dresses were a copy of Scarlett O Hara’s white and green dress from Gone With the Wind.

Mama said she had been inspired by the green sash on my lace dress. Of course she had made some adjustments and done them all in taffeta, because she had gotten a lot sale on the fabric. These get ups were topped by huge leghorn hats, which naturally Jessie had to put on too, but after Jessie broke the second of Mama’s prized ceramic cows with one of her head throwing shouts of “fiddle dee dee Miz Scarlett, I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ no babies”, Mama made her take that hat off and go sit down with Daddy in the living room.

Poor daddy was sweating so much in his rented tuxedo that Mama had told him just to stay put in front of the fan. Randy, on the other hand, looked real calm and real handsome too in his tuxedo. George had asked him to stand up with him, which at first I thought was being real nice, until I realized he was just trying to fill out his ranks.

I mean, I had seven attendants so he had to scramble. Finally he found four which still made our line-ups look uneven, but not as bad as if it had been just him and Teddy D standing there as he had previously wanted.

When I was finally dressed, and I had left Mama still sobbing in my bedroom, for the sight of me in that dress had just done her in, it was Randy, not Daddy, who was waiting at the bottom of the stairs to look up at me. He got real still when he saw me, and then just held out his hand. I walked down and took it, and he pulled me into his arms. “You know what, Leeann? You really are the prettiest girl that was ever born in Dalton, Oklahoma.” I got a little choked up because Randy, as I have said, did not say much of anything as a rule.

About then everyone else in my bridal party showed up, and there was not near room enough for all of them inside, especially in those damn bridesmaid dresses, which after the hoops were inserted under the skirts, well they tended to be about twenty feet wide.

Then Daddy was there looking at me and crying, and pretty soon Jessie started yelling at everyone to get into the cars - George had sent three rented limos - and then Mama came down the stairs. Daddy put his hand on his heart, like he was going to faint at the sight of how pretty she looked.

And if I had to say what I was feeling right then … well I was happy I guess, but somehow I also felt a little like I needed to laugh in that wild way that Muffin did. I figured it must just be the gas, though, and there was no time right then for any deep thinking because we were off to the church.

I don’t remember much of the actual ceremony. I was awful nervous, and that just made my stomach hurt worse. We had to have us this darned long Catholic service, though, on account of all the Willets being so devout (don’t make me laugh). So, because of it being all Roman Catholic and old school, George and me were stuck down on our knees for about three days, it felt like, and the whole time I was a nervous wreck, but not because of getting married.

I was real pre-occupied by how bad my stomach hurt, and I was thinking what if I explode and disgrace myself for the next fifty lifetimes right here in this church? I didn’t, but I was sweating pretty bad by then. I still thought it was gas pains combined with nerves, and so I just worked on concentrating on holding myself real still and trying to at least look like I was listening to the priest. Then he finally got around to saying "You may kiss the bride".

George had to get all theatrical and about broke my back bending me way back to kiss like they do in old movies. Then we were kind of galloping down the aisle, because we both wanted to get to the reception real bad, George so he could have a drink and me so I could try to go to the bathroom; my stomach was about to kill me dead by then. As we went by the pews I glanced at Miz Willets who was crying so hard you’d have thought she was at a double funeral, not a wedding. Seeing her act up like that, it made me want to kick her, but there wasn’t time because we had to kiss about fifty people before we could even get into the limo.

There was one thing, though, that brought me up short. In the back pew, just sitting there like he was king of the world, was Donny Readle. Of course I knew he had been invited, he was an old family friend … I just hadn’t thought about what it would be like to see him. It’s funny Carlene wasn’t with him. He was just sitting with his Uncle Hank; he was wearing a gray suit and the sun coming in through the stained glass window shot his hair up with light making him gleam far brighter than any gold I ever saw. I could barely look at his eyes; oh they were just like green glass, and he was staring at me with the funniest expression on his face. I gave him a little smile and a wave, but he didn’t even nod, he just sat there looking at me, with that face of his. I had always dreamed of this day, me and Donny in church on my wedding day, so maybe I let myself get lost there, just for a tiny second imagining things was different. I guess I might have even felt a little shocked when my arm got pulled by George, but that was fine 'cause then it all came clear again real quick. Yep it was my wedding day for certain, but not to Donny. George, he was the one who was my dearly beloved now, and who I belonged to, and he was tugging at me wanting me to get going so we could head to the reception.

There for a minute between how bad my stomach hurt, and the sick feeling I got seeing Donny, I thought maybe I would pass out right there, but I didn’t … not then. I stayed on my feet and made it outside to the limo.

The reception was naturally back at the Dalton Country Club, scene of my bridal washout luncheon, only this time, for every dozen or so white roses for Miz Bethany, there were a dozen lavender roses too. I felt warm then. George, he could be the sweetest man alive and he had insisted on them purple roses 'cause he knew I loved them best.

Instead of a little three piece combo there was a full band, and when George and I walked in, having had to sit in the damn limo like fugitives for half an hour first so everyone else could get inside, the band broke into 'The greatest love of all'. That’s about the most pathetic song I can think of, so obviously Miz Bethany must have chosen it.

Later when Jessie and I were in the bathroom, me in a stall trying to relieve my stomach pressure, and her at the mirror, she said that was probably the song Miz Willets sang when she looked in the mirror. That made me laugh so hard I almost fell off the toilet. Then we had to put on our dog and pony show. First there was the new couple dance, then the father-daughter dance, and the mother-son dance, where Randy and Mama looked real sweet and George and his Mama looked real scary. Then we had the cake cutting, which got all messed up because Miz Willets included herself in that part of the ceremony, so that somehow it ended up with George putting a bite into her mouth before mine. I could not wait to hear what Jessie would say about that!

And then everyone got real drunk the way they always do at receptions and made asses out of themselves doing the chicken dance and so forth.

I threw my bouquet. Lurlene caught it after tripping Jessie to disarm the competition, and then I got led to a chair so George could take my garter off and throw it to the single men.

This part gets real cloudy for me, but what I do remember is sitting down and the men yelling “use your teeth, George.” I was laughing too, I think, when George pushed up the skirt of my perfect lace dress. I know he winked at me, because I had on matching lace stockings, but then his face got funny. George was kneeling between my legs, and all of sudden he started backing away so fast that he fell over onto on his back, and I sat there looking at him and laughing like what the hell? And then I saw it too … blood, there was blood all over my pretty lace stockings. I don’t think I made a sound, but someone did. I heard 'em screaming “Oh my God, look at all that blood” and somebody else yelled "Dial 911", but by then I was sliding off the chair, and that’s all I do remember

Chapter 18

When Jessie came into my hospital room, I did exactly what I had been doing with everyone else - Mama, Daddy and George - I turned my body right over to face the other way. Doing it hurt me quite a bit; I felt like there was no place anywhere on me from my shoulders down that wasn’t beat up. I had been in surgery for four hours and had had two blood transfusions.

I guess I had something called an ectopic pregnancy, where the baby is in your tubes and not your uterus where it belongs, so all that pain I had, the pain my Mama and I and even Doc Miller thought was from constipation, was the baby getting too big for my poor tubes and getting ready to explode or something.

Doc Miller says I was real lucky, and would be able to have as many more babies as I wanted. He was the first one who made me roll over and face away.

You can’t do that kind of thing with Jessie though, she just stepped around to my other side. She did this two more times until the pain from moving around was making me cry and I begged her to stop it.

“Please Jess, just go on home; I don’t feel like talking now.”

Jessie ignored me, of course. She just sat down beside me and took my hand and said if I didn’t want to talk, that was fine; she would talk and I could lie there and push my morphine pump. I was too beat to fight, so I just nodded and laid there with tears trickling down my face which Jessie every once in awhile brushed off for me.

She told me how, after I slid down onto the floor, that “fat pussy, George” just stood there looking shocked, and that it was Donny Readle who pushed his way through the crowd around me to get to me first. Jess said he had picked me up and continued holding me right up until the ambulance got there; that my blood had covered his gray suit - his only suit, I knew - and that she told me he had been so gentle when he laid me on that stretcher … that he wouldn’t let the ambulance men touch me until he had put me down himself. Hearing about that roused me a little bit, and I asked what George had been doing while another man was carrying his bride around. Jessie just sneered and said he had been “crying on his mama’s lap”, which I hoped to God was one of her exaggerations.

Jessie got real serious then and said “Hey, Leeann, I know you are feeling real bad right now, but did you ever think that maybe this is like a gimmee pass? You don’t love George, and you only got married because of the baby, which wasn’t exactly a planned pregnancy anyway. You could annul this marriage, no problem. Hell, Miz Willets would be happy to pay for it, I bet, and probably give you money to boot. You could just put this behind you and start over. I think you’d be glad you did later on. My God, girl, do you realize that tomorrow is your eighteenth birthday? You’re too young for this, Leeann. You need to let your mama and daddy take you home when the doctor releases you. Don’t stay married to that asshole … him and his crazy mama.”

Jessie didn’t understand, and I knew she couldn’t understand, tough as she was. Jess was still a girl like I had been yesterday. The biggest thing that had happened to her so far was getting her diploma last week. She had loved the same nice boy all her whole life, and there was no messy rebound relationship in her life; no pregnancy and now this … this blood and pain and a feeling of emptiness that shocked me because I hadn’t even wanted this baby, had I?

And Jessie, well she could talk about annulment like it was a get out of jail free card, but the thing was I had married George. Granted our for better or for worse had come awful fast, but I knew that if I didn’t at least try, I would feel guilty all my life. I felt sick remembering what I had been thinking about in the church two minutes after I had married him. I had been raised a Christian and I had learned early on that God could hear our bad thoughts loud and clear. If he had heard mine yesterday, well then losing my baby was a righteous punishment and I wasn’t fixin’ to give him anything else to be mad at me about in a hurry.

If George asked me for an annulment, I knew I wouldn’t say no, but if he didn’t, then I was going to stick it. I was different now, and as much as I wanted all this not to have happened, it had and I had to live with the choices I had made. I tried to tell Jess some of this, but she just told me that the morphine had made me more of a drama queen than usual, and I obviously needed more sleep. She told me she would see me in the morning and then she kissed me goodnight. I figured if she had done that I must really look like I was on death’s door. I knew why Jess thought I would be different in the morning; it’s because she thought that I was still a kid like she was, but I wasn’t. I know that just having bad things happen to a girl doesn’t make her turn into a woman right away, but it does cut something out of you. I think that something is being a kid and all that goes with it.

See, when you’re a stupid kid, you just believe in things …that’s really what being a kid is all about. You believe summer won’t ever end and that your parents are happy all the time and that just because you love a boy, why he’ll love you right back and you two will just go on and live happily ever after like people in the movies do. I know other people have had lots worse things happen to them, and I am sorry it’s so, but it ain’t my fault that I got to be born somewhere where I was real happy. And I’ll tell you something else. You ask all them people who are sad and they’ll tell you straight up that if they could have one wish, you know like what genies give, well that wish would be that they could just go back and be a kid again, only maybe this time in a time and place where people was good to them. There ain’t nobody who ever really wants to be a grown-up … it’s just something that happens to you. I guessed I wasn’t a woman yet, but I wasn’t a girl anymore either. I was just stuck somewhere in between.

Thinking about tomorrow being my birthday, which George and I had planned to celebrate in Hawaii, just made me start to cry again so, when the nurse came in, she must have figured that I was in bad pain, which I was, but not that kind, and she hit my pump two times, before pulling up my covers. That was my wedding night.

Chapter 19

The next morning George was sitting at my bed side when I woke up. He looked like a dog’s dinner, all hangdog and unshaven. When he saw me looking at him he gave a little jump, like I was some dead person come back to life, then he took my hand and asked me how I felt. I said okay I guessed. I asked him what he had done about our honeymoon reservations and he told me not to worry about it, we would go as soon as I was feeling better. Then he said all choked up like “I love you, Leeann, and, Honey, there is something we got to talk about.”

I have always hated that sentence; no good ever comes out of it.

I knew it was here, Jessie had called it. I knew that just like in that movie with Sandra Bullock 'While You Were Sleeping', things had been decided for me. George was going to tell me that our marriage had already been annulled and that I had to give back the ring, and probably the earrings too, or his mama would have me jailed for grand theft diamonds.

I started crying real hard before he could even start talking; it felt so horrible to be rejected a second time - first Donny and now even George.

He looked real startled, and started talking fast. “Honey, Honey, it’s just a damn tacky little townhouse. I don’t know who told you, but it’s not a big deal, Sugar. You’ll get used to the mansion right quick and, hell, it’s like I told Daddy, it’s where you belong. The prettiest girl, the best house, Leeann. You’ll be just like a queen there, and heck, Sugar, we’ll have us fifty more kids if you want ‘em. Stop crying now, Sugar.”

Well I did stop crying, because I wanted to know what the hell he was talking about, so that’s just what I said to him, I said “George, what the hell are you talking about? I thought you came in here this morning to ask me for an annulment.”

He looked even more like a fly swallowed by a calf than usual when he said “Hell no, I don’t want an annulment! Why? Do you want one?”

I shook my head.

He grinned then and said “No, this ain’t about no annulment, Sugar. I am trying to tell you about where we are going to be living when you get on out of here.”

Now I was purely confused again, but I was also real relieved not to be getting shoved out onto the sidewalk, so to speak; that’s why I didn’t even get real upset. I figured the townhouse had fallen through, and maybe that was best. After all, the townhouse had that cranberry carpeting … and that room with the white crib in it. Besides, I had liked that part about where George said the “best house”, so I was sweet when I asked him “What mansion are you talking about, George Willets? And you had better not be talking about Bethany House.” I laughed a little when I said it, just to show how I didn’t hate his mama, which I surely did, but a smart girl knows just when to shut up about that sort of thing, and I can be real smart sometimes …no matter what Jessie says.

George got this poop eating grin on his face and said “Well, Sugar, Mr. and Mrs. George Willets are moving into Willets House.”

I froze like a deer in the headlights. I think my blood might have even froze up too. There was only one Willets House, the murder house, the haunted house … the house where my brother had been hurt so bad he had never woken up again, the house he died at. My reaction was quick. “No George, not that house, I can’t live in that house. Hell, Baby” - little nervous laugh here – “kids dare each other to even get close to it, and you want me to live there? ”

George wasn’t smiling anymore. He was mad, I could tell. This George was the same George I had met the day Jessie and I told him I was pregnant. He pulled himself up as tall as he could (not very) and said in this old lecturing voice “Well, Leeann, I am real sorry that the best house and lands ever built in Oklahoma isn’t good enough for Miss Leeann Worthier, the Corn Princess.”

Shoot, I knew I should have said it different. Mama always said “Sugar catches more flies than vinegar” and this situation called for a lot of sugar.

I smiled my best beauty pageant smile at George and wished I had let Mama or Jessie make me up and put a new nightgown on me as they had wanted to, but I would have to make do with what I had. I started talking fast.

“George, Honey, I didn’t mean that it wasn’t a beautiful house, or that it wasn’t the best place in town, hell in all of Oklahoma. And, Sugar, I know it’s your family house. It’s just that such bad things happened there and well …” I looked down behind my hair acting all fragile like, "... my big brother, you know he died there. I didn’t mean to make you mad, Baby. I’m … well, Georgie, I’m scared to live there, that’s all.”

He looked real appeased after my little speech, and sat down by my bed again. I figured we could work this out. Hell, I could live in an apartment if I had to … this would be all right.

George smiled at me a little and said “Oh, that old haunted house stuff, huh? Shoot, Leeann, you’re a grown married woman now. You should know all that is a bunch of crap. I’ll tell ya something, Baby … if you knew what I went through to get us that house, you’d be real proud of me. Why, when Mama got to the hospital yesterday, she already had her ducks in a row. She was gonna move us right into Bethany House the minute you got out of here. Well I guess just you, actually, as I already live there, but you know what I mean. And she had Daddy on her side as usual. He had already agreed with her to put the townhouse back on the market, and you know he can, because the company bought it, so we didn’t really own it ourselves. But, Baby, I knew that you wouldn’t want to live with Mama. Sure, she is the sweetest woman alive, but a girl likes her own house, and that’s just what I told Mama and Daddy right to their faces.” He paused for breath and obviously for praise from me too.

Well I was proud … and shocked too, that he had stood up to his mama and daddy, but I still didn’t understand how that had led to us moving into horror mansion, so I said to him, this time being real sweet “Oh, Honey, you were just right telling them that for me. So then how did Willets House get into the conversation, Sugar?”

George, he was getting all puffed up now telling me about his heroics and he said “Well, this is the best part. I followed Daddy outside of the hospital here when he went out to have a cigar, and, Leeann, I just straight up cornered him. I told him that my whole life I had wanted that house and that, except for the last thirty years, that house had always been lived in by Willets, and usually a George Willets to boot. And I reminded him of how I was married now, and to the world’s most beautiful girl.” George grinned at me and squeezed my hand. The best I could muster in return was a kind of sickly smile.

It didn’t slow him down a bit. He was puffed up like a blowfish and he kept right on talking.

“And I said you were a local girl as well as being a beauty queen, so I deserved that house. Besides, us moving in would make the house just Willets House again and stop all that murder house and haunted house crap once and for all, and, do you know what, Leeann, Daddy was plumb knocked out by my logic! Shoot, he said he had never been prouder of me in his life, and that I was just right. Willets House was the house he had grown up in. He said that his daddy, and his daddy’s daddy had grown up there too and that it bout broke his heart the way everyone talked about that house and seeing it set empty all these years. Then hell, Leeann, he told me how he had wanted him and Mama to live there after Uncle Roger died, and have his own son, me, born there, but that Mama had thrown such a fit about it that he gave into her and built Bethany house instead. I tell you something, Leeann, my daddy has never talked to me like that. You know what else? He did this real amazing thing last night after I left you sleeping here. When I got home, he called me into his study and, Leeann, he gave us the title to Willets House and the land free and clear! He said 'Son, if you are man enough to want to face down people’s stories and take your wife and live in our family home, then you are man enough to own it free and clear … it’s your wedding gift from me.”

When George finished his touching father and son story, he had tears in his eyes. I knew if I had been Jessie, she would have made a snorting sound, but I wasn’t, I was me, Leeann, the girl who was always looking for ways to make her own daddy happy and proud. I didn’t think at that point there was much I could say to sway George off this idea and, as in every big situation of my life, I needed to talk to both Jessie and my mama before I jumped one way or another, so I needed to get rid of him for a while so I could talk it out with them. I leaned up and kissed him and then fell back on the bed, like it had caused me horrible pain to do so, and said in this weak little voice “That was a beautiful story, Sugar, and if that’s what you want, then that’s what we’ll do. Now, Honey, I don’t feel so good. Would you mind getting my nurse for me? ” He got all loving and concerned, and called himself a fool for getting me so tired and headed out to get the nurse.

As he got to the door, I called out to him “Hey, Georgie, just one thing ....” He said "What, Baby?" and I asked him what he had meant when he said that about always wanting that house? He came back a little into the room and told me that, yeah, since he had been a little boy, he had thought it was the most beautiful house in the world, and that being as how it was the real Willets home, he felt he belonged there and not at Bethany House. He said “It’s just that up until I had you, Leeann, it wasn’t worth fighting for.”

I was sorry I’d asked, and just smiled and waved him on out to the nurse’s station.

Chapter 20

Shoot, this situation was worse than I thought. That house was obviously as much George’s lifetime dream as Donny Readle had been mine, and I knew for a fact that people just didn’t let go of their dreams that easy.

Later on when he was gone and Jessie and Mama were there, I told them the whole horrible story and just laid back and waited to hear their ideas on how to get out of it ... and waited .... and then waited some more.

They looked like slaughtered calves. Well, to be strictly honest, Mama looked like a slaughtered calf and Jessie looked like the one who could be doing the slaughtering but, mad or not, she still didn’t have any better ideas than Mama did. Mama said that George was my husband now, and a girl had to do what her husband said, even when it was too damn dumb to comprehend - well that last part I added in. She said it was God’s plan for us to obey our husbands and that, after all, it was a fine big house, really the most beautiful house she had ever seen … and that there were no such things as ghosts. Why, that God had sent that poor family on up heaven; even that poor crazy girl Robina a long time ago. And that, yes, it would be hard for her at first, coming to see me in the place where her “poor baby Charlie had met his maker”, but that she would pray on it, and that she suspected it would all be fine in the end.

Oh shoot, that wasn’t what I wanted to hear, so I got a little mean and asked her what she thought Daddy would say about this. She looked at me real sad for such a low blow, and said that she thought Daddy would “come around to visiting me there too, once he had thought about it.”

I looked at Jess then. I knew she would not agree with anything Mama had said, and I was right about that, but I should have known … she just went right back to “You need to annul this dumb ass marriage and tell that fat asshole George where he can shove his precious Willets House.”

Oh, Mama was shocked by that. She told Jessie that she felt sorry for poor Mark if that was the kind of attitude she was going to bring to her own marriage one day, but Jessie just laughed and said that Mark knew what he was getting into anyway. “Miz Elma, there are too ghosts, and Willets House has got ‘em.”

Mama got all puffed up and told Jessie that if she had ever once gone to church she would know that was not so, and what was Jessie saying? Was Jessie implying that her own sweet boy Charlie was a ghost too … that his sweet soul was trapped at Willets House along with everyone else’s - that maybe he was in the tree, or the bottom of the pool - is that what Jessie was saying to her?

You got to hand it to Mama; she might have been the only one who could shut Jess down. Jessie loved my mama … a lot more than she loved her own, to be strictly honest, and she would not have hurt her for the world. Listening to them two arguing started me thinking that maybe Mama had a point. After all, I was a Christian too, and I didn’t really believe that everyone who died just ended up sitting in a tree or a pool, or hell, hanging out down at the Piggly if they had a heart attack there, like say Mr. Mahoney did last year. People had to go to better places than that after they had passed on and I strictly believe in heaven. Though I thought Mama might be wrong about Robina moving on up. Yes, there was forgiveness, but I did not feel it extended to people who killed four innocent children, no matter what the bible said.

So, all that this talking and thinking meant was that I was right back where I had been earlier. I could either move into Willets House and hope for the best, or I could move back home with Mama and Daddy, though, after Mama’s speech about girls having to do what their husbands said, I wasn’t so sure she would be all that supportive of my running back home.

I knew my daddy would be, or then maybe not, because now he did like George, and I knew that Daddy thought people who believed in ghosts were damn fools, so maybe I didn’t have to make a decision after all; maybe it had been made for me already.

They let me out of the hospital six days later, and George had the limo brought right to the hospital so I could lay all spread out in comfort on the ninety mile drive back to Dalton from Oklahoma City. I enjoyed being made a fuss over, but really I felt fine and I looked fine too. I had lost about six pounds in all the trauma, and was right now tucked into my True Religion jeans and a Michael Star t-shirt looking all right, if I did say so myself.

George, he was all excited and worked up. He talked a mile a minute on the trip back about how all my clothes had been moved into Willets House already. He told me that though his daddy had insisted all these years that the house be kept exactly as it was - well, except he said that naturally his mama had to have the antique wallpaper in some of the rooms replaced all those years ago because of “stains that wouldn’t come out” and of course everything had been repainted and kept up - but that it was my house now and if I wanted to change anything. “Then, just go ahead, Sugar, knock yourself out.”

George pulled out his little vial and did a line, offering some to me, but I was jittery enough as it was, so I just told him maybe later and said the same thing to his offer of champagne. I was on pain pills and, besides, it wasn’t even ten a.m.. I made a note to myself to keep an eye on George’s drinking as I was not going to be like my Mama and let him be drunk every minute of his life and laugh about it. He was still going on about the house and then he said, like a damn fool, that he had his daddy's man Avery over there right this minute, filing the pool for us.

Well, My Lord, I had to pull his ears back a little for that. I asked him if he thought I wanted to swim in the pool my brother had died in, though, to be strictly honest, I guess it wasn’t the same because if the pool had had water in it that day, then not much would have happened to Charlie, and Donny’s legs would not have got broke either, so mostly I was just saying it to be contrary and because I was nervous. It did make me kind of mad that George was so damn happy about everything; it seemed insensitive to my feelings.

He didn’t act sorry a bit though, he just said all logical like “Well shoot, Leeann, are you gonna want to swim down at the public, when you have your very own pool right outside the door? Hell, I figured you’d have Jessie and your girls over all summer just tanning your sweet selves, and that I would be in eye candy heaven.”

Well that was a pretty good point, what he said, and it got me to thinking too. My very own pool where me and my friends could play Tim McGraw music at one million decibel volume if we wanted and where we could drink pineapple and rum all day if we felt like it, my very own pool sitting outside my very own mansion house. Shoot, I had been looking at this thing all wrong, I saw that then.

I sat up and grinned at George and reached for his vial, I told him “Shoot, Sugar, when you’re right, you’re right. Give me some of that, I am going to have the time of my life with that house, and with you too.”

He laughed, all happy, and asked me how long the doctor said it would be before we could start having “some real fun”. I told him four weeks and acted like I was sad about it too, which I purely was not. Then I asked him what his mama had said about all this and he started laughing so hard he choked on his drink and I had to pat him down before he could tell me a thing.

He said that she had taken to her bed, threatened his daddy with a divorce - as if poor George Sr. could ever get so lucky - and said she would never set one foot inside that house if we insisted on living there - as if I could ever get so lucky.

I was thrilled with her conniptions, but acted real serious and concerned when I asked George why she was so upset. He told me it was on account of how his mama just hated Robina Willets down to her feet, and said that she had felt like a second class citizen while Robina was alive. It still galled her to this day that, to everyone in Dalton, Robina had been the Mrs. Willets, while his mama had just been the wife of the younger brother.

I asked him if he’d ever heard about Robina being mean to his mama, and he said no, that as far as he had heard … and he hadn’t heard much, but that Robina had never acted much like being a Willets had mattered to her at all. George said for some reason that just made his mama madder, and then of course Robina went crazy and disgraced the family name by killing everyone in sight. But, to tell the truth, he said he had always thought that his mama made his daddy build her Bethany House, not because of the crimes, but because to her it was Robina’s house, and she just couldn’t put up with that.

Hmm, I thought that was real interesting what George had said. I grinned at him and tossed my hair and said “Well, it’s Leeann’s house now. Maybe your mama will like it better this way, huh?”

I got to hand it to George; he knew in one what I was really going for, and he grinned and hugged me to him.

“That’s right, Baby, it’s Miz Leeann’s house now and everybody that doesn’t like it can just go straight to HE double LL, can’t they?"

I leaned back against him feeling good for the first time in a week. Then the limo slowed down and we were outside the big wrought iron gates with the fancy cursive W’s on them, and we were driving down the fancy circular driveway, and we were there.

I looked up at that huge white mansion with its twelve pillars outside and more fancy windows than I could count, all reflecting nothing but the day outside, and I knew right then somehow that this was still Robina’s house, not mine.

Chapter 21

I shook off my negative thoughts 'cause it don’t do nobody a lick of good to start thinking thoughts like that. I got out of the limo and headed inside to my new digs with my head high.

George had to stop me at the doorway, so I could be carried over the threshold, and that boy sure needs to get himself to a gym, because I don’t weigh a pound over one hundred and fifteen with my clothes on, and he panted and grunted like I was Audrey Steppes, which pretty much killed the romance of the moment for me.

I was glad he had done it anyway; all that nonsense had kept me from getting nervous about actually, finally, walking through the door of the house that had been a dark legend my whole life. But here I was and, looking around, all I felt right that minute was awe. My God, this was the most beautiful place I had ever seen; it was even better than houses that you see on television.

George and I were standing in this high ceilinged round area, the foyer I guess it’s called. I looked up, and do you know that the ceiling, which was about fifty feet above my head, was made of stained glass. I gaped like a fool, and George laughed, real pleased with my reaction, and started dragging me along behind him to show off the house.

When you walked out of the foyer, there was this huge grand area where you could fit about a hundred people without crowding them, and the staircase … oh, it was something.

There was one of those double staircases, where you could walk up one side and down the other, like in movie houses or really good hotels. I did not know houses people lived in had anything like that. There was a chandelier that must have been twelve feet long, but the ceiling was so high that it was still a good thirty feet above our heads.

The downstairs had a living room, and a library, and a dining room for about fifty and something called a mourning room which is a place that I believe rich folks put their dead family members into until they are buried. I knew all about that 'cause me and Jessie had to watch this PBS show one time. George laughed at me, though, and told me it was a morning room, for people to sit in in the morning. I think he was wrong, though, because I never did find any old afternoon or night time room, but I didn’t correct him 'cause, truth to tell, I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the scope of the house.

There were three or four other fancy little rooms and then the kitchen which was the size of my whole house, and it was not cheerful either like kitchens are supposed to be. For one thing, the tile on the counters was this real ugly aqua with black shot through it, and I decided the first thing to be changed was this room.

The other downstairs rooms were real beautiful and grand, like in a good hotel, but they were stiff, and didn’t have much color to them, mostly ivory and gold. I was real glad to see that George had already had the flat screen plasma TVs that we had picked out at Best Buy installed in just about every room. It sort of brought the place into this century.

Upstairs there were nine bedrooms … that’s right, nine! The master bedroom was huge, and it even had another sitting room off of it where, thank the Lord, George had installed two more TVs, one for the sleeping area and one for the sitting room. The bed was one of those old fashioned canopy things that George said his granddaddy had bought in some place called Florence, and had brought over to America. Looking at it, I thought it could be pretty if Mama made a new canopy and spread for me; maybe using some flowered lavender fabric I had seen down the fabric store a couple weeks earlier. Then we walked through three more real fancy bedrooms, all with big antique beds and furniture, which I immediately set about planning to have updated in brighter colors.

I thought living in the house was going to be all right, except that it would be a little like living in some fancy bed and breakfast alone. I should say I thought it was all right, right up until I saw the other five bedrooms that is.

Each one of them was a kid’s room and not just like a, you know, small bed with pastel painted wall, like in a regular little kid’s room. Oh hell no, these rooms looked like any minute the kid who lived in them might just walk on in the door.

There were two boys' rooms. One had bunk beds and a telescope, and all these books about space, and there wasn’t one spot of dust in that room. The other boy’s room had a mural on the wall with desert cactuses and all these cowboy pictures. There was even a little straw cowboy hat resting on the made up lower bunk, as if some little fellow had dropped it there after getting home from school on his way out to the back yard. His tennis shoes were still under the bed.

There were two girls' rooms too. Both were the kind of rooms any little girl would just die to have, which I apologize for saying as I do realize that is a poor choice of words in this situation, but it’s just an expression. One room was all pink, and the other (ugh) was all done in my favorite shade of lavender, and that one had a skirted dressing table to match the bedspread on the small canopy bed just like my room at home did.

I was already feeling sick at heart by then, when I walked into the last room ... a nursery. Someone had done it up real pretty in white eyelet ‘”once upon a time” but this was one room that didn’t look preserved in time. The white eyelet was gray now. On the wall there was this embroidered plague that said “Our baby George”. I was feeling shocky but I was curious too. I had thought there were only four children. I asked George and he told me in a real sad voice that the family had asked the paper back at that sad time not to mention the baby; it was just too much for them he said to have people reading and thinking about a poor little murdered baby.

That did it. I backed out into the hallway, ran down the left side of the fancy staircase and out into the driveway, George hot on my heels. When he caught up with me, I was halfway down the drive; I would have got further but I was out of shape from being hospitalized, so he caught up with me when I was leaning over to be sick on the gravel. To his credit, he knew how bad it was, especially that nursery. He started trying to explain, talking quickly, and sounding nervous as hell. “Leeann…oh Sugar, I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have brought you here until all that stuff was taken out. The workers are off this weekend. Monday morning they’ll be here first thing and it’ll all be gone. See, Sugar, what happened is that Daddy would never let Mama have that stuff thrown out on account of it being all that was left of his baby nieces and nephews, but I can see how it would seem real creepy to you. Hey, I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do, lets go on down to Dallas for a couple days till that stuff is all gone. What do you say? ”

I was way too hysterical to be pawned off that easy. I was all screaming and red faced, when I asked him how he thought seeing that nursery had made me feel right after losing my baby. And I think I asked him if this was his damn mama’s idea of a joke, so I would kill myself or something. George was real good, though, about it; he just shook his head and explained again that it was his daddy who had insisted on keeping the stuff. He said that he had overheard his mama and daddy arguing about it over the years, his mama saying that she thought it was “sick and morbid”.

Well who knew? It looked like Miz Bethany and I did have something in common after all … what a surprise. George could see he was going to have to up the bribes considerably if he ever hoped to get me back in that house. I’ll tell you what, he sure did it. He got on his mobile and called up Jessie and explained what had happened and told her that he was coming by to pick her up, that she and I were going off to Miami Beach to the Willets Petroleum condo in the sky there. He said she and I were going to stay there a couple weeks so as I could recuperate from all my traumas … just me and Jessie … me and Jessie on my honeymoon.

I heard him say to her “No, no girl, don’t you bother packing. You and Leeann just buy whatever you want when you get there - everything’s on me.”

Well now, as Mama would say, this was a horse of a different color; two weeks with Jessie, in Miami. Shoot, I’d forgiven him already. While George and I were driving to the airstrip, this time in the Jaguar, he explained to me that, when I got back, all the rooms would just be plain white rooms, and I could decorate them however I wanted to. I was pretty mollified by the time he got done talking, but deciding to press my home court advantage, I asked him if I could have Jessie come and live with us. Now that we had graduated, I knew Jess (who had got her old job back at Tully’s) would be itching to get out of Delilah/Susan’s house right quick, and I figured that if Jessie was with me, I would never feel scared in that house. Why hell, Jessie was scarier than any ghost all by herself.

George didn’t like the idea much, I could tell, but he said yes anyway. I think he knew that hearing yes was about the only thing that was going to get me to ever settle down.

Chapter 22

Jessie and I had the time of our lives in Miami Beach. That town is something - crazy fun and the fancy sky condo, which Miz Bethany had done up all modern, was the coolest place I had ever been.

Jess and I drank margaritas all day and spent thousands of dollars of George’s money on bikinis and short shorts. We just had a ball. The only thing that made it not perfect was that Jess said no to moving in with me and George. It turned out she and Mark had already rented a little studio apartment above the Piggly from Britney’s daddy.

When I told her that was just so stupid and, what the hell, she could move Mark in too, she just shook her head and said she guessed that Mark wouldn’t like that, that he needed his own place where he was the “man of the house”. When I asked her if she wasn’t worried about getting bit by all the rats that I was sure lived in the Piggly building on account of the dumpster, she just laughed and said she had always wanted a pet, and since she and Mark couldn’t afford a dog, “what the hell, Willard could be her ghetto dog.”

I did have to laugh too, but I was real disappointed, and since I confided everything to Jessie, I told her about my feeling of the house still belonging to Robina.

She didn’t laugh or make fun of me; Jess totally believed in all that stuff. As a matter of fact, in sophomore year, she went through a period where she believed she was a witch. Due to Jessie’s personality other people sort of believed it too. So she got real serious and told me that as far as she knew, ghosts couldn’t really hurt anyone. Also she said that when we got back she would “sage the house”. That sounded so stupid, I asked her if she was going to rosemary the house and thyme the house too. She punched me, and I punched her, and we got to laughing so hard that I pretty much forgot about the house that day and for the rest of our trip too, till Friday, when it was time to go home.

When the limo pulled up to the house this time, I was alone in back, and I waved Jack the driver back when he came around to open the door for me. George couldn’t meet my plane, because he was in Dallas with his daddy on petroleum business. He had told me on the phone, that my mama had come by and stuffed our refrigerator, so not to worry about fixing dinner (which I surely hadn’t been), and that he would be home around seven that night. So I just sat there for a while in the back of the car, looking at my house.

It sure was a beauty with its white paint gleaming in the hot sun. There were roses all around the house that had been kept up all these years by the Willets’ gardener. And in total violation of the water use laws, this lawn was as green and perfect as any golf course. I smiled a little thinking of my daddy’s brown lawn, because you could only water twice a week now. So I had a pretty good idea about what he would say about this lawn.

“Those rich assholes have nicer lawns in their empty G.D. houses than the rest of us who live in our houses do.”

I guessed I was one of those rich assholes now myself; thinking about that made me smile, so I gestured to Jack that he could go on ahead and let me out of the car and bring in my five new Louis Vuitton bags too.

I had bought those suitcases ‘cause I had to have someplace to hold all the new clothes I had purchased when I was in Miami. And while I was at it, I had bought Jessie a set too. Jessie hadn’t been all that excited; she had just laughed at the price of them and said she guessed she and Mark would use them for tables but she was sure that they would give their place “some real tone”.

I did purely love my no limit (no matter what) black card. I was planning to buy Randy and Sarah Beth a new living room set for their anniversary next week as well as getting my daddy the biggest, flattest plasma TV set that I could lay my hands on.

I inhaled a real deep breath, pulled up my shoulders and then I was ready to go inside.

I followed in after Jack, and I told him to just take the bags upstairs to the first room on the left and leave them there. He looked around and whistled real low and said “Whooee, Miz Leeann, this is sure some place, ain’t it?”

I had gone to school with Jack’s younger brother, Rooster, who had been a star basketball player at Dalton High, so it wasn’t like I was going to start acting all high and mighty with Jack just because I was married to his boss’s son. I did feel real proud though all of a sudden that this palace was my house now. I said to him “I know, right? Can you believe this place? Hell Jack, I can’t get over it myself; shoot it’s bigger than those houses on cribs.”

He said it sure was, and I was one lucky girl, but if he didn’t mind me saying so, that Mr. George was still the lucky one, and I said I didn’t mind him saying so a bit.

As Jack was going on up the stairs, from out back of the house came this little bitty Hispanic lady. I am not too tall myself, but I had a good six inches on her. She was smiling real wide and holding out her hand to me. I took it and smiled back at her confused. She told me that her name was Maria, and that “Meester George had hired her to work for us five days a week, to clean, and do laundry and get dinners ready. She told me if I did not want to cook, she’d be happy to do it. She said that her sister worked for “Mees Bethany and that her mama had even worked here in this house a long time ago too.”

Well I was pleased as can be at this news. I had wondered if George had expected me to keep up a house the size of a hotel by myself. Besides, I knew I liked Maria right off, and having her here meant that I would not be alone during the days while George was at work. I know she was real startled when I gave her a big hug, and told her that I couldn’t be happier to hear about her working for me.

She laughed a little, and asked if I was hungry, which I decided I was, and then she asked me whether I would like her to bring my lunch outside by the pool since it was such a nice day, and I decided that sounded real good too. So I was feeling pretty happy when I went upstairs to my bedroom to change into one of my new bikinis.

When I got up to the landing, I turned right instead of left though because I had to make sure that George had kept his promise to fix those horrible children’s rooms. Sure enough, all the furniture was gone; all five of the rooms were bare, with fresh white paint on the walls.

Empty and cleaned out like that, they were just regular sunny rooms that smelled like paint, and I couldn’t get out of any of them fast enough. My room still looked like a fancy hotel suite, but I saw that George (or Maria) had put bowls filled with roses from outside all over the room. I don’t know why, but I shut the door to our ensuite bathroom while I was changing into my bathing suit.

When I came back out, I made a note to tell Maria to turn off the A/C during the day; this room was too cold for comfort, even though it was about a hundred degrees outside. I opened one of the French doors out to my little balcony and walked outside onto it. Our bedroom overlooked the pool and I waved at Maria down there putting out the plates and the pitcher of sweet tea for my lunch.

The door clicked shut behind me, and, when I tried to open it, I couldn’t. I tried about three more times before I started shouting for Maria, but she had gone back inside the house and couldn’t hear me. I knew she would be coming back outside in a minute, so I just waited kind of absently looking into my bedroom from outside, wondering what I should change first about the room.

That’s the first time I saw her. Robina.

While I was just standing there waiting for Maria to come outside, so I could holler to her to come upstairs and let me in. I could see the door to my bedroom open from the hallway. I thought it was Maria come upstairs to check on what was taking me so long, so I kind of pounded on the glass yelling “Hey Maria, over here, I locked my stupid self out.”

But anyone could tell right away that it wasn’t Maria. For one thing, this girl was tall, a lot taller than me, and she was bone thin. She had long dark hair that was worn straight. Her hair hung down on either side so I couldn’t make out anything but the side of her face. She was barefoot and wearing this gauzy, peasant type of skirt, and a blue halter top. Even though she had on summer clothes her skin was dead white, the kind of skin that looks like it had never been tanned. While I stood there shocked, I watched her wander over to my suitcases.

And though I couldn’t see her face, her body language told me that she was surprised to see them there. I watched her bend down; she even picked up the tag that had my name on it. She looked at it for a minute, and then dropped it. As I stared, I got ice cold even though I was standing outside in the hundred degree sun. She then went and sat down on the edge of our bed and put her face in her hands. She bent over and started rocking back and forth real rapidly. I have never seen anyone who looked so pitiful and alone.

I know no one will ever believe me, especially not Jessie, but I didn’t feel afraid of her then … honestly I didn’t. I knew she was a ghost, but she didn’t look like a ghost; she just looked like an ordinary girl, like me, a girl who was too thin and too sad to even stand up. But while I watched her, she did stand up; she stood up and walked over to the mirror hanging above the fancy marble fireplace in the room.

I still couldn’t see her face; I just watched her back, which was shaking the way backs do when you cry real hard. You could tell she was taking deep breaths (with what lungs, though, I could not tell you) like the ones I had taken in the limo downstairs. That’s what a girl does when she is trying to collect herself before having to face people and pretend everything is okay. Then she straightened her shoulders and turned and walked out the open bedroom door back into the hall. The only kind of scary thing was she walked through the door. It slammed shut behind her hard enough to make the glass panes shudder as I watched her walk through.

I can’t say why, but I thought maybe that slamming door was for me, that perhaps she had known all along that I was standing out there watching her and that maybe what I had mistaken for sadness was not sadness at all, but a woman so mad she was just trying to hold herself together from doing something she might regret later. Thinking this made me so scared that I was backed up as far on the balcony as you could get without falling over the railings when I saw the bedroom door open again.

Oh poop, I thought. I was not up to seeing the house’s previous owner again. I was just fixing to try to lower myself off the balcony to the one below it, when I saw it was Maria. She came into the room looking real puzzled and then I started hollering for her.

“Hey Maria, out here, on the balcony, I got locked out.”

Maria came over and opened the door, looking at me real funny. “Miz Leeann, what you doing out there?”

I told her how I had gone outside to look off the balcony, and that the door had shut and locked behind me, but she showed me that there were no locks on the door at all. We decided it must be swollen wood and she said her husband was a real good carpenter and maybe he could fix it.

I told her sure thing, to please send him on over, and then I asked her what made her come looking for me. She said it was the sound of my bedroom door; it had slammed so loud that she had heard it in the kitchen. Maria said she thought maybe I had been calling her and she hadn’t heard me, so I had slammed the door to get her attention.

Even in my extreme fear, hearing her say that made me laugh. It sounded so much like something Miz Bethany would do if you weren’t quick enough to suit her. I told her that obviously it hadn’t been me since I was trapped on the balcony like Juliet or someone, and she said it must have been a cross current from the window being opened and then she looked at me all reproachful and said “Mees Leeann, it’s real hot in here, and you should not open the windows in the heat of the day; bugs weel get in.”

I looked at her funny because I had only opened the damn windows as the room had been so cold, but she was right - the room was about a hundred degrees now.

To tell the strict truth, I really needed to tell someone what I had just seen, but I knew that people of Hispanic origin tend to be pretty superstitious to begin with, what with Santeria candles and all that stuff, and I was afraid that if I told Maria what I had just seen that she would either run for the hills, not wanting to have to work in a haunted house, or that she would think I was a loco and run for the hills, not wanting to work for a crazy woman.

I knew Jess wouldn’t be home yet, as Jack and I had dropped her off at home, and she had told me that she would just have time to shower … “Let Mark hit this, and then get her ass to Tully’s for the swing shift.”

Chapter 22

I followed Maria downstairs, and went out to the pool to eat my lunch, sunbathe and think about what I should do. It was as hot as the seventh circle of hell outside and, after I took about three bites of my shrimp salad (I already loved Maria), I could not resist getting into the pool.

It was a beautiful pool - not a long pool like you see at high schools and recreation centers, but round, with red brick edging, and a pretty little waterfall that spilled into it. The waterfall connected to a little manmade creek that ran around the whole property. It had all been built so long ago that now it looked natural. As far as you could see out back here, it was bright green lawns and old trees and roses. You would never know you were in Dalton.

I slid into the water and made a little shriek. It was probably eighty degrees but, after being so heated by the sun, my skin still shrank back a little. I got used to it quick though and in just a minute I was floating on my back. Above me was the bright blue sky and all around me was this private little park, and right then instead of feeling all terrorized by what had happened upstairs, all I could feel like was the queen of my own country.

I thought that maybe Robina was still here because maybe she had been, like me, a girl who didn’t come from much and then she got everything and more than she could have dreamed of, and that she just didn’t want to leave such a pretty place just because of being dead and all.

That thought wasn’t so scary, but then it was easy not to be scared out here in my pool with the sun overhead, and Maria just inside in the kitchen where I could see her through the windows. I wondered if I should tell George about what I had seen, and then decided that was not a good idea. George had been awful good to me when I freaked out about the kid’s rooms and, if I told him about seeing Robina, he would think I was making it up so we could move.

The funny thing was I didn’t want to move anymore. I wanted to live in this beautiful place and enjoy everything in it. It was like the imaginary castle in ‘Beauty and the Beast’ where every room that Beauty walked into held another surprise for her. No, right then I didn’t even care about the bad things that had happened here. After all, it was like Mama said, there is no place on this earth where something bad hadn’t already happened to someone who came before you and that didn’t mean a place was ruined or anything.

I didn’t even mind about my poor brother Charlie as, to tell the strict truth, I had only been acting upset about that with George to make a point. I had never even met Charlie, as far as I remembered, so I couldn’t mourn him, and boys did fall out of trees. But, darn it, that got me to thinking about what Daddy had always said about how Charlie didn’t fall out of a tree; how there were scratches on his face and how he thought Charlie had been inside the house and that someone in there had attacked him and pushed him out a window.

Thinking about Daddy’s theories, that made me think about how Robina had slammed the door upstairs and the anger that could be behind an act like that. What if Robina wasn’t just hanging out here on account of it being so pretty and her not wanting to leave the house where she had been queen of the castle? What if she was still here because she knew that after murdering her family, well that after doing a thing like that, there was really only one other place she could go on to … and it sure wasn’t heaven. What if she had liked murdering her family and was just a natural born killer who missed having people around to murder now?

But Jessie had said that ghosts couldn’t really hurt anyone, but then Jessie was just a kid like me who had read some stories about ghosts. Reading a book or two didn’t really make you an expert on a subject. There was only one person alive that I knew of who could tell me if Robina could still hurt anyone and that was Donny Readle.

In all these years, he had never once talked about what had happened the night my brother died …not after those first couple days at the hospital when he had just basically confirmed what Sheriff Riffler thought had happened. By the time Sherriff Riffler got around to interviewing Donny, he had already told the Dalton Tri-Weekly that the incident had been a Halloween prank gone bad. Sherriff Riffler said that the boys had climbed the tree to see inside the windows upstairs, the downstairs windows being shuttered and all, and that on the way back down the branches broke under their weight, sending them into free fall into the emptied pool below. Sherriff Riffler was a nice man but big and kind of intimidating; he might have just told Donny what he thought happened and Donny, being just a kid, in pain from his broken legs and losing his friend, might have just thought it best to go along.

But if my theory was true, then I wondered why he hadn’t told my daddy anything different in all these years? He and Daddy were real close, so maybe it was just an accident, like Sherriff Riffler had said it was. Maybe, but I didn’t buy it.

I thought they had seen Robina in that room, same as I had, and that seeing her, well it startled them so much, they just fell back out of that tree. After all, I had almost jumped off the balcony myself when I saw her. If that was all it was, then it wasn’t so bad; I mean I purely did not want to share my house with a ghost, but I figured I could stand it for a little while until Jessie and I could figure out how to get rid of her.

Yes, I could maybe take it, as long as all she was going to do was walk around and look sad; even slamming doors I could get used to (for a little while). But if Robina was still a crazed killer even in her dead state, well that was another matter altogether. If she could push people out of windows or off staircases and such, then I was in danger, and drastic immediate measures had to be taken.

George was a Catholic. I guessed I was one now too. Shoot, I had better be considered a real Catholic since I had to go to all those boring conversion classes so we could get married in his church. And the Catholics, as everyone is aware, know all about ghosts and exorcisms and things. Hell, Jessie and I had watched that horror movie ‘The Exorcist’ like six times, and that movie was based on a true story, as everyone knew. And if they could get out a demon that powerful, I figured one thin, ornery ghost girl wouldn’t be much of a challenge for any self respecting Catholic priest.

The thing was, though, if I were to call up George at work and make him call in Father Moray, the priest who had married us, then it would be a big deal and people would find out about it. I did not want more gossip than I already had after my horrible wedding reception (all that blood). Why pretty soon, at this rate, people would say I was cursed or something and feel sorry for me … me, the prettiest girl in Dalton, a girl who lived in a mansion. I know it’s awful small and petty, but I hated the idea of being pitied.

I knew that Jessie had some ghost busting books and stuff, so I decided that I needed to find out if Robina was an ordinary garden variety ghost - one who wandered around wringing her hands and not much else - or if she was an evil human killing ghost; then I would have to bring in the big guns of the Catholic Church. And since there was only one way to find out, short of letting Robina kill me first and ask questions later, I knew I had to talk to Donny Readle.

Anyone reading that sentence, why they might think that I would have looked for any excuse on God’s earth to look up Donny, but it just wasn’t so. When he married Carlene, he hurt me all the way down to my soul. Him not knowing he had hurt me did not make it any better … in fact it made it worse. It was like he just left me standing there with all my love in my hands, and what was I supposed to do with it? Donny didn’t know I loved him, he didn’t even sense it, and how would that have been possible if he had cared one tinker’s damn for me? When Jess told me about how he had carried me to the ambulance at the reception, my heart lifted straight up into heaven for a minute until I thought about it and realized that Donny was just being a good guy like always.

I was Charlie’s baby sister, and he loved our whole family so, by extension, he loved me like his own baby sister and that didn’t make me grateful, it just made me mad, and hurt. Oh yeah, Donny Readle could hurt me, and he didn’t even have to try hard. All he had to do was go on with his life without me.

But this was a matter of life and death (mine) so I had to talk to him and I needed to do it soon, so I could stop these thoughts in my head.

I knew his schedule for driving inside out, having memorized it years ago. I knew that he would be pulling into Dalton tomorrow morning, and that he would eat breakfast at Scrugg’s Café at about ten a.m., same as he did every Saturday he was home. I hoped Carlene wouldn’t be there and I knew I couldn’t take Jess for moral support because Donny was a real private man. I figured if he hadn’t told his story in all these years, he wasn’t going to start in front of Jessie.

I knew, though, that I could get him to talk because I was a little sister to him, and he wouldn’t want me to worry about being murdered by the ghost of Robina if there was no need, and, if there was a need, well, shoot, I wasn’t going to head down that path again right then.

By the time I had worked all this out in my head, I was a wrinkled mess from being in the water so long and, to be strictly honest, I was a little bit worried about my hair too.

Though I am a natural blond, I have been keeping it real silver, with a little help, for a couple years now … my hair having started to get kind of dark blond around my sixteenth birthday. No one knew about this, not my mama or Jessie either. Real discreet like, I would pick up a box of L’Oreal light blond at the Piggly once a month when no one likely to talk was working the register. So, given my color situation, I was hoping that I hadn’t just turned my crowning glory light green from the chlorine.

Normally I would have put on an ugly old bathing cap in a pool, but I had been just a little distracted, what with Robina and all, and had forgotten. If my hair had turned green, then Robina could go on and kill me as Donny Readle was not going to see me like that before I could fix it.

Well, when I got a look at myself, I could see it surely had. It was a real nice bright green; I looked like a horrible clown. I was standing there in the downstairs powder room looking at myself and crying. I say ‘downstairs’ because, even though I was embarrassed, I did not want to be upstairs alone.

Maria heard me crying and came in and stared at me in shock. “Oh Mees Leeann, your pretty hair, it ees green. What you do that for?”

Well, if anyone had to know my secret, I figured Maria was as safe as it got, so I told her. Maria, she was great, it made her laugh, and that made me laugh, and then she said she would just run on down to the pharmacy and pick me up a box of hair color.

I felt that this having a maid business could really grow on me. I decided to wait outside for Maria to get back. I wasn’t really scared of Robina showing back up as Jessie had told me that it took a lot of energy for a ghost to ‘manifest’ and I figured today’s performance had probably shot her load, but I thought it was better to be safe than sorry. Besides, my hair needed to be dry before I could dye it back to the blond I was born to be.

So I was just sitting outside minding my own business, pretty much blending in nicely with the grass around me when I saw to my total horror a big black Chevy truck with those special mud flaps on the wheels, the kind that only Donny Readle had.

Chapter 23

Shoot, shit, and every word that Jessie could think of and, believe me, that’s a lot!

He wasn’t supposed to be in town till tomorrow. Donny had never come by just to visit me in all the years I lived at home and now he was doing it when my hair was green! How could this be happening to me? I wondered for a second if I was just imagining him because of how I had been thinking about him all day, and how I was planning to go see him tomorrow.

But he was real enough. His truck had an exhaust leak, and I didn’t think in a girl’s fantasies she would be choking on exhaust with green hair.

He got out and, oh, he was so fine … six foot two, and not one wasted inch. His hair was all gold in the sun (obviously he did not need L’Oreal light blond help), and he was as tan as a walnut tree. He started ambling toward me, and I wanted to get up and run into the house for a towel to put over my head, but I couldn’t; I just had to sit there and look at him.

Donny had this real concerned look on his perfect beautiful face when he first got out of the pickup, but when he got an eyeful of my hair; he just threw his head back and laughed. Laughing, though, well that just made his narrow green eyes narrower, and showed off the whitest teeth in Oklahoma. Oh there ain’t one man on this earth who has anything on Donny. He should have been mine.

He ambled over to me and grinning down at me, he said “Hey, Leeann, you look real good like this – colorful. I like it on you.”

I was busted, so I just rolled with it. “Hey yourself, Donny … Yeah, I needed a change, and me and Jessie had been up to OKC and saw that play ‘Wicked’ last month, so I thought, what the hell, I’m going for it.”

He laughed again and said how he thought I must have stayed in the pool too long. He told me that this same thing happened to his aunt Lucy a couple of times. He said he figured I could fix it but that I didn’t need to do it on his account because I was still “too damn beautiful to look at straight anyways.”

Hearing his words made me have trouble catching my breath. Donny had never talked to me like that before. He had always teased me and called me fat, and spotty, and such, the way a big brother would. I didn’t know what to say to him then, so I just looked down at my feet, wishing I had a pedicure, and asked him if he wanted to come inside for a beer or some iced tea.

He said no, that he wouldn’t come inside, but that a beer out here would be real nice if I didn’t mind. Obviously I did not mind as I would have walked barefoot to OKC to get him water if he had told me he wanted me to. So I sauntered on inside, shaking my booty just as feisty as any girl with green hair should be. I got one for myself too, though I don’t really like beer, unless it has tomato juice in it.

When I got back outside he was laying there, sprawled out on the grass with his eyes closed like he owned the place. I just stood there looking at him, my heart hurting for a minute.

He opened up one green eye and squinted at up me. “Well hell, Leeann, you ain’t ever going to make much of a waitress; hand me my beer before you get it all hot just standing there.”

I blushed and gave it to him, setting it down beside him. I said “Donny, what are you doing here? I don’t mean here - you know you’re always welcome - I mean in Dalton. Don’t you usually get back on Saturdays?”

He grinned real wide when I said that. “You know my schedule real good, huh, Leeann?”

Shoot, I was too stupid to live. Jessie was right; I was dumb as a box of hair. I didn’t know what to say. It had been a real long day, and I don’t know, maybe I just felt like to hell with it after all these years. So I just looked straight at his perfect face, into his beautiful eyes, and said “Yeah, Donny, I guess I do know your schedule real good. Why do you think that might be?”

He sighed and laid his head back down. He looked up, but at the sky not me. “I think I know, girl.” He laughed a little. “You maybe ain’t as good at hiding your feelings as you thought you were. But fuck, Leeann, what could I do about it? I’m old, and for a long time you were like my own baby sister.”

I started feeling like maybe all the world was opening up for me. I know I was married and all, but you go on and hear words like that from the only man you ever wanted and then you go ahead and judge me for what I did. I just said real soft to him “For a long time, Donny - what about now?”

In a quick move, fast as a snake on a mouse, Donny reached out one long muscled arm and pulled me down on top of him. He didn’t pause. When I was laying sprawled on him, he just looked at me and said “Well what do you think?”

That was good enough for me. I did it. I went for it. I leaned right down into his face and stuck my tongue so far inside his mouth I should have choked him, but he mastered me, oh God yes, he did.

He had me on my back underneath him and my bikini bottoms down and himself inside me before I could say “God, yes, Donny, you have me anyway you want me,” as I sure as hell would have never said anything else to him.

But I didn’t want to talk, and I couldn’t have if I’d wanted to. This was different, so different than the stupid drunk sex with Billy, and the pretend it isn’t happening sex with George. This was Donny, the only man I ever wanted and, hot as my imagination had been, it wasn’t nothing compared to the real thing.

God, he was big and rock hard, and he was pumping in and out of me without breaking stride or breaking even one drop of sweat. I wrapped my legs around his waist and screamed out my thanks to God and anyone else who was listening. I imagine I was loud enough to wake the dead. If Maria had driven up right then I wouldn’t have stopped; hell all of Dalton could have come and taken a picture for all I cared. He grinned down at me when I screamed, but he never broke his motions until I had come again, and then he did, and then, for a long time, nothing else in the world mattered, and I’ll tell you this right here, ain’t nothing ever going to matter as much to me as he does.

Oh shoot, of course I hope I live to be a real old lady and have me a whole mess of kids and that they have kids too. And I know I’ll love them, and I’ll keep on loving my family and Jessie right up until the day I die, but the way I feel about Donny, well that’s the way a person feels about just one thing … and that’s what he is to me; it’s what he always has been … that one thing that makes it possible for you to believe in other good things; believe in good things and be able to take all the bad things that come along too. You get someone in your life who you feel that way about, well you shouldn’t ask for much more and I won’t. I can hope for other stuff, but I won’t ask for nothing else long as I got him.

Chapter 24

Afterwards we were laying there in that sweet grass; Donny had pulled his jeans back up but kept his chest bare so as I could lay on it and smell him, and maybe lick him a little too. He lifted his beer to his mouth, looked at me, and said “Shoot, Leeann, that sure as hell wasn’t what I came here for, but I can’t say I’m sorry about it because I’m not.”

I felt like I would never be sorry about anything again as long as I lived, so I just grinned back at him.

“Yeah, Donny, you going to try to tell me that you came here on business or something? Well I must say, Mr. Readle, I do purely enjoy how you ask a girl questions. Shoot, is there anything else you wanted to say to me while we’re on the subject? I’m all ears.”

When I said it, I leaned over and took the beer from his hand and drank deep, then I put my mouth back on his to share it. He kissed me back nice and slow, but then he sat up looking a little shamefaced. Donny told me to get dressed, and that made us both start laughing because by now I was dressed again in the same tiny bikini I had been wearing when he showed up.

Donny said my “damn bikini was smaller than that rock on your finger.” His face got all dark and sulky when he said it. I smiled to myself because I knew that meant he didn’t like me having another man’s ring on my finger at all. I was getting ready to tell him how I had ended up with George in the first place but then, shoot, we saw Maria driving in the gates. Both Donny and I sat up, trying to look as respectable as a girl in a bikini and Oklahoma’s hottest man - who was not wearing a shirt - could look.

Sweet little Maria got out of her old car and looked over at us kind of puzzled. I introduced her to “my old family friend” Donny and, if she thought there was any more to it, she didn’t let on. She just asked real politely if she could bring us anything. I said no, and then damn if Donny didn’t ask her for another beer if she wouldn’t mind? He flashed his pearly whites at her and poor Maria got all gushy and blushy and ran in the house as quick as she could and was back out with his beer in about one minute flat. Then she just stood there staring at him all goggle-eyed. I liked Maria real good, and I understood her wanting to look at Donny too, but I needed to be alone with him, so I got kind of haughty, and asked her to go start dinner. When I did that, Donny looked at me like he didn’t know who the hell was talking.

Then when Maria was gone, he just whistled real low and said “Miz Leeann would like her dinner now. Shit, when did you get to be such a Willets girl?”

Oh I just hated him saying that and I explained that I was not now, and never would be, a real Willets … that I just wanted to be able to talk to him undisturbed and couldn’t think of a better excuse. I said that he had me a little flustered from our afternoon delight and all, and I put my hand on his hard stomach to make my point.

He looked at me and grinned, and allowed that he was a little shook up about that himself, especially since he had come out here to talk to me about something serious, but he said the sight of me in my black bikini and green hair, had just driven it out of his head. I laughed with him at that, and took the opportunity to ask him where Carlene was, but he just said “Later”.

Which by the way, I hate it when people say later to me, but I just acted sweet as pie and said, “Okay Donny, what was it you wanted to say to me then?” He was acting real serious again and he told me that he had come out to tell me what had happened to him and Charlie here all those years ago.

He said he had never told anyone, and he would appreciate it if I did the same, because if anyone ever heard about this, “he would be hauled off to the funny farm.” I told him that I thought maybe I knew what he was going to talk about. I said his timing was real fine because actually I had planned to come see him the very next day and ask him what he knew about the house and Robina. I said not to worry that I would take what he told me to the grave which, given the subject matter, might not have been the best choice of words, but it’s just an expression.

Donny nodded at me and then he did the sweetest thing. He looked over his shoulder to check on whether Maria was safely inside the house and then he took my hand in his. He started telling me what had to be told in a real quiet voice.

“Leeann, I just need for you to hear this story, because I think after you do, you’ll realize that you can’t stay in this house another minute. I know I don’t want you to be here.”

Hearing him say that made me real happy, because ghost or no ghost, of course he didn’t want me to stay here, he couldn’t, not after what we had just done. I imagined he would be wanting me to be with him all the time from now on. That we were both married to other people was bad, but not something that couldn’t be fixed.

This was Donny and, if he wanted me, I was there. I wanted to tell him all this, but I could see he was determined to tell me his story first, so I just squeezed his hand and told him to tell me what had happened that night, back when I was only a baby.

He kept my hand in his and closed his eyes and started talking.

“Your brother Charlie was the best friend I ever had. We were just kids, I know, but I have never made another friend like him. Shit, he was a wild kid even back when we were in first grade. Why he would get up ideas that were always landing us in trouble, setting off fireworks in the church parking lot and shit like that. Charlie hated to be bored and if you grow up here in Dalton, you pretty much have to make your own fun, you know?”

I nodded. I sure did know. Making our fun, well that’s how Jessie and I had lived through our own Dalton childhoods.

“The most interesting thing in this whole damn town was this G.D. house you’re living in now. Back when me and Charlie was growing up, those murders were still fresh as hell in everyone’s minds. Shit when we were little, we even used to come to this house and trick or treat for candy at Halloween … well candy and to look at Miz Robina.”

I just had to interrupt him here.

“Donny, what do you mean ‘look at Miz Robina’? Was there something weird about her even back then?”

He looked at me startled, like a man who was miles away, and he didn’t understand what the hell I was talking about.

“Weird? No, Leeann, she didn’t seem weird, we just liked to look at her because she was so beautiful. Hell I don’t think me or anyone in Dalton had ever seen anyone that looked even close to her.”

Well shoot, I didn’t like hearing Donny talk admiringly about any other girl, even a dead one, so ignoring my mama’s admonition to let sleeping dogs lie, I just had to ask. “Donny, was she prettier than I am?”

He didn’t even grin; he was back in some other time I guess, and he just said in this far away voice that he guessed she was “more beautiful than anything he had ever seen.”

That made me mad, so I just told him in this real hurt tone to just go on with his story, which he did, without even telling me that he thought I was beautiful.

“Yeah, so me and Charlie, we used to bicycle by the house a lot in the years after the murders, but you couldn’t get in the gates or anything for a long time. Old George Willets had guards patrol the place for the first few years on account of the media. Back then there were ghouls who were coming from as far away as Louisiana just to take pictures of the house. But after a few years it all died down like stuff does, and that’s when Charlie started talking about getting inside, and even bringing something out to prove we had been inside. Now Charlie was a real good guy, don’t you get me wrong, but he did love to talk about his exploits … especially to girls, and there was this one girl - hell I can’t even remember her name - her family moved away years ago. But, anyhow, Charlie sure did spark to her, and she was always oohing and ahhing about how brave she thought it would be for him to get into Willets House. Of course you might have noticed, as I am telling this story, that when Charlie told people at school what he was planning on doing, he never mentioned that it would be him and me doing it. That was just Charlie’s way, though. I didn’t really mind. He just liked a lot of attention and, anyway, at the outset of the plan, I wasn’t really planning to get in on it. I wasn’t scared or nothing, but I had already been in a little trouble. The sheriff back then was Sheriff Toomey, a real hard ass. He had told my Uncle Hank that if he busted me again I was going up to juvie in OKC. So I wasn’t any too anxious to get a trespassing charge with maybe a little breaking and entering thrown in. And see, Leeann, it always seemed that no matter what Charlie and I did, we got busted, or I did anyway, so I was planning a pass on this one. But shit, Charlie, he just kept at me, and I kept saying no until finally I said what the hell. But I told him I would only go along as lookout - that was the plan. We would both climb up that old tree outside over there,” he pointed at the tree, “and then Charlie said he thought he could get into the house through the attic skylight while I would just stay outside in the tree and watch the street for the cops and anyone else; if I saw someone I would hoot like I was an owl, and Charley would come back outside in a hurry. That night I told my uncle that I was staying at Charlie’s. It was just a regular night at your house back then; your daddy barbequed for us out back, and you caterwauled all night, and …”

I had to punch him for that, but he just laughed at me and then got serious again and kept talking.

“Randy had overheard Charlie and I and he wanted to go with us real bad. We had to give him five bucks to keep his mouth shut. He was supposed to make up the beds too, so it looked like we were in them, in case your mama checked, and also to leave the window in the room open so we could get back in, in case he fell asleep while he was waiting up for us. We got out the window and onto our bikes and made it over here in about fifteen minutes. I remember the moon was real bright that night, and it worried me some as we wouldn’t be invisible. I tried talking Charlie into another night … one where it would be darker, but he called me a pussy, and I called him a stupid asshole, and we decided to just go ahead and do it. We hid our bikes across the street under some brush, and we climbed over the fence around back where the pool is. Damn, it was quiet that night … maybe there were cicadas and such making noise, but I didn’t hear any and, for some reason, me and Charlie were whispering even though we were out back a long way from the street and there was no one could have heard us. This house looked like it was glowing, it was so white in the moonlight. It’s funny, but I knew then that if I had come up with just one more excuse, Charlie would have jumped on it. But I didn’t. We were here, and I guess I was pretty damn curious to find out what the murder house looked like inside after all those years of sitting empty, even though strictly speaking I would never actually be inside, but I knew Charlie would tell me a hell of a good story. We climbed up the tree just like we planned to and it was real easy … it held us good too. Charlie scrambled up onto the roof while I sat there watching him, and damn if he wasn’t right - the attic skylight wasn’t locked at all. I guess the Willets weren’t too worried about cat burglars or maybe they had just forgotten it altogether. Charlie said to me in his normal voice then ‘Hey, Don boy, I’m going in. I’ll come down and open the window of the room by the tree here, so I can hear you hoot if anybody is coming, all right?’ ”

I shuddered in the hot sun, because I knew which room Donny was talking about, the one by the tree; it was my room … her room. He went on.

“A couple minutes later, there was Charlie. He was leaning his head out the window and saying ‘Shoot, Don Boy, you want me to open up the balcony doors here, so you can jump down a ways and get in? You got to see this place; I swear to God, it looks like they just stepped out for a walk. Shit they still got clothes hanging here in the dang closets. Hey look, Don Boy,’ and Charlie, he was pointing at the dresser of the bedroom he was in. He said, ‘Look at

that, Don, there’s still pictures of Miz Robina on the dresser, that’s what we are going to bring back, one of them pictures. Shoot everyone will know we were here then, huh?’ Just then, while Charlie was talking to me, I thought I heard somebody down underneath the tree, like there was someone on the lawn. I freaked out a little and I told Charlie to grab the fucking picture and get back out right now. He called me a pussy again, but I could tell he was glad as hell of an excuse not to have to explore the rest of that house. Now remember I told you that it was real bright out that night?”

I nodded.

“Well it was, real bright, and see from where I was in the tree, I could see into the bedroom real clear. Charlie was facing me, so it was me who saw the door to the hallway open behind him. He was facing me talking so he couldn’t see it, and I guess he didn’t hear it either, but he could tell from my face that something had gone wrong. He turned around and looked too. It was her, Miz Robina, only she didn’t look anything like I remembered her when she was alive. She was wearing this pink robe - at least I think it was pink - and it was gaping open so you could see one of her breasts, and her thin legs too, but there were dark stains all over the robe, and her eyes were all crazy. One of them looked like it was swollen shut but the other one was looking right at me … past Charlie and right at me … and oh Jesus, Leeann, I will die still seeing those eyes of hers. See, she had big beautiful dark eyes when she was alive, but now it was just big and dark, black really, and I swear to God, something was moving in her eye. And the smell, oh shit she stunk; it was like rotted meat even being outside the room. God it was bad. There was maybe something worse too, ‘cause part of the skin on her face looked like it might be coming off, and then I saw what she was holding in her hand.”

Donny stopped speaking for a minute, he was sweating and he groaned like he was hurt. I was hugging myself by then and shaking, I just said to him “What Donny, what was she holding?”

He shook his head a little and I could feel his hand still in mine. It was clammy.

“She had a knife, Leeann, it was just a bread knife, but see I knew it was the knife because I had heard Deputy Riffler’s wife tell my aunt Lucy once when they were talking how she hadn’t known that you could cut people up that bad just using a bread knife. Deputy Riffler’s wife told Aunt Lucy that Robina must have been so crazy with rage that it made her as strong as a man. Anyway, Charlie, he was backing up to the window real fast. God, Leeann, if she looked that bad to me, I can’t imagine what it looked like to Charlie because she wasn’t any further away from him than you are to me now. And then, oh shit, she talked, at least I think she did. It almost seems like I heard her voice inside and not outside my head and it’s driven me crazy all these years wondering how that could have been.”

He paused again, squeezing his eyes shut. I had to ask him. “Donny …Baby … what did she say?”

He nodded to himself like he was going to get this out no matter what. “She said ‘Roger, Roger?’ like she was asking Charlie if he was Roger but she didn’t know for sure. ‘Roger, what are you doing here? I killed you, didn’t I, Roger?’ Leeann, she didn’t even say it mad like, it was just this real conversational question, like didn’t I do the wash already or something. When she talked though, I’ll admit it, I pissed myself like a three year old, and that’s when Charlie started screaming. I’ll hear him screaming and her saying that ‘Didn’t I kill you, Roger?’ till I die, Leeann.”

I just squeezed his shoulder, ‘cause sometimes there just aren’t any good words to be spoken.

“Then, Leeann, she said, ‘Well that’s okay, Roger, I will just kill you again. I will kill you as many times as it takes. You know I have to, don’t you, Roger? You have ruined my life, Roger, and I won’t let you live unless you are sorry. Roger, are you sorry for what you did, is that why you came back here?’ Poor Charlie, see Leeann, he couldn’t talk, not even to beg for mercy, he was crying too hard. He was to the window by then so I answered her for him. I said ‘Yeah, yeah Miz Robina, Roger is real sorry, that’s what he came to tell you, that he’s sorry.’ She looked right at me then and smiled; only it was a God-awful because part of her jaw had fallen off her face. Then she said ‘You’re not Roger, neither of you are Roger. I want Roger! You’re just filthy boys who don’t belong in my house.’ Then, God Leeann, oh shit, she moved so quick, she raised her arm up and plunged that knife right into Charlie’s back. He was halfway out the window by then with me pulling him into the tree. He didn’t even scream, because the knife just went right through him without leaving a mark. I thought we were home free, but Jesus she climbed right out after Charlie, and started clawing at his face; this time it did make marks. Oh God, it was so bad she tore his face to the bone with her fingers. I was screaming by then too. Charlie was just trying to get away from her, but we were in a goddamn tree and so when he backed away, he fell. Leeann, I heard him hit. When he hit it sounded like this … this cracking, splatting sound. I guess I knew then she had killed him. But God help me, I still wanted to live. I started climbing down, but she was there, ahead of me and, oh shit, the smell of her. The last thing I remember before the hospital was her hands coming out at me, and she said, ‘Your turn, little boy.’ I guess she shoved me, and I would have died too, but I was hanging straight down from the branch when I hit, so my legs took it all. See Charlie, he was leaning back from her; I think that’s why he landed on his head. I don’t know, maybe it just wasn’t my time.”

Oh my God, I didn’t know what to say to him, except the first thing that came into my head. “Daddy was right. He always said Charlie was murdered in this house and that the Willets covered it up. He was right all along.”

Donny shook his head. “No, not really. The Willets didn’t cover up anything. They don’t know the story; no one does but me, and now you. And I told you because as soon as I heard you had moved in here, I knew I had to convince you to get out of here. I ran into your mama last week and she told me you were living in this G.D. house. I came over right away, and George told me you had gone to Miami, so I’ve been checking every day since then till you got home.”

I had me, as Jessie would have said, some feelings that were shaken not stirred about Donny’s story. I was scared, of course - I am not a fool - but also I was feeling for the first time in my life sad and angry that my big brother was dead. People say that you can’t miss something you’ve never had, but I don’t know that I agree with that. You can miss being fed if you are born hungry and, take it from me, you can miss being rich if you have always been poor. That day I found out I could miss having a brave, funny big brother who probably would have been crazy about me, even though I’d never met him. I felt a lot of things that afternoon: love for Donny Readle, sadness at never having no memories of Charlie, and something else too. I felt hatred for Robina Willets, a woman who was haunting my house when she should have been roasting down in hell long ago for the things she had done.

Chapter 25

There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask Donny, but my immediate curiosity was struck by him saying he had been around all last week.

“Donny, did you lose your job with the trucking company?”

He said no, that he was home for awhile on leave; that he had a bunch saved up and had needed to take it. I remembered then that Carlene had not come with him to my wedding; I got excited, thinking maybe he was on leave as he and Carlene were in the middle of a divorce. I asked him straight out if that was why.

He shook his head at me, looking sad. Then as fast as he had made me happy, he broke my heart again and set me straight to the facts. He told me he did not love Carlene; that marrying her had been a mistake, and he had come back to tell her so … tell her that he knew she had lied to him about why she had wanted out of Texas. It turned out that Mama was right - Carlene was trash, and worse, trash with a methamphetamine problem.

But when Donny had told her to get out, she had locked herself in the bathroom and started making cuts all over her body. On top of everything else wrong with her, apparently sad trashy Carlene had a real ugly history of cutting on herself when things went bad.

While Donny was telling me this story, I had a hard time keeping my face from showing my disgust, and from saying why the hell did you ever start up with that pig anyhow? But I was not Jessie, so I managed to keep silent, and let him talk.

Donny said that the real reason he had taken leave was to get her into a treatment program, which she had agreed to if he promised not to divorce her.

Huh? Not divorce her? Well if he wasn’t planning to divorce her, then what the hell had he been doing with me half an hour ago?

Now I know I had participated too (boy had I) and that I was married too, but Donny was the man, and older, and besides I did not feel rational or forgiving here. So I jumped up and started screaming at him. “You four flushing son of a bitch; you come out here and have me like some whore you picked up at Downey’s and then you tell me some horrible ass ghost story to scare the shit out of me in my own house, and then you go on back and sit and hold the hand of that cheap, drugged out whore you married?”

He stood up and put his shirt on and just looked at me. I found out then, when green eyes get cold that they look like glass.

“Well sure, Leeann, that’s exactly what I planned when I pulled in here. I’m going now but, before I do, there’s just two things I want to tell you. That wasn’t no ghost story I just told you, it was the truth. And Carlene may be a drugged out whore, like you call her, but at least she isn’t a gold digging bitch who screws the first man who rolls down her driveway a few weeks after her wedding day.”

I just stood there taking it. I couldn’t talk, and I didn’t think I would ever be able to talk again. I took a little step forward towards him, but he was already getting in his pickup and squealing in reverse down the driveway before I could even say as much as no … as in, ‘no, you didn’t mean that; no, I didn’t mean that. I love you, and I know you love me. I’ll leave George if you ask. I’ll wait for you till Carlene gets well. I’ll do all of this if you just put your arms around me one time.’ But he was gone, and he thought I was a gold digging whore, and he didn’t want to hear how I felt about any of it.

I turned back towards the house like a sick dog, and walked in slowly. My hair dye was sitting on the little table in the foyer and I just went on upstairs to Robina’s old bedroom and into the bathroom. I did believe every word of the story Donny had told me, but right then I didn’t much care. If that murderous corpse of a woman wanted to come in and shove me out of a window, then I thought maybe she would be doing me a favor.

Maria had to leave at six, and though it was still light out, I didn’t like her going before George got home, not one bit. I tried to think of a reason she needed to stay but I couldn’t. Jessie was at work till eleven, so I couldn’t ask her to come over either.

My feeling from a couple hours earlier of not caring if Robina made an appearance had worn clean off. I was heartbroken over Donny, but hell that was nothing new, and I was not really willing to be killed after all. So when Maria left, I went and sat out front on the verandah and waited for George to get home.

Maybe because of what I had done earlier, I had taken special pains with my appearance that evening. I was in an off-the-shoulder lace peasant blouse from Dolce and Gabbana and a short gauzy skirt, with lace up sandals. My hair was white gold again and I was tan as hell from Miami and spending all that day in the sun too. I looked good, and I needed to look good.

I needed to convince George somehow, without breaking Donny’s confidence (yeah I was mad, but I still loved him), to let me get Father Moray over here to do an exorcism right away. I was planning to tell George what happened in the bedroom earlier and hoped that would be enough to convince him that we were in danger from Robina.

George pulled up in the Jag right on the dot at seven. George was real good about being on time for things, I reflected. See, I was trying to make myself feel in love with George again, him pretty much being my only available choice. He looked pretty good too; he was tan himself, and wearing old 501s, and a white shirt. I guessed his meeting had been casual dress allowed. He was real happy to see me too. He ran over to the verandah (when you have twelve pillars it’s a verandah not a porch), and swept me up to his chest.

Chapter 26

“Baby, I missed you so much last week. Hell, look at you, Leeann. You got even prettier while you were gone … how’d you do that? You must have missed me too, huh? Sitting out here on the porch” (well I guessed when you are born rich, then I guess all verandahs are porches) “waiting for me. Why, when I pulled up and saw you, I thought it was the cutest thing I had ever seen.”

I let him kiss me real deep and told him that, yeah I had missed him real bad too, and I let him pull me on into the house, but I put the brakes on reminding him of what Doc. Miller said about four weeks when he tried to get me upstairs right away.

I thought then of what me and Donny had done out there on the lawn earlier and took a moment to thank God that I was on antibiotics. Jessie had explained to me a long time ago that you couldn’t get pregnant on antibiotics, which was a damn good thing, because neither Donny nor myself were thinking protection out there earlier. Shoot, we weren’t thinking at all and that thought made me pull myself up short and remember that I better stop thinking about Donny right this minute or George would know I was a cheating, adulterous whore just from looking at my face. I acted like I couldn’t wait till the three weeks more were up too, and went over to our fancy antique liquor cabinet, which George sure had stocked up nice and made him a big old Johnnie Walker on the rocks.

He sat down on the ivory velvet couch, in Robina’s (our) living room, and pulled out his vial and put some white powder down on the coffee table. It kind of annoyed me, him doing that. I guessed then that my husband was for sure a damn drug addict and I was a little worried about Robina’s reaction to him using her furniture this way too. But I decided to do a couple lines myself as I had had a long day and, besides, George liked me to party with him, and I needed him to be in a good mood.

After I did my lines, I went over and sat on his lap and wound my arms around his neck. “Hey Baby, I have something I need to ask you.”

He grinned at me and said “What do you want now, Miz Willets, a new car? I been meaning to get you one because I sure as hell don’t want you driving either of mine.” He grinned at me, and I forgot about the exorcism for a minute. A new car, that was something. I had never had any car at all, new or old.

“Oh, Georgie, a car - really? What kind are you going to get me? ”

He laughed and said as how he thought a little BMW roadster would look awful good on me.

Damn it, now I did feel horrible about Donny. I leaned into George and started kissing and fondling him until he pushed me back and said that maybe I should sit somewhere else until we could finish what I was starting. I moved over to one of the fancy chairs and sat there grinning at him until he told me that he had invited his mama and daddy over for dinner next Friday night and he hoped that would be okay. Now I was determined to be as perfect a wife as possible to make up for my transgressions, so I said sure and that we would have my mama and daddy over too.

He said he didn’t think that was such a good idea, but I told him it better be because if I didn’t have Mama and Daddy over too, then I couldn’t ask her to cook the dinner, and what would we give his parents to eat - tamales from Maria, or should I call in Domino’s? He thought that was funny as all get out, and said what the hell, bring on the in-laws too.

Seeing as how I had agreed to hostess my horrible mother-in-law, and that George seemed real pleased with me, I waited till he did another couple lines and then told him what had happened up in the bedroom earlier today.

He got real still and just sat there looking at me, not saying a word. I asked him why he was staring at me and he said, real slow, that he was just wondering if I was still taking those pain pills that Doc. Miller had given me after the surgery? I knew what he was implying and it made me mad right away, but I stayed calm … more flies with honey and all that stuff.

I said no, that I hadn’t had a pill for days and that I wasn’t crazy either, thank you very much! It had really happened. Why he could ask Maria about the slamming door and how I couldn’t have done it, being trapped outside on the balcony, behind doors I might add (my voice got a little high pitched here I will admit) that were locked … even though there was no damn lock on the doors. I asked him how he might like to explain that.

He was real calm, which just made me madder, but I held my tongue, as he explained that the doors to the balcony were old and the wood must have expanded; after all, no one had been opening or closing them for years. And as to the door slamming, well it was just like Maria had told me, the window was open and the draft shut the door. So then I asked him, well what about me seeing a dark haired woman come in and even look at my luggage. Was that the damn wind too, huh, was it? But of course he had an explanation for that. George was real smart all of a sudden. He told me that people see what they are expecting to see, and I had been nervous being in the house for the first time and what with the shock of seeing those kids’ rooms before. And he said as how I had just recently had a bad shock and surgery, well he figured that when I got shut out on the balcony, my “little girl’s imagination just took right over.”

I didn’t say anything to that; it was too stupid to answer. Shoot, I wondered if old Roger used to say stuff like that to Robina and if it made her go crazy and decide to go on a rampaging killing spree.

It was obvious that George was never going to believe me and that if I wanted help I would have to get it myself. I decided to get Jessie in on this thing first thing tomorrow, and then maybe she and I together would go talk to Father Moray and see what he thought we should do.

The rest of the night me and George watched reruns of the Sopranos on HBO. He just loved that show. George drank a few more Johnnies and I stuck to soda as my nerves were kind of jittery from the coke earlier, and I didn’t feel like getting loaded along with George.

After about three hours of Tony and crew, I started getting real sleepy and asked George if we couldn’t go on up to bed now? He told me to go on ahead, he’d be up in awhile … that he wasn’t tired yet which, given how much coke he had done, wasn’t much of a surprise. But I didn’t want to argue with him anymore. I just wanted him to come upstairs so I could go to bed. So I said real sweet “Come on, Baby, you can watch TV in our room.”

He said no again, that he wanted to stay downstairs, so then I started to cry and told him I was afraid to be up there by myself. That exasperated him plenty, I could tell, but he just called me a big old baby, and said he would come to bed “but that he probably wouldn’t go to sleep for hours, so not to whine about the TV keeping me up.”

Normally, I would have to agree with what George had said about me whining if the TV was on …I normally did surely prefer my bedroom all nice and quiet and dark to go to sleep in, but right then I was so tired that I thought I could sleep through the Dallas Cowboys playoffs in my room … besides which, dark and quiet and alone did not sound too tempting in a room that I now knew for sure held a ghost … a mean horrible ghost that could and had already killed someone, my own brother as a matter of fact, in that very room or at least in the tree outside.

Despite everything that I had learned (and done) during the day, I fell asleep right away. But then I woke up right away too, or at least I thought I was awake. I could see the TV on, but I couldn’t hear it. Maybe George had muted it. The room wasn’t dark, the curtains were open and the moon was out.

Like I said, I thought I was awake, I even felt myself sit up. But … and this is very hard to explain … it was like I was tugged to a sitting position and somehow I knew it wasn’t my body being tugged but my spirit. Like I said, this is hard to explain. Whatever it was, it was a horrible feeling.

I was struggling against something that was making my spirit sit up outside of my body and was still tugging on it to make more of me slip out. I was trying to hold onto my body like it was a blanket that I wanted to cover me, but I couldn’t. Whatever it was that was tugging me was too strong, and then it won. I was out of my body completely.

“Oh God help me, please help me,” I was praying, but just in my head because whatever I was now couldn’t make an actual sound. I got flung upwards all the way to the ceiling and, when I looked down below me, I could see myself and George lying there in the bed. Then I was being pulled across the ceiling to the doorway and that’s when I really started struggling with whatever it was that was doing this.

I started trying to hold myself inside the room, grabbing at the top of the doorway with my hands, but the wood just went right through them. I tried praying, frantically, saying the Lord’s Prayer over and over. I could feel it was working because, without warning, I shot back into my body, but I still couldn’t get it to move. It was like someone had poured cement on top of me.

I was paralyzed and that thing, whatever it was that had yanked me out in the first place, it was still close by. I could feel it right beside me, trying to pull me out again. My feelings of being watched and surrounded by something dark and powerful, by a force exuding pure evil was so strong that it’s impossible to describe.

I just lay there, and I kept praying hard and fast and, in a minute, or an hour - it’s hard to say - it lifted. I could move my head and this time I sat up and it was really me sitting up, body included. I switched on the light by my bed and half walked, half crawled to the bathroom. I made it just in time to vomit harder than I ever had in my life.

I was standing there, shaking and rinsing out my nasty mouth when I heard the laughter again; the same laughter that Jessie and I had blamed on Muffin back at the old house. Oh I knew then, I knew it had been her all along, that somehow she must have known I was coming here to her house and it made her laugh. And, oh, this thought was bad, but I couldn’t help wondering if maybe her being able to move around like that, well didn’t that make her more powerful even than Donny said she was?

Because, see, I had always heard that ghosts were stuck in one place, but apparently no ghost rules applied to Robina. She could come to visit me at my mama and daddy’s house, she could kill my brother and try to kill Donny, and she could pull me out of my body while I slept and take me somewhere.

Oh Christ Jesus, where was it she had been trying to take me? I don’t remember going back to sleep that night, but I must have because George woke me up with his cursing.

Chapter 27

“Where in the hell has that stupid Mexican put my nine irons?”

I rose up and looked at him. “Hey, Sugar, what are you doing?”

He smiled at me. “Hey yourself, Sugar. Sorry I woke you. I have an eight a.m. tee time with Daddy down to the club, and I can’t find my damn nine irons! You don’t have any idea where that girl put it do you ”

I told him that Maria was real nice and not a damn Mexican; well I mean she was Mexican, but he didn’t need to say it like an insult. And I said that, yeah, I remembered him telling Jack to put his clubs in the garden shed by the pool.

He gave me a big kiss and told me that it was great having a little wife to take care of him. He said that he would see me tonight and not to forget we were going into OKC to see the Indiana Jones movie. I told him I hadn’t forgotten (which I had) and to have good game. Then I got up and without showering or anything. I just threw on a t-shirt and shorts, and ran downstairs. As soon as I saw George back down the driveway in the Jag, I grabbed the spare keys to the Humvee and ran outside and jumped in and drove over to Jess and Mark’s apartment.

Britney’s daddy, who ran the Piggly, had built a couple apartments upstairs where the old storage rooms used to be, if you could call them apartments. They were just one big room each with a bathroom. The kitchen pretty much consisted of a mini-fridge and this little tiny stove and you had to use the bathroom sink for washing your dishes. They were real cheap though, two hundred a month, and that included utilities. Of course that wasn’t as good a deal as you might think because there was no air conditioning.

I didn’t know how Jessie stood it, but then she was with Mark, and he was her true love. Also her weird old mama wasn’t there. And even though I had a huge mansion all to myself, it was infested with Robina, like the Piggly was infested with rats. Heck, Jessie’s apartment probably was too, now that I thought about it. And still I think maybe Jess was better off than me.

I went on up the outside stairs to her door, making a lot of noise in case the rats were sitting on the steps taking a break from the over full dumpsters which you could smell three blocks away. I don’t know why the mayor didn’t make the Piggly pay for garbage removal like everyone else had to do. Daddy said there was a payoff situation going there, and maybe he was right.

Anyway, I had to pound on the door and holler Jessie’s name about fifty times before she finally opened it. When she did, I knew I was in deep shit. Jess isn’t exactly a morning person to begin with and I knew she had worked till late last night and then probably had homecoming sex with Mark till the wee hours, but this was an emergency and she could sleep another time.

She just stood there looking at me, and then she started in. “Shit Leeann, what the hell? It’s the butt crack of dawn. Me and Mark just got to sleep like two hours ago. You get on home, and come back at a decent hour when God fearing people wake up, like three p.m. or so.”

I swear Jessie can make me laugh no matter what. I brushed on past her and walked inside. I told her that I didn’t think God fearing people got up at three p.m. just for her information. Mark woke up then and he looked pretty pissed too, till he saw I had brought them lattes and donuts from the new Dunkin Donuts we had just got here in Dalton. He got up and wrapped the sheet around himself and disappeared into their bathroom, saying “Hey, Leeann” on his way out of the room.

That was just like Mark, to do something nice like that and leave Jessie and me alone so we could talk. Everybody always said that about Mark, what a nice guy he was, and it was true. I still didn’t know what the heck Jessie saw in him though.

Mark was a long old string bean of a boy. He had real nice thick sandy colored hair, but he wore it to his shoulders which didn’t go over so big in Dalton. And he didn’t like sports - never even tried to play any of them, not that Jessie gave a tinker’s damn. Ever since she had set down next to him in kindergarten and punched his lights out for stealing her play dough (she claims he ate it), she had never looked at another boy. I will say this about him …in addition to being a real nice guy, he was different than any of the usual boys in Dalton.

Mark liked to read and not just comic books either. He read whole real books without even being told to or anything. He wanted to make movies too - horror movies mostly, like Wes Craven. I didn’t think that would ever happen because Mark didn’t have a dime to his name, so film school was not an option, but he and Jess weren’t worried about it.

They had a plan. They would both work like dogs and live like, well dogs I guess, and save up enough money for two years to head out to California. Once they got there, Jess would work as a waitress at some real fancy place and Mark would get a job as an assistant to a producer. One day he would make a short film, and the rest would be history as they say. I never did think Mark was good enough for Jessie, him being poor and kind of strange, at least by Dalton standards, but I will say this for him, he sure did love her. He never stopped looking at her like he couldn’t believe she was his, not even after all these years, and that part of Mark …well it made me love him too.

I sat down on the bed and looked up at Jess who was now awake enough to come over and kill me and then murder me later for waking her up. I decided to head her off at the pass and jumped right into the story that Donny had told me yesterday. While I was talking, Mark came back into the room and leaned on the arm of their foldout couch and whistled real low.

He said “Geez, Leeann, that is the best ghost story I ever heard. I swear girl, there’s a movie in this.”

Jess gave him a punch and told him to shut up. She said that I was her best friend and I didn’t tell the damn story to make him the next M. Night Shyamalan. She told him that there wasn’t going to be any stupid ass movie about my personal problems. I was feeling somewhat touched by her defending me until she up and said that I had “so many personal problems that she figured he’d best think in terms of a series instead.”

He got as sulky as Mark gets, which isn’t very, and said he had better get on to work then. Mark worked two jobs: during the weekend he was out at the lumber yard and, during the week, he changed oil at the Jiffy Lube. I felt bad that I had violated my promise to Donny by telling Jessie and now Mark but, to be strictly honest, there was never any way that I wasn’t going to tell Jessie, and she would have told Mark, so it wasn’t my fault really.

As soon as Mark left, Jessie threw on a pair of shorts with the t-shirt she had slept in and said I could buy her breakfast as she thought better on a full stomach.

I realized I was starving too. I hadn’t eaten a thing since I took two bites of the salad Maria had made for me the day before. My stomach felt funny this morning and I wondered if all the stress of the past few weeks wasn’t going to make me the youngest ulcer patient in history.

Jess told me that now I was becoming a hypochondriac on top of everything else. We got into the Humvee and went on over to ‘The Coffee Pot’ but, when we pulled into the lot, we could see that everyone else in Dalton had decided to have breakfast there too. Even my daddy’s pickup was in the lot, so we motored on over to Gatley, which is the next town over from Dalton, about fifteen miles south of us.

We went inside the Gatley Café and this fat snooty waitress looked us both up and down with a nasty expression on her ugly face. Me and Jessie was in our Daisy Dukes, and neither of us had bothered to brush our hair (or teeth, I’m sad to say) but, still, this wasn’t exactly the ‘Four Seasons’ in Dallas, so she didn’t need to be such a witch.

Like always, Jessie had to order the trucker’s breakfast - four eggs and about ten pounds of bacon. I don’t know where she put it because she weighed about ninety pounds wringing wet. After thinking I was starving, my stomach still didn’t feel good enough to try more than white toast and tea. Jessie tucked into her breakfast and started firing questions at me at the same time. To be strictly honest, Jess ate like a pig. Mama said it wasn’t her fault on account of her mother being the way she was (she meant drunk ninety percent of the time), and her daddy being gone all the time. Normally it didn’t bother me, but like I said, this morning my stomach was shot.

So to get her to stop talking, I repeated Donny’s entire story and told her about what happened to me on the balcony, and also my dream that wasn’t a dream, and then how afterward I had heard that awful laughter in the bathroom. I also told her that now I knew it hadn’t been Muffin laughing at me back at Mama and Daddy’s house. I said that somehow Robina had come there, that she must have known about me coming to live at Willets’ House.

Jessie said that she thought I was right about that. She said that either I was dumb as hair like usual or that Robina must be one hell of a powerful ghost since, as far as she knew, ghosts couldn’t manifest anywhere but the place where they had died. Because of her stupid theories, she said she was a little doubtful about Robina being able to follow Charlie and Donny out into the tree like that.

Then, and doesn’t this beat all, she told me that I had messed up last night. Jessie thought that the force I felt trying to pull me out of my body was Robina and that she had been trying to show me something; that I should have followed the tugs out of the bedroom.

Well I told her that, no shit, it was Robina, but that I already knew what she wanted to do with me, and that was kill me dead …so excuse me for resisting. Jessie was finally done with her eggs, thank God, so she could talk without me having to watch her masticate. She said that I was wrong about Robina. She asked me why, if Robina had wanted to kill me, then why didn’t she just push me off the balcony when she had the chance? Jessie told me ghosts were ghosts because they had some kind of regrets or unfinished business, maybe both, and, in Robina’s case, it was probably worse than most, because in life she had gone so crazy that she had killed her own children. Jessie said that Robina was obviously trying to show me something important and, if I got the chance next time, I should let go and follow.

I asked her why I should try to help a ghost that killed everyone she came across and Jess said that wasn’t true as far as either of us knew. That yes, she had killed Charlie, but hadn’t Donny said that first she was calling him Roger?

I said yes, but then at some point she realized it wasn’t Roger and killed him anyway, as well as trying to kill Donny.

Jess thought about that for a minute, but like always she had an answer for everything. “Okay, Leeann, think about it ... she said Roger, didn’t I kill you? And then something about what he had done to her, right? So obviously Roger Willets messed up that poor woman’s life and now she hates all men. Those two were just in the wrong place, and you did tell me they were trying to steal a picture. Maybe she just lost it there for a minute.”

I snorted like a little pig laughing at that lame-brained idea. I told Jess that I ‘lost’ it myself sometimes but that I had never killed anyone over it, and that the theory was bogus anyway because Charlie and Donny weren’t even men then, just young kids.

That made her mad, and she told me I was being a judgmental asshole and that she personally thought anyone who had to be married into that family would probably go crazy eventually. She raised her eyebrows at me and said that if I just wanted to shoot all her theories down that was fine with her; she didn’t have to live in “horror mansion,” I did, and if I didn’t like her ideas or want her help, that was good. Could I just run her back home so that she could go back to bed, please?

I started telling her that I was sorry, that I did want her help, that I would listen to any theory that she had, no matter how crackpot (I grinned when I said it though). I said she was my best friend in the world, and I couldn’t get through this without her.

The thing with Jess is she has a temper, but her heart is bigger than Texas, so she blows hot and is over it in about one minute. She grinned and told me okay, okay, she guessed I was pathetic enough, and of course she would help me. Her plan, she said, was that we needed to find out everything we could about Robina and her life before the murders, like did she act different right before, what might have set her off; how was her marriage - things like that - so we could try to communicate better with her when we had the séance. Yes, Jessie explained, as soon as we had more information, we would haul out her prized Ouija board and make contact with Robina and then send her on into the light.

I told her that it was worth a shot but I thought Robina wasn’t going to be that easy to get rid of and, I said, I wished we could have a full blown exorcism. Jess perked right up at that idea and said there was no good reason we couldn’t do both … just to make sure. Jessie loved the movie ‘The Exorcist’.

I told her about how George had reacted when I told him what had happened to me and how he had treated me like I was losing it and, worse, had refused my request for Father Moray. That pissed off Jessie again. She called George a fat asshole and then she said “Hey, I have an idea. Let’s not get rid of Robina just yet. Hell, Leeann, she’s just bound to kill off asshole George any time now - after all, he’s a Willets and a man - then you can just sell that damn house and get on with your life.”

That cracked us both up. I told her that George wasn’t that bad and that he was my husband and the only one I was likely to ever have so, if she didn’t mind, I would still like to try to get rid of Robina. Jess pretended that she thought I was making a mistake but said, what the hell, if that’s what I wanted, we’d ghost bust Robina.

I told her it could be worse: just imagine if the ghost was Miz Bethany; how would we ever get rid of her? Jessie said she didn’t think that one would have been a problem … that we could have just lured her shade into the shoe department at Neiman’s and left her there to torture shoppers forever.

Shit, this got us both laughing till we cried, and we were doing dead Miz Bethany imitations when that rude waitress came over and told us to pipe down and were we done? She said she had people waiting for the table. We looked around. I guess the people waiting were dead like Robina because we were the only ones left in the restaurant.

She pissed me off so, to get even when she brought the check, I asked her if she took credit cards. I was just being contrary as I had plenty of cash. Truly I just wanted to put her in her place. She nodded with this nasty look on her face, so I handed her my black Amex.

She looked at it like it was a dead roach and said they only took MasterCard and Visa. Jessie was laughing at me now and told me to stop acting like Miz Willets, which I guess I had been, but still that waitress was a cow.

To make her feel bad for how she had acted, I handed her a twenty-dollar bill and told her to keep the change. That was a hell of a tip for a nine-dollar breakfast, but all she did was pocket it and shake her head sneering at me.

Chapter 28

When we got into the Humvee, Jess told me that the waitress probably thought we were strippers and I was paying her out of last night’s tips. Jessie could always make me laugh at myself. I cheered up and asked her where we should go to continue planning how to get rid of Robina?

Jess said “Where else, Lake Injun”. I said hell yeah, and turned the Humvee toward it. Jess lit up a J and offered it to me but my stomach still felt funny so I passed.

I did feel happier, though, so I decided to spill my guts to Jessie about what happened between Donny and me the day before. She stayed quiet while I talked, right up until I said how it was a good thing I was on antibiotics, huh? She looked at me like I was loaded, which I wasn’t (that would have been her that was loaded actually), and asked me what the hell I was talking about.

I reminded her of how she had told me a nurse had told her that you couldn’t get pregnant on antibiotics. She started laughing and snorting then, and said that I was lucky I was so pretty because my brains sure as hell wouldn’t get me very far.

That pissed me off, and I asked her what the hell she meant by that.

She told me then. “Hell, Leeann, do you remember last year when Mark and I had that scare?”

I told her I did, and she said that she had gone to the school nurse to ask her if she could be pregnant even though she was on the pill and the nurse had told her, no, not unless she had been on antibiotics which made the pill ineffective sometimes. A couple days later she got her period, but it had scared her, so she had passed on the warning to me, but obviously I had misheard her. Then Jess, who can be really dramatic, said “Okay, lets recap: yesterday in broad daylight you screwed the hell out of Donny Readle in front of God and anyone who might have driven by, right? And for birth control you used antibiotics, and he didn’t use a condom. Am I missing anything here?”

I just said that about summed it up and started crying. Then Jess said oh hell, don’t cry, she didn’t blame me, I loved him, it was all right, and, besides, I probably couldn’t get pregnant that soon after my miscarriage and everything anyway. She finished up by telling me real sweetly that if I played that Britney Spears CD and made her listen to ‘Everytime’ once more, she was gonna bash my head in with a baseball bat.

I sniffed a little and nodded, even though I purely disagreed with her about my song, which, so help me, coulda been written just for me and Donny, but it’s no use trying to explain stuff like that to Jessie who only listens to classic country and Motley Crue. And then we were at the lake. We got out and went to sit on the shore of it but, shoot, it was so hot that within a minute we were both naked and in the water.

Lake Injun has this old floating dock that’s been there my whole life and that’s what we swam out to then. When we were lying on it naked and sunning ourselves, that’s when Jess finally told me her plan.

“Okay, we have got to figure out who knew Robina and talk to them right away. Also, maybe we should go to the library and see the old newspapers and stuff.”

I told her we didn’t need to go to the library for that, let’s not get crazy here. We could just go to Mama and Daddy’s house. I said that Daddy had kept every clipping there was about that house because it had to do with him thinking Charlie had been murdered there. Of course, now we knew he was actually right about that, though daddy had never suggested it was a ghost. I thought he would think that idea was nuts even if I did tell him.

Jessie perked up when I said it, and she said “that, hell, she bet that Daddy probably knew more than anyone about the murders since he had been investigating the real story for all these years.” She bet that daddy might have even known Robina, that he could be a primary source, whatever the hell that was.

I told her maybe she was right, but that Daddy never talked about stuff like that with me, and he wouldn’t start now.

Jessie said that he would talk to her and, moreover, didn’t I realize what today was?

Well yes, I told her, I knew it was Saturday, if that’s what she meant.

Then she reminded me that every Saturday, Daddy held court from noon until he passed out at Downey’s. Jessie calculated that we needed to show up there about two hours into his drinking and ask him about it, or rather she would ask him and I could just sit there and be quiet. I guessed that might work after all. When Daddy was drunk, he loved to tell stories, and he loved Jessie all the time.

So I told her I might have heard worse plans in my life and that I was ‘in’. She said good, and now she was ‘out’ … as in out for a nap. Since I had woke her up at such a God-awful hour and that, she was gonna sleep now for a couple hours so “God help you, if you wake me up.”

Jess went out like a light and I looked at her for a minute. She was so pretty and so brave. I didn’t know what I would do without her. Then I stared out over this lake that I loved and I thought about how Donny and I were supposed to have a little house here one day and nine or ten babies, and then I thought maybe I should just take a nap like Jessie, because thinking like this hurt too much.

I went out right away. I hadn’t got much sleep last night myself, what with my dream that wasn’t a dream and all, and the old wood under my back was so warm, and with Jessie right beside me I was safe.

The dream began immediately. I was still on the dock. I saw a man on the shore staring at me. Then he began taking off his clothes and got into the water and started swimming toward me, but I saw that he was not alone in the water. There was a woman swimming right beside him but underneath the water. Oh God, the man was Donny, and she was there too … Robina. I called out to him to be careful, that she was in the water, but he couldn’t hear me. Donny gestured to his ears, shook his head, and kept swimming towards me. Robina heard me, though. I saw her shake her head at me and smile like I couldn’t help him. Then he was climbing onto the dock naked. His gold hair was wet and hanging in his green eyes and he kneeled down beside me and looked into my eyes and smiled at me the way only he could smile.

He said “There you are. Leeann. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

I started to tell him that she was right behind him but he leaned down and kissed me, a long, slow, heat-drenched kiss that made me forget everything. I put my hands up on his wide shoulders and let my legs fall open to him. Over his shoulder, though, I saw Robina was climbing up over the side of the dock, her long dark hair hanging in wet strings. Jesus, Donny had been right ... there was something moving in her eyes and her face. The skin was hanging off in strings.

She smiled at me and said “There you are, Leeann. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

I screamed and tried backing away from Donny, from her, and then she was right beside me and she spoke again….

“Geez, oh Pete, Leeann, what the hell? I was having the best dream. For some reason someone gave me and Mark a big pink mansion to live in and we were just driving up to it, when you woke me up with your caterwauling. Must have been quite a dream, huh? Oh well, it’s about time for us to head over to Downey’s anyway. Shoot I’m hot. I’m going in now. See you on shore.”

And then Jessie dived off the dock and started swimming back. I stood up shaking even in the heat. Yeah, she was right, that was quite a dream. I followed Jessie into the lake and began stroking for the shore.

Chapter 29

You wouldn’t think that on a hot sunny Saturday a total dive like Downey’s would be crowded, but it was. The lot was already full and it wasn’t even two p.m. yet.

I spotted my daddy’s beat up Ford truck parked over on the side. I guess he thought he was being sly and that if Mama drove by to check on his whereabouts, that she would never spot it cleverly disguised over there by the dumpsters.

I said that to Jessie and she cracked up. Then she reminded me to stay quiet and let her do the talking. She hadn’t said much on the drive here.

When I told her about the dream I had, she said that it just confused her. Did it mean that I was hot for Donny or did I think Robina was? I told her she wasn’t funny. Mostly she just wanted to talk about her dream … how she and Mark had somehow inherited this gigantic, Spanish mansion, painted pink, of all things. What did I think it meant? Could it be a premonition that Mark was going to be a famous director?

I told her that it just meant that she was probably hotter for a mansion than she was for Mark, and maybe I should fix her up with Teddy D, George’s rich best friend after all.

She told me that “One gold digger in the family was enough, and look how this was turning out.”

I told her that I hoped that she and Mark would get attacked by the rats from the dumpster out back of the Piggly. Mostly we were just trying to pretend everything was normal, like it was everyday that we hunted my daddy down to ask him about his son’s death. Oh, and by the way, since we’re talking about it, did he know anything about the woman who had killed her entire family, whose house I was now living in?

When we first walked into Downey’s I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Jeffy Laws, who owned Downey’s, kept it awful dark, no doubt so that his patrons couldn’t see how filthy it was. It smelled like every bar in the world does, I guess - old beer, perfume, and burnt popcorn.

Jessie and I were just standing there a few feet inside waiting for our eyes to get used to the dark. There had, of course, been a series of whoops and whistles upon our entrance, but that was to be expected, and then we heard my daddy’s voice.

“Hey, what are the two ugliest girls in Dalton doing here? You two get on over here right now.”

‘Here’, it turned out, was Daddy’s stool in the middle of Downey’s long bar. He held court there every Saturday and quite a few days during the week, too, if you want me to be strictly honest about it. When we got over to him, he told the men sitting on the stools closest to him to shove off and they did, and Jessie and I took their places. It was kind of nasty because my seat was still warm from where the dirty looking man had been sitting. Oh well, when in Rome, as they say.

Daddy was reaching over and giving both me and Jessie big hugs. He told me that I had better be heading over to see Mama right after this little visit because she was pissed as hell that I hadn’t called her since I had gotten back from taking my “honeymoon with Jessie here.”

Jess laughed and told him that “Yeah, Charlie, and so what? Who wouldn’t rather travel with her than fat ass George anyway?”

Daddy thought that was hilarious, which surprised me a little since I thought he liked George now. Then he made the bartender bring Jessie a Bud Light, and me a coke, which pissed me right off. I mean I didn’t actually want a beer right then, but why treat Jessie like a grown up and not me? I was the one who was married, after all.

I kept my mouth shut, though, and just sat there and let Jessie sweet talk him into a good mood. To get him warmed up, she let him go on for about (three days) thirty minutes of talking about his one season of playing for the Sooners, and how he could have been huge, before she brought up the house and Robina.

He got real stiff then .... asking her why she wanted to know. He said we should just let the dead stay dead. Jess told him that she would sure as hell like to, but that it didn’t look like Robina was all that dead after all, and his only daughter was being frightened near to death by her.

He laughed, and said that “Oh hell, you girls have been watching too many of those movies you like where everybody gets chopped up.”

That pissed me right off. After all, I wasn’t the one who spent all day every day of my life drunk. Wow, where did that thought come from? I loved my daddy and I didn’t mind his drinking, at least I didn’t think I did. I started to mouth off to him, but Jess gave me a warning look, and I remembered my promise to be quiet. So I just looked down into my Coca Cola, like it could show me the future or something.

Jess laughed, and said “Yeah, Charlie, maybe we have seen too many horror movies, who knows? But what the hell, maybe finding out something about Robina would make her seem more human and less scary. Then wouldn’t it be worth it to restore his little girl’s peace of mind, and maybe calm her wild imagination down?”

He nodded at that, and said, yeah, that made sense to him. He said he didn’t really know much about Robina, that he had just seen her around town. After all, they didn’t exactly move in the same circles, did they?

Jess jumped on that and asked him if Robina had been “an unholy stuck up bitch, like old Miz Bethany was?”

He shook his head, saying, no, no, she hadn’t been. He told us he had been working back then at Peddy J’s Auto Body and Repair, and that she had come by a few times to have her oil checked and that sort of thing.

His eyes got distant while he was telling us what he remembered about Robina. “She didn’t even drive a fancy car or nothing. She just drove this big old station wagon. It was usually full of kids and she was mostly always pregnant it seemed like. But she never looked all puffy and red, the way a pregnant woman usually does. Hell, I guess she was about the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life, now that I think about it. She had the biggest eyes; huge dark eyes, sad eyes, but real kind; do you know what I mean?”

Jess and I had no idea, of course, but we both nodded like we did know. My own experience to date of Robina’s “huge dark eyes” was somewhat different.

He kept talking. “And she was real tall for a woman, but so slender that she just seemed like a little thing. When she would come by Peddy J’s, she was always real nice to me, but those kids of hers … shit, they were hellions, running around, screaming, grabbing snacks off the stand without asking. She would try to get them to behave, but they just laughed at her. It used to piss me off, and my hand would itch to give them a whack now and then.” Daddy’s face got kind of dark looking when he said that, and then he said, “Well of course it was just terrible what happened to them poor children, and maybe they hadn’t been that bad after all.”

Jess got him back on track by asking what Robina would do when her kids acted up like that. Daddy shook his head and got a little smile on his face, thinking back. “Well, that part was just real cute. See, she had this little tiny whispery voice - hell, she sounded just like Jackie Kennedy, now that I think about it. You know she was a Yankee too, just like her, which makes a man wonder because your Mama, Leeann, is always saying that Yankee women have loud, screechy voices, but Miz Robina sure didn’t, and neither did Miz Kennedy. Why, if anyone has a screechy voice, then shoot, I guess it’s your Mama when I’m late for dinner.”

That cracked up Jessie and me. Daddy was in his stride now that he had such an appreciative audience. “You know, she was always alone, too, I remember that. No matter what day it was, weekends and such, it was just her .... her and those kids. I never once saw old Roger out with her, and she didn’t have a single friend here I don’t think.”

Jessie asked him why he thought that was. He ruminated a little and then said he figured it was on account of her being “so much more beautiful than any other woman in this town that they didn’t want to suffer the comparison. And then of course, she was a Yankee, poor little thing.” But he didn’t think that was the main reason. He guessed that it was because she was married to Roger Willets, “Dalton’s favorite son, old Prince Roger himself. I think it just galled every other woman in Dalton to death. See, Roger had left Dalton for a few years and then he just showed back up with this beautiful girl he had married from back east somewhere. And Roger’s mama, old Miz Willets, well girls, she hated her on sight, and treated her like dirt every day of her life. I guess that attitude kind of trickled down to the other ladies, which isn’t too surprising, because you women all stick together like hens, don’t you?”

Jessie made a cackling noise and pretended to shake her tail feathers. She said to daddy “You got us in one, Charlie, but, hey, you gotta tell me, was that old Miz Willets as horrible as Miz Bethany is now?”

He laughed, and called Jessie a pistol, and said that the original Miz Willets could have eaten Miz Bethany for lunch, and probably did after Robina offed herself and she was the only daughter-in-law left around to torture.

Jessie told me then, that see, “It could be worse”.

I just rolled my eyes, but inside I did feel my first little twinge of sympathy for Robina. Jessie was asking Daddy now about “Prince Roger” and what he had been like.

Daddy was in full steam on that subject. “Well, I guess that Roger Willets was the biggest prick this town ever saw. When he was growing up here, his mama worshiped the ground he walked on … his daddy, not so much, but Miz Willets ruled the roost. He was a good looking son of a bitch; probably the only good looking Willets ever born .... sorry, Sugar (he winked at me), but an entitled little son of a bitch from day one. He didn’t even play football in school … acted like it was beneath him. Shit, everything was beneath him, I guess. Then if he didn’t up and announce to his parents that he didn’t want to work in the family business - no, that wasn’t good enough for his highness. He wanted to be an architect and wanted to go to Yale for school. Not OKC College, that weren’t good enough place for him even though that’s where his daddy and grandpa attended and where his sad-ass brother George was going …sorry, Sugar.”

I shrugged. I didn’t much care what Daddy said about George. Shoot, did I care about George at all? Oh those were nasty thoughts. I shook myself back into right now and daddy was still talking.

“That was probably the first time in their whole marriage that Mr. and Miz Willets agreed on something about Roger. His daddy didn’t want to support his ass if he wasn’t going to get a business degree and come back and work for Willets Petroleum, and his mama just didn’t want him out of her sight period.”

Jess and I were hanging on daddy’s every word by then, and Jess said all breathless “Then what happened, Charlie?”

Daddy loved the attention and was grinning now while he talked. “Well, I guess Roger had him some money, not much, but enough from his grandma to head off to Yale without his parents’ help, and that’s just what he did. None of us saw him around here for years, and old Miz Willets, she just got meaner every day. Then the old man died, and see, normally, all the money it just goes to the oldest son, along with the company,” (this part I knew about already from George), “but in this case, the oldest son, that being Roger, got cut out, and then old man Willets, he cut out his next son George too. I guess he knew another asshole when he saw him - sorry again, Sugar” (looking to me, as if I cared if he called George an asshole).

I just grinned and waved at him like it’s okay, Daddy, say what you want.

“So, anyway, it wasn’t too long after the old man died, that old Roger shows back up in town, only he wasn’t alone. He brought along this beautiful girl and three kids with him. I guess that he just wasn’t as smart as he thought he was and had run out of money. So when his mama called, he came running back with his tail between his legs and, before you could say sad ass mama’s boy, he was running Willets Petroleum and him and Robina and the kids were living in Willets House.”

I couldn’t help it, I had to interrupt.

“Daddy, you mean they moved in with his mother?”

Jessie glared at me for talking, but I couldn’t help it I had to know.

Daddy shook his head at me. “Well, yeah, I guess at first they was all living there real cozy; young George too. But then George went off to college up to OKC and, the next thing you know, old Miz Willets had built herself a new monster house out where the golf course is now. Actually now that I think of it, the present clubhouse is part of her old home. The old bitch lived to be about a thousand. Back to Roger, unless you two are getting bored now…”

We both shook our heads frantically.

“Okay then, so Roger was back and had fallen in line and old Miz Willets had opened up her purse, but she was still holding the strings, if you know what I mean.” (We did). “And so Roger, well, he must have resented it something awful. I don’t know, but maybe he felt ashamed for quitting his life up north and coming back here to be his mama’s lap dog because rumor had it that he started taking out his anger on Miz Robina. Now I don’t know if that’s true … people do gossip in this town.”

Me and Jessie both nodded again. Daddy was speaking a truth we knew real well.

“But I will say this, after a few months back here, when I would see her around, she always had these big glasses on … just like Jackie Kennedy again, now that I think of it.” Daddy loved Jackie Kennedy something fierce, she was like a damned fetish with him I swear. “Now this part I do know myself ... Roger took to drinking like prohibition might be back upon us. Shit, he was in here just about every day of his life, and early, too.”

God help me, I know that the irony of that statement was completely lost on daddy. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud but I knew, if I did, he would get furious and stop talking, so I took a big swallow of my coke and bit my tongue. Jessie, of course, was flattering him to no end, she was all… “Wow. Charlie, this is a good story.”

He puffed up and kept talking. “Yeah, pretty much everybody in town was talking about Roger and his drinking by then. He even racked up a couple of car accidents but, of course, being a rich asshole Willets, nothing happened to him. Sorry, Sugar, I know they are your people now, but once an asshole, always an asshole is the way I see it.”

I nodded. God, I guessed they were my people now …hideous thought.

“Anyway, instead of blaming Roger for being the asshole he was, his mama started telling everyone in town that poor Roger was just drinking away his sorrows because he had married the wrong girl. Old Miz Willets said that Robina was a strange one, and just couldn’t settle here in Dalton. And, I’ll tell you what, every woman in this town seemed to want to agree with her. They just shunned that poor little gal something awful. Well not your mama, Leeann, my Elma is a saint and don’t you forget it.”

I nodded. Daddy didn’t have to tell me my mama was a saint.

“Then, I don’t know, she had another baby, and sort of disappeared from sight, and you started hearing talk about how Roger was running around on her. But I’ll say this for the old boy, he must have still been doing his job at home, because then she was pregnant again. Course this time there was no baby. Don’t know what happened there, and then of course she had that last one, and it wasn’t too long after that, them murders was committed.”

Daddy stopped talking and signaled for another beer and I fished out my wallet and laid down a twenty on the bar.

“Girls, I’ll tell you something; from what I saw of her, that little gal wouldn’t have hurt a fly. I don’t know what happened to make her go crazy like that, but if you think of her, maybe you should do it with more pity than hate. Well, that’s what I think, anyway.”

I could see Daddy was done talking now. I wondered if he would still think Robina was to be pitied if he knew what I did about Charlie. That thought made me feel protective towards him and I leaned over Jessie to kiss him goodbye. I said we had to get going now, that I had to get cleaned up because George was taking me into OKC for dinner and a movie. And Jess said she had better get going too because Mark would be coming home to take her to bed, and then maybe watch a movie on TV. Daddy laughed at that, and reminded me to call Mama. I said I would as I needed to ask her to come to dinner on Friday with the in-laws and, well, to cook the dinner too, if I was being strictly honest.

Chapter 30

Damn, it was bright outside, and hot too. Jess and I both yelped when our butts hit the leather seats of the Humvee; no wonder George didn’t drive it in the summer.

On the way back to her apartment we talked about what Daddy had told us and Jessie said that it just proved her point about marrying into the Willets family. I just sighed and asked her what was next. She said that she thought she had enough information now for her séance, and what night should we do it?

I had to think about that one. I knew it had to be a night when George wasn’t home (the night part Jessie insisted on - personally I would have preferred high noon). I went over the week. Jess was only off on Tuesday and Saturday, so it had to be one of those nights. I said I had to check with George as to when I could maybe get rid of him, and that I would call her as soon as I knew. I told her sternly that if I could get rid of him for a night then she was definitely sleeping at my house after the séance since there was no way in hell I would be alone there after that.

She told me in return that I was a giant pussy and after hearing what Daddy had told us, that she didn’t think Robina was so scary anymore. Jess said that she thought Robina was just sad but that, yeah, she’d stay over and protect me. I had to wonder how brave Jess would be if she ever got to see Robina as I did, with her skin rotting off and those things moving in her eyes. How much would she feel sorry for her then?

I dropped Jess off and drove on back to Willets House. George’s Jag was out front, to my relief. I walked inside, told him I had been out with Jess at the lake all day …mostly true, and that, no, I hadn’t totaled his Hummer, obviously since it was in the driveway undamaged, and that, no, I didn’t want a line (the damn junkie), and could he please give me half an hour to shower; then we could get going.

He followed me upstairs, talking about his golf game, and then what the hell? He followed me right on into the bathroom and just sat there on the closed toilet. He was sitting there like he planned to stay while I took my shower! I kind of looked at him funny, but he just smiled and said that I was his wife and, even though he couldn’t touch me for another week or so, he could sure as hell look if he wanted to.

This, sadly, I guess, was the truth. I was his wife and there was no argument there. I wondered why I felt so self-conscious taking my clothes off and getting into the shower in front of him. I mean, we had done it like twenty times, so obviously we had seen each other naked, well him more than me because I mostly kept my eyes closed. But I didn’t like it, being naked in front of him. I felt bad about that because he was my lawfully wedded husband, but I couldn’t help how I felt.

It’s funny because, when I had been with Donny buck naked in the full sunlight, I had loved him looking at me. I could have stayed naked with him forever, like Adam and Eve, only no fig leafs needed. But Donny wasn’t my husband … George was, and I needed to start making the best of it. So all I said was “Sure, Sugar, you look all you want. After all, I belong to you, don’t I?”

And then I was real glad the doors of the shower were pebble glass. That way I figured for sure that George would not be able to tell that the water running down my face was not just from the shower.

Chapter 31

We got back late that night. I had to drive us home because George had hit his flask pretty hard all during the movie. It’s sad to say but I guess I didn’t think about why George was drinking or using as much as he was. I never thought to ask him if he was sad or disappointed about things too. I just worried about myself, and I’m sorry for that.

She came again that night. I mean I didn’t see her or hear her, but I had the same horrible sensations of being made to sit up out of my body, and being pulled from it. I was tugged back up to the ceiling and towards the door again. I promise you that I was not asleep. If I had been, then how could I have been weighing my terrible fear and the sense of evil against Jessie’s advice to just go with it?

Go with it and let Robina show me what she wanted.

Fear won out hands down. I started praying frantically and, exactly like before, I was back in my body, but paralyzed. I felt her, this time, just hovering over me, right over me, maybe an inch from my face.

I didn’t smell anything, but I heard her breathing. I felt her emotions, too. It wasn’t sadness or disappointment; it was rage … the purest form of rage I have ever encountered.

After a minute, the paralysis left me, but I could tell she hadn’t. Oh God, it’s hard to tell you how much I did not want to get up. I wanted to scream for George, even knowing he wouldn’t believe me. He still would have been someone living that was awake and talking to me. But I had to pee, worse than I ever had before in my life. For a minute I thought of just letting go there in the bed!

I really did. That would for sure wake up George but, shoot, even in the middle of the worst crisis of my life, and that’s counting the miscarriage, I just couldn’t do such a disgusting thing. So I ran to the bathroom as my mama would have said, as if all the devils of hell were following me, and one apparently actually was, because as soon as I sat down on the toilet, the door closed shut.

It didn’t slam this time, just very slowly began closing. I sat there paralyzed. I felt an awful deep fear, one that must live inside every human since the beginning of time … a fear of something that could not be, but was.

I tried to call out for George but I couldn’t make a sound except this little squeak which she answered it with a sigh. I began to pray and beg at the same time.

“Please, God, save me from this. Please, please, Robina, will you stop? Please stop. I have never hurt you. I have never hurt anyone. Please leave me alone, please, God. Please Robina.”

The bathroom filled up with the scent of some flowery perfume and then the laughter. It was the ugliest sound on earth, or so I thought then. Until she spoke to me the first time, and that really is the ugliest sound on earth. Not her voice, her voice mostly sounded like a whisper; it was the knowing that what I was hearing was the voice of the dead that made it so ugly, so wrong.

Right then, when I first heard her, I remembered Donny saying that he still didn’t know if she had spoken outside or inside his head. I understood now because I could hear her clearly, but it felt like her voice was echoing in my head. She said my name.

“Leeann, Leeann, don’t run from me. This is my house. You have to see my pretty pictures. I want to show you the pretty things I made. Leeann, Leeann, it makes me angry when you resist me. You can’t resist me, Leeann, I’m irresistible. Why just ask your brother, he’s right here with me. Do you want to talk to Charlie, Leeann?”

That did it. I might not be able to make a sound, but it turns out that I could faint dead away - pardon the expression. I guess George must have heard the thump I made because I woke up back in bed with him looking down at me, worried as hell. He asked me what had happened. So, shoot, I told him. I knew he wouldn’t believe me, but I didn’t much care right then what George believed or didn’t believe. He patted my shoulders, and said the same old poop. “You’re tired, Sugar. You just had a miscarriage.”

Blah blah blah.

As soon as I knew I wasn’t going to pass out again, I stood up, grabbed a pillow, and went downstairs to the living room. I turned on every light I could hit on my way downstairs, and then turned on the TV and laid there curled up on the couch. George followed me like an idiot, him now being the last person I wanted to talk to, and I told him so. He just nodded, all pathetic, and asked if I minded if he sat with me anyway. To be strictly honest here, I did not want George, but I did want someone in the room, so I told him fine but not to talk to me anymore.

That’s just where we were when it finally got light outside. I looked over at George asleep on the loveseat and just shook my head. I waited until seven a.m. as I figured that was late enough and then, still in just my nightgown, I grabbed George’s spare Jag keys and went outside and got into the car and drove to my mama’s house. I did not bother to leave him a note.

Chapter 32

When I got to Mama and Daddy’s house, I could see the kitchen light on and Mama bustling around inside making coffee. I just sat there watching her, tears in my eyes. Had I really only been gone from this safe happy place for just over two weeks? I had no idea how one person’s life could go so wrong in so little time.

Mama opened the back door then to get the paper and she saw the car. She squinted her eyes and walked over to me. I unrolled the window.

“Leeann, Honey, what are you doing out here?”

I just looked at her. By then I was crying hard. She pulled open the door and told me to come into the house right this minute. I got out of the car and followed her into the kitchen. Her eyes got big when she saw my nightgown and bare feet, but she didn’t say anything. When we got inside the house, she just pulled me to her and started rocking me side to side and stroking my hair. It felt so good that I just cried harder. It was a long time before I let go off her and went and sat down at the kitchen table.

Mama poured two cups of coffee, and added about a pound of sugar and cream to mine, and came over and sat down beside me. She handed me the coffee and, when I had taken a big gulp of it, she took my hand, and said “Is it George, Baby, did he do something to hurt you and you had to run away?”

I actually laughed when she asked me that, which made her narrow her eyes.

“Leeann!” she hollered at me, but I said to her “No, Mama, I’m sorry. No, I can’t say George hurt me exactly, but this is his fault.”

She was totally worked up by that time, not sure if she should be mad at me or at George.

“What is his fault, Leeann. What in the Sam Hill is going on? You better start talking little girl, and I mean now!”

So I did. I talked and talked. I told her every single thing that had happened from the moment I first walked into the house and saw those children’s rooms. I told her Donny’s story and the truth about how Charlie died.

Mama looked like she had been hit, while I was talking about Charlie.

I told her what Daddy had told Jessie and me, and about being pulled out of my body twice and, finally, what Robina had said in the bathroom. I said everything except, of course, about what Donny and I had done in the yard. Not telling Mama that made me have to leave out yesterday’s dream where Robina had swum out to the dock with him, but I had surely given her more than enough to think about as it was because, when I finished talking, Mama’s face was dead white and her hands were shaking so bad she had to set her coffee cup down.

Now you have to understand that my mama is a staunch Christian woman; Mama had only missed church on Sunday three times in her life, and that was to have me and my brothers. So if she did believe in ghosts, then I had sure never heard about it. I didn’t think I could take it if my own mama looked at me like George had and started telling me I had been under a strain, etc. But, from the look on her face, I didn’t think she was going to say that. She looked, I don’t know, shocked, which was normal, but she didn’t look as shocked as she should have been.

She inhaled real deep then and said “I should have never let you move into that house. I knew! I knew that house could never be clean, not after that. I blame myself for this baby. I was so worried about you being an unwed mother, and the disgrace, that I let you go into that slaughter house. Me, and after what I had seen there with my own eyes. I know that what Donny told you is the truth because, God forgive her, no woman ever born could rest peacefully after what she done.”

Now it was my turn to be shocked. “Mama, what do you mean after what you saw there?”

She was crying now. “Baby, I didn’t plan to ever talk about this again. When I came home that night, I told your daddy what I saw, and then I told Reverend Pete. He prayed with me and I didn’t see any reason to ever talk about it again, though God knows, as do I, that I have never been able to forget it.”

This time I yelled at her. “Mama, tell me. You have to tell me what you are talking about. What did you see?”

She nodded.

“All right, Leeann, I’ll tell you. See back when it all happened, your daddy and I were real young, and we had Charlie, and Randy was just a baby. Money was tight. This was a long time before I had my princess.” She smiled at me sadly with all the love in the world in her sweet eyes. “And the dress business, well that was long in the future. Your daddy was working at Peddy J’s, and even doing double shifts, and we were barely making it. So, when Miz Bethany offered me a job cleaning for her a couple days a week, I jumped at it. When the murders happened, she called me up a few days later and asked if I wanted to earn some extra money cleaning up the place. Well I just had to say no and she got real snooty about it. But I didn’t think there was any amount of money in this world or the next that she could offer me that would tempt me to go walking into that house where those poor little children had been slaughtered like animals.”

I nodded sympathetically at her, but she shook her head at me. “Well then she up and offered me two thousand dollars and that was just too much money to turn down.”

She sighed and gestured at our worn out old kitchen.

“It doesn’t look like much now, but that money paid for this kitchen. Heck, before that, your daddy and the boys and me were using a barbecue out back if we didn’t want soup off the hot plate.”

A hot plate! Damn we were worse off than I knew. I said that to Mama, and she laughed, and then started talking again.

“Yeah, well, it was bad back then like I said, though God help me sugar, if I could choose between poverty and having my baby boy back … well, never mind that now. I was telling you about the house. So I told Miz Bethany I would do it early that morning, it being a Tuesday, I took Charlie to kindergarten and dropped Randy off at Maddie’s house, and went on over to Willets House. It was raining, I remember, and there were still the children’s little toys and things scattered around out front. I let myself in with the key Miz Bethany had given me. The house was real dark, on account of all the curtains being taped shut, so that those media people couldn’t take pictures. I was afraid of making Miz Bethany mad if I opened them, so I didn’t. I just turned on every light I could, but it didn’t seem to brighten it up none. Maybe I’m wrong, but the way I remember it is that the rooms stayed dark grey. Who knows? I was real jumpy. God help me, the smell, oh Baby, it was like every slaughter house, and then ten times worse. And there wasn’t barely a foot of wall downstairs that wasn’t covered in streaks and splashes of what had to be dried blood and maybe other things too. In the end, even after all my scrubbing, the Willets’ had to replace all the wallpaper and repaint. Anyhow, well there were words in the blood too. I didn’t want to look, but I had to because I was trying to wash the words off, and so I read them, God help me.”

Mama broke off talking then and just looked down at her coffee and cried. I gave her a minute and then asked her what the words said. She looked startled to see me there. For a few seconds I guess she was right back there in that house, back in that day. She shook her head a little, and said “Oh the words, well they didn’t make much sense. There was his name, written in blood everywhere ‘Roger, Roger’, and then she had written ‘Why’ a couple times, and ‘You see what you did’, and then, ‘Not me’. Oh, and this was the most awful -up at the top of the landing she had written all her children’s names and their dates of birth. I guess that must have been in her own blood, because that’s where they found her, up against the wall on the landing. I guess that was the last thing she did… write their little names and birthdays on the wall while she was bleeding to death up there. She had stabbed herself, you know, and not slit her wrists like you might have thought. No, God forgive her, she had stabbed herself in her own stomach over and over again. His name wasn’t on that wall, though. She had made a special letter to him in the dining room. Right by his body in the dining room she had written, ‘Die today, die tomorrow, die again and I’ll wait’. God, the poor girl must have been mad as a hatter… well obviously.”

I nodded at that, but I had to interrupt and ask her what she thought the words had meant.

Mama just shook her head and said that the sheriff and Old Doc Miller (our present Doc Miller’s daddy) had said that the poor woman was just raving, and it didn’t mean anything. “Anyway, Honey, it took me three days just to get the gore gone, and then I called Miz Bethany and asked her if she wanted me to pack out the house, their personal things and such. She told me to just put all Robina and Roger’s clothes and personal things up in the attic, and to leave the children’s rooms alone; that that was what Mr. George wanted. I thought it was wrong, but I did it. I finished that night about five and your daddy picked me up. We drove over to Miz Bethany’s house and gave the keys back and she wrote me a check for the full two thousand dollars and a hundred extra. That was the end of me and that house I thought … then Charlie, and now you. Wwell I guess it’s time, then.”

I asked her what she meant - time for what?

She got up heavy, like she weighed a million pounds and was a hundred years old to boot, and told me she had something for me … to wait here.

Well, I must say, I hadn’t been expecting that story. It appeared that my family and the Willets had overlapped a few times before old George and I had come together. I wondered what the hell Mama was going to bring back. At this point I figured nothing could have surprised me. I was wrong about that as it turned out.

When Mama came back, she was holding a stack of little books in her hands. They were all pale blue leather and they all had the same title – ‘My Life’. They were done in handwritten gold paint, like a young girl might do. I guess I knew right away whose life they were about. What I didn’t know was what in the name of all that’s holy my own mama was doing with them.

Turns out that Mama, like daddy, had had encounters over the years with Robina and that, like Daddy, she had found her kind and sad. She told me that Miz Robina had even dropped off clothes for Charlie and Randy, clothes her own boys had outgrown. Mama said Robina had been so young and beautiful and lonely that she had touched my mama’s already big heart.

Mama agreed with Daddy that Roger was a rotten man, and a worse husband, but, unlike Daddy, she stated it as gospel that Roger had been running around on Robina, cheating on her and hitting her besides. There was no point in asking Mama how she might have known that. Dalton had a gossip line that found out things about all of us who lived here, sometimes before it even happened. If Mama said she’d heard it on the grapevine, then you could take that to the bank.

Anyways, because of her fondness for “the poor little thing” when Mama found the little stack of the books up in the attic when she was putting the boxes up there as instructed, well she didn’t give them to the police, and she didn’t give them to Miz Bethany or Mr. George. Nope, she brought them home and put them in her lace box.

I was aghast, I really was, and I had to say it.

Chapter 33

“Mama, what the hell? You concealed these from the police, and hid them from her family too? Did you want them so you could read them? Did you read them?”

Damn, I forgot in Mama’s world you don’t cuss, and she means ever. So first she had to tell me that I wasn’t too old to have my mouth washed out with soap, and then she told me that she didn’t “see much call for giving them to the police, because they already knew who had done it.”

And as to giving them to her family, well… “Bethany and George Willets, and Old Miz Willets, were not family to that poor girl.” No, she hadn’t read them, she had just taken them, her only plan at the time being to protect Robina from further gossip and slander. Really, until Charlie got killed, she forgot about them. She said she had thought about reading them then but had been too sad and, after a while, the impulse to read them at all passed. She was giving them to me now because maybe reading them would help me and Jessie to figure out what to do next.

As it turned out, Mama thought Jessie’s idea about finding out what Robina wanted so that she could go on over to the light sounded fine to her. I asked her if she didn’t hate Robina now that I had told her about Charlie and Donny.

She said “No, Baby, I don’t guess I hate anyone on earth. I don’t guess that’s God’s plan for any of us. I made my peace with my lost boy long ago … he’s with God and I will see him again one day. I don’t know what happened to that little gal to make her do the things that she did that day, but I do know that she wasn’t a bad girl when she lived. I think bad things happened to her and she just went crazy. You know, Baby, not everyone can live straight when the dark days come. It’s not given to all of us to be strong but, Leeann, and this is real important to remember now, when the dark times fall on you and you think you can’t face things no more, well you don’t have to. You just fall on your knees and ask God to get you through, and he will, Baby, he always does.”

I put my arms around her and told her how much I loved her. I thanked her for being my mama and told her, if she wanted, why maybe we could pray together right now. That’s just what we did too. And I did feel better then, I really did. Of course, right about that time, Daddy came down the stairs, and the minute he saw me in my nightgown sitting there, he said he was getting his hunting gun.

He said “I guess after I have my breakfast, I might as well go on over to the house and up and kill George Willets and murder him later.” He told me and Mama that far as he was concerned George was already “Toes up for whatever he done to send my baby girl running out of the house all naked and a mess like you is.”

You had to hand it to Daddy, no matter what the situation was, he could blow it up more somehow.

Mama for some reason thought what he said was cute. She said it kept him young being so feisty. I don’t know about that. For one thing, I was far from naked. I was wearing one of the nightgowns that I had bought for my trousseau at Neiman’s. It was a long white cotton one, with this real pretty lace around the neck and sleeves. Actually, I had liked it so much I had bought three of them that were almost the same. Wearing them made me feel like an old-fashioned girl in a book. Heck, I remember when Jessie saw them she said it was obvious I was trying to say “Hell no, look but don’t touch” to fat old George.

That wasn’t true … really it wasn’t. I just liked them. Though, to be strictly honest, I guess that I wasn’t feeling too Frederick’s of Hollywood the day I went shopping. God knows, George didn’t need any extra encouragement.

Mama jumped in and calmed Daddy down, telling him George hadn’t done anything to me except hurt my feelings, and that I had had a scare, and that’s why I was here.

“And she is not anywhere near naked, Charlie Honey, so calm down now and I’ll get you your breakfast.”

Of course, then Daddy had to know what had scared me, so Mama told him the G rated version ...that was the one without Donny’s story, as he would have gone crazy if he had heard that. He listened, and then he started to laugh and laugh, and the more he laughed the madder I got. Pretty soon Mama was mad too, because she told him to “Shut up, Charlie. None of this is the least bit funny.” I could count on one hand the times she had told Daddy to shut up, and it surprised him too, because he did.

But then he had to start in with telling me most everything George had already told me, that I had been under a strain, was in a strange place, etc, etc. Then he said, oh hell, that was what Jessie and I had come down to Downey’s for and, if he had known that, he wouldn’t have told us a G.D. thing, because it had obviously gotten me even more worked up. “There ain’t no such thing as ghosts, Honey. Now I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. Elma, you just hold that breakfast. I’m gonna drive on over and pick up poor old George and bring him over here to have a hot meal with his wife. We’ll talk some over our food and see what we can all do to make baby girl here feel less jittery. How’s that sound to everyone?”

Mama didn’t say anything to that. I think she thought it was probably a good idea, though, George being my husband and all. Daddy took her quiet for admiration of his idea. I started to tell him that I was too mad at George to see him right now … that’s why I was here in the first place, and that none of this was in my head, but he just kissed me on the head on the way out the door, and told me that “He knew just how these things were with young folks.”

He left to get George and I jumped up and called Jessie. I knew she would be pissed again about it “being the butt crack of dawn”, but I needed her. I figured Daddy and George against me and Jessie was about even odds.

Jess was pissed as hell but, after I told her what had happened to me last night and how George acted and what Mama had told me, and that Daddy was off getting George right now so that everybody could talk some sense into me, she said she’d be right over. And if I wasn’t dressed, then hell, she would come in her P.J.s too.

I could tell that she was talking to Mark at the same time as she was talking to me because she said she was bringing Mark over too. I asked her why, and she said it was a home-cooked breakfast, and he hadn’t had one in so long he’d forgotten what they looked like.

She said the least I could do was make her look like a good girlfriend, by letting my mama feed Mark before he went to work. I said what the hell, and went back into the kitchen to help Mama start breakfast for six.

Chapter 34

Mark and Jessie got over to the house in about five minutes. True to her word, Jess was still in her Scooby Doo pajamas. She kissed Mama on the cheek, and asked her if she wouldn’t mind feeding Mark too because he had to be at work in half an hour.

Mama said not one bit and she would love a chance to fatten him up. Mark looked awful happy at this prospect.

It has to be said that Jessie was all kinds of good things, but a cook wasn’t one of them. She hit me on the shoulder and said that one more morning wakeup call and she would kill me herself and save Robina the trouble. Then she spied the little blue books and said that she called dibs on first read and went and lay down on the couch with them.

Mama had already fed Mark and still no sign of Daddy and George and then, just as she was getting upset, we heard Daddy’s old pickup pull into the drive. He didn’t come in.

We looked out the window and he was just sitting there in the cab of his truck with his head down on the steering wheel. Mama harrumphed and said this was getting to be a bad habit with her family, and she went out to bring him in. Jessie and I were watching from the window as she walked up to him. We saw her say something to Daddy through the driver’s window and whatever he said made her nod and then she went around and climbed into the passenger seat.

We could tell Daddy was speaking serious about something and then, even from here, we saw that it looked like Mama was screaming, and then we watched as Daddy pulled her into his arms. Jessie was saying “What the hell?” but not me … I was already backing away from the window. And when I couldn’t back up any further, I sat down on the stairs to wait for them to come inside and tell us what we had to hear.

Jessie was staring at me funny and, in this little high voice I’d never heard from her before, she called for Mark. He came in from the kitchen, still wiping his mouth, saying “What’s up, Baby?”

Then Mama and Daddy came inside. They just stared at us, and then Daddy walked over to me and sat down on the stairs beside me and pulled me to him.

He said “Baby, you need to be real brave here.”

I knew what he was going to say, so I said it to him instead.

“George is dead, isn’t he Daddy?”

He nodded and looked at me funny, and then he said it. “Baby, is there anything you want to tell your mama and me? Because, if there is, it's all right. I haven’t called the police yet, no one knows anything but us. I came right home. So, Baby, if there is something you need to say, best to say it now. No one in this room is ever going to repeat a word you say, isn’t that right?” Here he glared at Jess and Mark like they might talk.

Jess didn’t bother answering him, she just ran over and grabbed me, and started screaming at Daddy. “Charlie, what the fuck are you saying? Leeann didn’t do this. What are you thinking … what are you saying?”

Then Mama was there with her arms around me too. She said “Hush now, Jessie. No one is saying Leeann did this awful thing. Charlie is just wondering if she saw or heard anything before she left the house. Isn’t that what you're asking Charlie?”

Mama’s glare at him was fierce. Daddy just nodded and said, sure, that’s what he meant, he was just upset. I knew that wasn’t the truth, but I couldn’t deal with that right now.

I guess, seeing everybody else had gone crazy, Mark decided he’d best step in. So he told Daddy and Jessie that no matter what had happened, if we didn’t call the police then, everyone was going to jail. Daddy nodded and indicated that he should go ahead and call, and then he and Mama followed Mark into the kitchen where our old wall phone was.

Jessie was still holding me and she tried to talk. I stopped her and said “Not now, Jess, later. Listen, the police will be here soon and we don’t know what’s going to happen so …”

She cut me off, saying “Nothing is going to happen! God dammit, Leeann, what are you saying?”

I cut her off again, begging her to listen to me now, just listen to me. She nodded okay. I went on “Jess, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I do know this: I was the last person to see George alive and I’m his wife and both of us have seen enough movies to know the police will suspect me, especially when Miz Bethany gets ahold of them.”

Jess nodded reluctantly.

“Okay, then, they may take me away for a while. Now I know Robina did this, Jess.”

Suddenly I had an awful thought. “You believe me, don’t you?”

She nodded fiercely.

“Okay then, thank God for you. Here’s what I need … I need you to read those books and find out what the hell she wants and, Jess, I need you to do something else, too.”

She just said “Anything.” God I loved Jessie.

“Okay, Jess, when I left the house this morning, I wasn’t thinking that I would need money, lots of money.” I started crying while I talked and she pulled me closer. “But I am going to need money Jess, for a lawyer, for bail… I don’t know. Anyway, the only things I have that are worth any money are the engagement ring and the earrings. I don’t sleep with the ring because it's so big, it’s uncomfortable. Jess, somehow you have to get inside that house and get my jewelry box. I know the cops will seal it up, but somehow you have to get in there before Miz Bethany does. She’ll take it if she gets a chance and then I have nothing. Hell, if I have a public defender in this town, I might as well just say, yes, your honor, I killed George. Please throw the key away. Will you do it, Jess. Can you? ”

She inhaled real deep. “Of course I can. Listen, Leeann, this stuff you’re talking about, it probably won’t even happen, but …” She raised her hand to cut me off. “I will do it, of course I will.”

Looking at her then, I got scared deep down. What if Robina hurt my Jessie? Screw the jewelry, I’d rather spend my life in prison than have her hurt, and I told her so.

She actually laughed. “Shit, that old girl isn’t going to mess with me. She should be more afraid of me than I am of her, which ain’t much. And, anyways, I already told you its men she hates. Shit, she really did kill poor old George, huh? Shit, I’m sorry now how I used to say he was an asshole. He wasn’t a bad guy really. Oh shit, Leeann Honey, don’t cry, it’s going to be okay.”

I begged her again to be safe. She said she would be fine, that she wouldn’t go alone. I asked her if she meant Mark. She said yeah “Mark or someone.”

Before I could ask her what she meant we both heard the sirens. We stood up clutching each other. Jess kept saying it would be all right. Daddy came in and opened the door to Sheriff Riffler and two other deputies. I looked around wildly. Mama grabbed for me and held me close to her. “Shh, Baby, it’s gonna be all right. It’s going to be fine, I promise.”

Well, it wasn’t fine; it was just horrible in fact. Sheriff Riffler had come for one reason, and that was to arrest me. He had even brought along a female deputy. That was so I could be watched if I needed to change clothes, or in my case, put some on.

I guess as soon as they got Mark's call, a dispatch car was sent to verify the truth of George being dead, though not the truth of how he got dead. That no one was ever going to believe.

Sheriff Riffler was real nice to all of us. Like everyone else in Dalton, he thought the world of my mama. But nice or not, he was here on business, the business of arresting me. He told me I could go on upstairs with the lady deputy and change into some clothes, that they needed to “bag” my nightgown anyway.

Then Mark stood up and said real respectfully, but real firm too, that he wanted to take pictures of me just like I was, my nightgown and my hands too. He said after he took his pictures then he wanted Jessie in the room, and either she or the female detective could take more pictures of me naked.

Sheriff Riffler bowed up, and said “Son, just what are you implying here? Do you think we mean to put something on Miz Leeann’s nightgown or body that isn’t there right this minute?”

Mark shook his head, and said no sir, he didn’t think that but even Sheriff Riffler himself would have to acknowledge that the Willets were a powerful family and he just wanted to do what he could to see that I was treated fairly.

Chapter 35

This made Sheriff Riffler mad as hell, but Mark just held his ground. Young and skinny as he was, he was a man right then. And finally, at long last, I saw why Jessie loved him.

Sheriff Riffler was pissed, but there wasn’t much else he could do but agree with my daddy now joining in with Mark in demanding the pictures.

So I stood still downstairs while Mark took a whole roll on my daddy’s camera, and then Jessie bullied her way upstairs along with the deputy to shoot another roll of me naked.

Luckily for me, the only lucky thing today, was that I had plenty of clothes upstairs in my old bedroom, having left behind anything that was not designer when I married George. This spared me the further humiliation of being photographed for the paper in my nightgown. When we went outside and I was shoved into the back of the sheriff’s car, I saw that someone - Miz Bethany - had already alerted the press, ‘cause there was ole Dolly Rae from the Dalton Tri-weekly and even a photographer from the Oklahoma City newspaper.

I was, it seems going to be famous, or infamous anyway.

I was taken over to the city jail which was really just the sheriff's office and two little cells. Sheriff Riffler was still trying to be real nice and he told me that I was going to be “arraigned” before Judge Styles in about an hour. He said after that I would probably be driven up to the women’s prison in Maybeetle unless I could make bail.

About twenty minutes, later this kid who looked about my age, with big ears sticking out, showed up and said he was my lawyer “unless you can afford to hire someone else, ‘cause to be real honest with you, Ma’am, this here would be my first criminal trial. I been training for tax law. But if you ain’t got no money, well I will try my best for you. I surely will.”

His name was Jack Dupree, and I felt a bad sinking sensation in my stomach while he talked. I prayed that Jessie would get that damn (and apparently damned) jewelry out in a hurry, ‘cause otherwise I knew for certain that I would end up spending my life in Maybeetle. I’d probably end up married again to someone, only this time not a man, but a woman named Big Bertha or something like it.

Jack told me that what was going to happen now was that we would go before Judge Styles soon. I would plead not guilty, he would ask for bail until trial and, if I could make what he set, then I could probably go home to Mama and Daddy under house arrest. I told him that I didn’t have any money, but there was the jewelry. Jack said that he would petition the court to have them ask the Willets estate to help out. I rolled my eyes at that.

Then he started off by asking me if I had killed George. That made me mad, and I yelled at him, that no, I had never touched George. I told him that was a hell of a thing for my own lawyer to ask me. He told me to calm down and that I had better get used to talk like that because this would get a whole lot worse before it got better. Then I just had to ask him if it would get better? Jack said that I had some things going for me .... that the nightgown I was wearing had no blood on it, and I had no marks on my body, whereas the murder scene showed that George had put up a hell of a fight, the bloodless nightgown and no scratches on my body was in my favor. He said that the knife they found had been sent up to the lab in OKC for fingerprints and DNA samples.

Well, I knew they were never going to find this killer's prints on that knife, or any damn DNA either, as I did not think the dead left such things. I was also positive that telling Jack what I knew had happened might keep me out of Maybeetle for a couple weeks while they fitted me up for a straitjacket. So all I said when he asked me what I thought could have happened was that I had no idea. I retold him the story of my morning, leaving out Robina. He asked why I had run off to my mama’s house in my nightgown and I said we had a stupid little fight, and that I had been upset. His eyebrows shot up to his forehead; then he asked how angry had I been?

I knew where he was going and cut him off at the pass. “Not even angry enough to wake up George and holler at him some more. I just was upset because he was mad about my credit card charges,” (well, what else could I make up right then?), and that I had gone over to see Mama and cool down, that it was such a storm in a teacup, that I had asked Daddy to go get him for breakfast (another lie), but I knew my folks would back that one up.

He nodded, but I could tell he was skeptical.

I could not wait for Jess to get the damn jewelry so I could get a lawyer that wasn’t already fixing to plea bargain me out in his head. He asked me why I wasn’t more upset that my husband was dead. I called him an asshole then and asked him just when in the last hour, between hearing the news and being dragged off to jail, I had had time to grieve?

He seemed to accept that at least.

Chapter 36

I knew it wasn’t the strict truth ... there was something else. The sad truth was that no matter what I had tried to tell myself before our wedding, I hadn’t ever loved George… I hadn’t even really liked him much. I hated it when he touched me and, sure, I had been sorry about losing the baby, but not as sorry as I would have been if it had been, well, Donny’s for instance.

Oh shoot, who am I kidding here? It shames me to write this but I had never even given George one fair chance. I had married him while in love with another man. I still loved another man. I loved only Donny Readle. I would always love him, and now I was glad that I had made love with him. I was only eighteen years old and it looked like my life was over. Thanks to that murderous, dead bitch, Robina, who had killed my husband, and thanks as well to that horrible, no doubt vengeful, living bitch Miz Bethany, I was going to spend the rest of my life in prison for a crime that I was innocent of.

My single hour with Donny would have to hold me for all of my life now, and it was this thought, and not that of George being dead that finally broke through my shock, and made me give way to tears.

I cried so long and so hard that even Jack was touched. He started patting me on my back and he went and got Sheriff Riffler who felt real bad for me, too.

He said “Now come on, little one, you stop now. I don’t believe you did this, and Judge Styles, why he probably is gonna let you go home to your mama and daddy on bail. You know I’ll keep looking real hard for the true killer. You just stop now, all right? We got to go see the judge now. You just wash your pretty face, all right?”

Well he did make me feel a little better, and more hopeful too, and who knows, maybe it would have even happened the way he said, with me getting to go home, but when we got into the courtroom there was Mr. and Miz Willets and, just looking at her, I knew she had death in her eyes - my death.

Sure enough, she had already gotten to the DA, a scrawny dried up cow that anyone with eyes could see was sucking up to the Willets' name and who probably had already been promised a hefty donation for her next campaign. By the time the DA got done telling Judge Styles that there were no signs of break in, that I was unstable (huh?) and had married poor George for his money; after first trapping him by saying I was pregnant by him, though it “could have been anybody’s baby” (huh?) …well then I had gone on and lost the baby, who, she reminded the judge could have been anybody’s.

Following which I had left my brand new and newly bereaved husband to gallivant off to Miami where I had indulged in wild spending sprees. With a straight face, she said that when George tried to curb my excesses, that I, or the defendant - which was me now I guessed - had no doubt, in a cocaine induced rage, (obviously the police had found George’s little party stash already), that I had attacked and killed him. She said that doubtless poor George had been asleep during the initial assault and that was why he had not been able to disarm me before he became so weakened with blood loss that he was unable to save himself.

During this fairy story, Miz Willets sobbed real loudly the whole time and the judge just looked at her, his face all sympathetic, but when Jessie, who was in the courtroom along with Mama and Daddy, made a snorting sound, the judge said “Young lady, one more outburst like that and you will be removed immediately.”

I looked at Jack hopefully to see how he was going to fight all the horrible things that awful D.A. had just said about me and my heart sunk down even further when I saw that he looked as scared as I was.

Well, he did try, I’ll give him that much. He told the judge that I was a young girl of impeccable reputation, even the reigning Corn Princess. When Jack said that, Miz Bethany made a rude noise, but the judge didn’t say a word to her. Jack told the court that I had a spotless record, had been born and raised right here in Dalton and had strong ties to the community. In addition to all that, he said the evidence against me was purely circumstantial. There was no motive, no witnesses and I should not be held until the DNA came back.

At that, the horrible D.A. jumped up and said that while the evidence might be circumstantial at the moment, there was no doubt in her mind that my DNA would be all over that knife, and “moreover, there exists, Your Honor, about one hundred million motives for Leeann Willets to kill George Willets. I am speaking of course of the Willets' money. Your Honor, history has sadly taught us that it is almost always the spouse in these cases. There were no signs of forced entry and, if indeed, as the defendant claims, there was no trouble in the house, then why did she flee the premises in her nightgown?”

Poor old Jack tried to object, but Judge Styles said he had heard enough and that bail was set at three hundred thousand dollars. I knew I was going up to Maybeetle then. Oh, Mama and Daddy went to the bail bondsman of course, but their house wasn’t accepted as collateral. I would remain in prison until Jessie could get to that jewelry. I was taken the sixty miles away in the back of Sherriff Riffler's car, led into the huge dark grey building and then into small cell with a window in the door. There was a thin, nasty looking mattress with no sheet on it, and I was only given a paper gown and paper slippers to wear on account of needing to be watched real close for twenty four hours.

They said I was on something called a suicide watch. It was the first thing I had heard all day that made sense to me. To be strictly honest, at that time, if I could have found a way, I might have done it … stepped over to the other side and joined Robina as one of the angry dead.

Lying on that hard bunk, which smelled like another woman’s tears and worse, I did not see one ray of hope that made me want to keep breathing. I guess there are times when you are too sad for tears, and this was one of them. Finally, though, my poor body, exhausted as it was, took over and I fell asleep despite the filthy mattress and the bright lights shining on me all night.

Chapter 37

She came to me then, in my sleep. I don’t know why ...maybe I was beyond fear now, but she didn’t frighten me. I was angry in my dream, if it was a dream. I couldn’t tell who knew anymore what was real. I screamed at her, asking her why, why had she done this to George, to me? What did she want … why me?

Robina didn’t look like she had before. She wasn’t decayed and disgusting. She was beautiful. I saw then what people meant when they said she was the most beautiful girl they had ever seen. Her eyes did not have things moving in them now ...they were just huge, dark eyes, and she looked sad.

She said that she had to kill George, kill her child.

I asked her whose child? What was she talking about - there were no children anywhere.

She shook her head. Now she was starting to look angry again. She told me that I had to “Come home now, Leeann, I have to show you my pictures. You can’t see them here. It is too far away … you must follow me.” I felt that awful tug on my body again, but I was made stronger now by anger and my lack of fear. I fought her, and I won. I hated this cell, but I knew that where she wanted to take me would be worse, and whatever her ‘”pictures” were, God help me, I did not want to see them.

I felt the grip on my body lessen, and then I heard her start to laugh. She said I would come; that she could wait. I would come.

If I wanted to save my child, I would come.

Then I woke up. I was drenched in sweat and sick like I always was after seeing her. What in the name of God was she talking about, what pictures, and what child? There was no child ... my baby was dead, and then I thought of Donny. My God, was it possible, just one time, and so soon after my miscarriage? Even if it was possible, it was too early to know, unless … unless the dead were given the power to see further and to know more.

I know it was crazy but, instead of fear, or even anger, at Robina, I just felt this instant of the wildest, sweetest joy, right there in that filthy cell - facing life in prison, I felt only joy. Because what if it was true and I was carrying his baby?

I sat up grinning like a fool. Well, if it was true, then I was going to fight this bogus charge with everything I had, fight and get out of here and live out all my life as proud and happy a woman as Oklahoma would ever see. Even without the one man I loved, it might just turn out okay, because this way I would always have him, in his baby.

Crazy or not, I knew it was true. She was telling the truth ... I was pregnant and, damn it, it was going to be a boy too. I vowed right then to fight off Robina and the Willets and anyone else who tried to hurt me or my baby. And then I realized that, oh shit, if it was true (and I knew it was) that this was all the motive the state and Miz Willets would ever need to fry me. They would say I had cheated on George (true) and then killed him (not true) when he found out.

I knew I needed to get the hell out of here before anyone found out I was pregnant, and for that I needed Jessie. I didn’t even have to stand in line at the pay phone the next morning to call her, because right after breakfast, which was some horrible slop that I forced myself to eat anyway for Donny Junior’s sake, they came to get me, saying I had a visitor. They took me to this little room divided by plastic, and there she was - Jessie. Oh I was pitifully glad to see her. It seemed already like a hundred years since I had last seen her.

She looked horrible though, and I had to tell her so.

She was still Jessie all right, because she laid right into me, saying that while I obviously got my ten winks last night, that she had been up reading those journals and trying to be a good cat burglar all on my account. And that also, thanks to me, she hadn’t gotten a hell of a lot of sleep the night before last either.

I acted all humble and told her I knew that was true, and what would I do without her? She said probably rot in jail, but don’t worry about it. She told me that I looked like shit too and was it horrible in here? I said hell yes, but still better than staying in Robina's house, even though she had gotten to me here too.

Jess was all agog at the dream, and then she kept at me till I finally promised her that the next time Robina tried to show me her G.D. pictures, I would go. I gave in and said “Yes, okay Jess, I’ll take a little ride on up into Nightmare County if you’ll just shut up for ten seconds and tell me about the jewelry.”

Her face got all downcast as she told me that last night after two a.m., she and “her crime partner” tried to get in the house, but that Miz Willets must have known I would be after that jewelry because there were guards posted all around the house.

I started to cry then. I couldn’t help it. I knew Jess had tried but, without the jewelry, how was I going to make bail? I couldn’t stand it in here, I couldn’t.

Jess scowled at me and said to stop being such a pussy, that I was getting out of here, and today. She told me that while she was visiting me, her “partner” was down to the courthouse with the bail bondsman making my bail right now. Jess said she figured in about an hour they’d be driving me home to Dalton. I would be on an ankle monitor but, she said, “It beats the shit out of this place, right? And shit, I cannot wait to hear what Miz Willets has to say when she finds out you are going home!”

I was in shock, happy shock, but I had to ask Jess if she had a head injury or had sold Mark, or something? No one we knew had ten percent of three hundred thousand dollars or, for that matter, ten percent of five thousand dollars.

She started grinning then, and said that maybe we did know someone; someone who owned a paid off eighteen wheeler, and had used it for collateral.

My heart stopped. “Donny? Donny did this? How? And why, Jess?”

She was grinning like the Cheshire cat, I swear. “Well yeah, it sure was Donny. As to how, well after we saw the guards last night, we realized we needed money some other way. That’s when he came up with the idea of putting his rig up. As to why, well shoot, I don’t know. Why would that old boy want to help you get out of jail? Why do you think, Leeann?”

I was grinning now too. I didn’t give one damn about anything I had gone through. Donny was saving me and that could only mean one thing. I still didn’t understand the part where Jess talked about last night. She told me then that, right after court, she had driven to Donny and Carlene’s house. Jessie had marched right in and “ignored that ole crack whore wife of his” and told him what had happened.

Jess said that he had been the one to insist that he go with her to Willets House and, when that hadn’t worked out, he had put his rig up, and here they were.

Well I told Jessie I loved her, and she being Jessie said “Blah blah, blah. There is no time for this shit because I need to tell you right now, Leeann, before Donny gets back, what I found in the journals. When you hear this, you’re gonna feel as bad for Robina as I do. And you’re gonna want to help her too.”

I didn’t know about that, but I told her to start talking and I would reserve judgment until I heard the story.

PART III

Chapter 38

This is Robina’s story, as told to me by Jessie. I have decided to just write it down in her words, leaving out all my ‘Oh my God’s and other interruptions, because they made Jess so damn mad that she said if I asked her one more stupid ass question that she couldn’t answer, she wasn’t going to say another word to me.

So here it is - Robina’s tale in Jessie’s own words:

“She wasn’t a thing like we thought she was, Leeann. She was just a kid when she met Roger. She was working at the bookstore at Yale and doing something called monitoring classes, which I guess is where you can sit in on the class but you don’t get any credit for it. To make extra money she was an artist’s model too for some of the students. She had moved to Cambridge from some teeny little state I ain’t ever heard of called Rhode Island and I guess her parents were both teachers who had died in a car accident a few months before. So she didn’t have any people or any money either, I guess. Anyway one day in the bookstore, she met Roger. She said he was the handsomest boy she had ever seen and she had never heard a drawl before and she loved it … said it reminded her of somebody called Tennessee Williams, whoever the hell that is. He asked her out for coffee and, before you know it, they were lovers living together in a little bitty apartment he had off campus. The way she writes it was that she knew Roger was from some real rich, but horrible, family that didn’t understand him. He had told her that he was going to be a great architect one day and they would live in New York City. Hell, she goes on for about ten pages about their little dream life of this loft in the village they would have. It was boring as hell. Anyway, of course, she gets pregnant instead, and pretty soon old Roger is failing his classes on account of having to work as a bartender at night. And then she starts writing about how he is starting to drink a little. Well hell, I could see the writing on the wall already! But ole Robina sure couldn’t … no, she loved Roger with a capital L, and even though he didn’t marry her till she was eight months along, why she was thrilled to pieces. So now it’s her and Roger Dodger and their little baby girl, who she had named Emily after, I guess, some friend of hers who she wrote a lot about named Emily Dickinson. I tell you, Leeann, these Yankee girls don’t have the brains God gave a fly because things were going downhill pretty fast between her and Roger, and she just would not see it. Here she is writing about opening letters from Yale saying they were going to drop him from the enrolled lists and him coming home later and later at night, even on nights he wasn’t working, and always yelling at her to “shut the damn baby up.” But did she see that he didn’t want to be there? Hell no, she just makes all these excuses for him. It’s all ‘He’s an artist, he’s never had to worry about money before, he can’t study in their tiny place with a new baby’ etc.. Shit, she just didn’t want to believe she had backed a losing horse in him. So what does she do instead of running for the hills? Well hell, she comes up pregnant again. And so within two years she’s got herself two babies. This one was a boy, which Roger insisted on naming Dalton, after his home town. Maybe that should have given her a clue on where things were heading but, instead, she just writes how southern and romantic she thought the name was. Then the diaries go on for a while about how much she loves Roger and her babies and how she is starting to paint again while they nap. She prattles on about how maybe, when they move to New York, she can take some art classes once Roger is established. You almost have to cry reading this stuff because you know none of it’s ever going to happen for her. It's like I wanted to go back in time, and yell at her ‘Get out while you still can - there’s no New York’. Hell I woulda told her, you just don’t want to follow where he’s going to take you, but you can't, you know? Well, of course, Roger finally gets kicked out of Yale for good which I could sure see coming, but I guess she couldn’t or wouldn’t. Then he wracks up a couple of arrests for drunk driving ... the last one totals their car, and naturally he blames everything on her for trapping him into marriage. And you can tell from the writing by now that even poor dumb Robina is beginning to lose a little faith in Roger. Then she writes about how he got a letter from his mama, and that the letter told him how his daddy had died and that his mama will forgive him for breaking her heart and all if he will just come on home now … come on home and take his rightful place as the head of Willets Oil, and be a leader in the community. Hell, have you ever heard such a pile of shit in your life, Leeann? Of course he friggin’ jumps at it. No more Yale dropout, drunken loser bartender for Roger. Oh, hell no, he is heading on home to Dalton to be Prince Roger again! Only problem is I guess he had never told his folks that he had gotten married. Oh, and that there were a couple of kids to boot. Now, reading this part of her diary, well you kind of have to draw your own conclusions, sort of read between the lines here. See, I think what happened next is that Roger actually took off and just left Robina and the babies in Massachusetts and went on home to mama, hoping that maybe they would just disappear. I say this because her writing gets real vague around that time … kinda like maybe she didn’t want to face facts, you know? It's all how Roger had left for home in Oklahoma to get things ready for her and the children, but it doesn’t wash because during that time she also writes about having to go on food stamps and rental assistance, so that’s why I think he had just left her high and dry; and the way she got to Dalton also tells me that because her next entry is like five months later, and she is writing it from the Greyhound bus, saying that she and the children are on their way to Dalton to ‘surprise Roger’. I know this is real sad and shit, but hell, Leeann, you kind of have to laugh when you think about how surprised old Roger, and his mama too, must have been when this real pretty, but no doubt raggedy looking girl, and two little babies get off at the bus stop and wander around town asking if anyone knows where they can find Roger Willets. Unfortunately for us, she didn’t write about what a pretty scene that must of been when she finally found him, but she did write about how his mama, Miz Evelyn, nearly had a heart attack, and how she tried to get her and them babies to step right back on that damn bus. But I guess Miz Evelyn, who by the way, Leeann, from what I have read, could have eaten ole Miz Bethany for lunch, softened up when she got a long look at little Dalton there, who apparently was the spit of Roger. So the next thing that happened is that Robina is living in Willets House with Roger, the kids and her mama-in-law, and baby brother George, when he is not up at the junior college in OKC. Now is when you start to see how maybe the poor girl went insane, because she writes all these pages about how lost she is and how ugly and barren Dalton is. She’s starting to talk more about how much she feels out of place in that house. She wrote that every time she walked into a room, Miz Evelyn followed her until she went back and hid in the bedroom she shared with Roger. And ole Roger himself, well she wrote that he was ‘like a ghost’. I don’t know exactly what she meant by that, except that maybe it's just that if he wasn’t at work down to Willets Petroleum then he was off golfing, or drinking, or I guess just about anywhere but that house. And then, when he was there, he was always irritable with her, saying that she was upsetting his mama. Apparently when Roger did show up, old Miz Evelyn would be lying in wait for him to tell him some story about Robina, and Robina wrote that Roger always took his mama’s side against her. So you could tell she was sort of starting to let go of her ideas of ever getting Roger to New York and maybe just letting go of the whole ‘Roger is a great guy’ idea. Who knows, maybe she would have tried to get on with her life somewhere else, but she came up pregnant again, and this time it was bad. She was sick the whole time. Roger was mean to her on account of her not feeling up to sex, and her mama-in-law sort of took over her kids. When they would come up to see her in her bedroom, she said they were starting to talk like us, you know, without accents, and maybe weren’t so nice to her either. She wrote that Miz Evelyn had stolen their affection and all sorts of depressing things, like she had just got real morbid during that pregnancy. After the baby was born, this time a little girl, Miz Evelyn picked out her name, Savannah, because that’s where she had been born. But then it looked like things might start to get better for Robina. Miz Evelyn announced she was sick of all the noise and confusion from the kids, so she was building herself a new house up to the golf course. When it got finished, she and George, your George’s daddy that is, moved into it, leaving the big house to Roger and Robina. And for awhile it did sound like she got happier. She redecorated a few rooms and had the pool put in, and maybe Roger was being a good boy then because she started writing all this mushy crap about how much she still loved him and that if he needed Oklahoma to feel like a man, then she would make the best of it. She had her man and her babies, and she even started a little reading group, though none of the ladies wanted to read the classics, she said. Yeah, well no shit, huh, Leeann? Who wants to read that crap once you get free of high school is what I say? I’ll tell you, though, that poor girl never could catch a break for long because, hell, if she didn’t get pregnant again, and she got real sick again, this time with something called gestational diabetes. I don’t know what that is, but she was a mess - bed rest, the whole nine yards. She wrote that she fainted during the wedding ceremony of George and his beautiful bride Bethany, ha. Anyhow, I guess on top of everything else, she got kind of fat this time around which, seeing as how she had about a kid a year, couldn’t have been much of a surprise. Oh, but ole Roger hated it, and made fun of her all the time, and I think that’s maybe when he started hitting her, too. She doesn’t say right out that he hit her, but she does mention going to see Doc Miller - our Doc Miller’s daddy - all the time for a broken collarbone, fractured wrist, the kind of stuff that you and I know you don’t get from opening up a can of Chef Boyardee for the kids, right? She had the baby, another boy, Ryder. Then she writes about starving herself down so she’ll be pretty again for Roger, which just made me sick. But anyway, I guess it didn’t work, because no matter how miserable Roger had acted before about being married, he always liked to have sex … but not now. She writes these real embarrassing things about trying to get him into the sack, but he wasn’t having it, and he wasn’t coming home again either. She knew then that there was someone else, and not just a one night stand this time. She started getting kind of obsessed about it, why I don’t know, because Roger was a platinum asshole, but this girl was definitely one of those sad sack, stand by your man types. She loved him, she wanted him, and now she was getting jealous, and that made her start to change. Before this, she used to write some cute little things her kids had said and done, but now it was all about Roger … when he was gone, what time he came back, how he smelled like soap from a fresh shower; how when she called him at work or went by, he was never there. She even wrote about hiring a private detective. Of course, and this is so pathetic, turns out she didn’t have any money. She had an account at the Piggly for groceries, and one at Peddy J’s for gas, but if she wanted anything else, even money for clothes, she had to go begging Roger like a dog. Me, I’d have killed him long before, but hell Yankee women are spineless I guess. So the journal whines on and on about Roger’s friggin’ affair, and how mean he is and I guess the years pass anyway. And somewhere in those years he must have given her a mercy pump or two because she gets knocked up again. Maybe she didn’t know what was causing it, huh? Sorry, I know it’s disrespectful to make fun of dead people but, really, you got to wonder - five kids? Now when she tells old Roger Dodger, I guess he was pretty unhappy too, because he told her to get rid of it, which she wouldn’t because it was a sin, which is pretty ironic in view of later events. But, anyway, she has the kid, and then falls into that post partum depression. You know, like Brooke Shields did? And, hell, by now her writing is all crazy, all about God, and hearing someone walking around the house in the afternoon, and her things getting moved. People calling her and hanging up and, if you ask me, this was all in her head because I don’t think until she started haunting the house herself that there was a ghost. But she was sure someone was trying to send her off her rocker, ‘Gaslight’ her is how she put it. One day her tires were slashed, and Roger accused her of doing it herself, and who knows, huh? So that’s it. Her last entry was the day it happened. She wrote ‘I hear her downstairs; she is here now. I will go now and confront the fiend who is sleeping with my husband and sneaking into my house’. I think by then she was a total loon and that she probably heard and imagined that stuff, ‘cause really, Leeann, who in the hell in this town would have been so nuts as to be sneaking into Willets House and moving her stuff and all? I think maybe she went down and mistook her own kids for this imaginary woman, or something. Hell, I don’t know for sure - hey, maybe I’m wrong - maybe the ‘fiend’ was my own mama, huh? Can’t you just see old Susan/Delilah sneaking around Willets House? Hey, maybe she heard they had a big liquor cabinet, that would do the trick. Anyway, that’s what I think happened. Roger must have come home, seen what she had done, and she killed him too. Then maybe she realized what she had done, and killed herself. I know she wrote that shit about not me and stuff, but Mark says that is called a dissociative state, which is when you are sort of out of your body and don’t know what you are doing, and you might blame what happens on other people. Sounds farfetched I know, but we are talking about a woman who killed six people and then herself here. But I still want you to let her show you her damn pictures next time because I think they may hold the key to why she is still so pissed after all these years. So what do you think? It’s okay, you can talk now.”

Chapter 39

Gosh darn it, now that I could talk, I couldn’t think of what to say. It was a sad story, poor girl. Roger was an asshole. Jess was right, she should have killed him earlier … killed him but not her children.

I started to say that, yes, I could see some points in her story to sympathize with, but just then the matron came in and said that I was being released, and for me and Jess to follow her.

Outside the room, Jess told me she’d meet me outside, and she followed the guard while the matron took me to a room and gave my clothes back so I could take off my orange jail dress. Once I was dressed, she took me through four locked doors and said that “I’ll see you again after your trial.”

I thought “Hell no, you won't, bitch,” and all of a sudden I was outside in the sun again. Jessie was waiting for me, but I could barely see her because there was Donny Readle big as life and a billion times more beautiful … just standing there, looking at me. He had a little grin on his face and a cowboy hat on that he tipped a bit when he saw me.

He said “Hey, Miz Leeann, I see they let you out for good behavior, huh? ”

I didn’t say anything smart ... I didn’t say one thing at all. I ran at him like a high speed train and I jumped into his arms and wrapped my legs around his waist. He caught me up to him and he held me and spun me around and around in his arms right under God’s sweet sun. The only sound was Jessie calling us a pair of assholes mixed in with our laughter.

After a couple minutes of hanging onto Donny and just being happy, I noticed that Jessie wasn’t teasing. Donny stopped spinning me and we both looked over at her like what the hell? She had to go and ruin the most romantic moment of my life by reminding me that maybe now wasn’t the best moment “to be seen crawling up and down another man, what with your old chopped up husband not even buried yet and all.”

That just made me mad as hell. After all, I don’t think in the history of the world anyone had ever had a worse twenty-four hours than me.

But Donny was setting me down, and nodding in full agreement with Jess. He said that she was right and that we had probably “already screwed the pooch with this here little display. Shit Jessie, you are as smart as you are pretty. Swear to God I’m the biggest asshole in the state. I’m guessing right about now one of the guards is either on the phone to Miz Willets or the Dalton Tri-weekly or both.”

Shoot, hearing him say that reminded me of that ugly old matron, who had just told me that she would see me after my trial. I was betting that him and Jessie were right. Thanks to me showing the whole world how much I loved Donny Readle, I had just dug my own grave a couple feet deeper … not to mention a girl should maybe try to play a little hard to get as well.

So I pulled back and collected myself. I told him that I was sorry I had jumped on him like a duck on a June bug, I was just real happy to have been sprung from that hellhole. He grinned down at me and said that I could jump on him anytime I felt like it, but maybe next time I should wait till we had a more private situation.

Jess snorted out her nose like an old bull and said she didn’t imagine that would take us long, but that right about now “how about getting the hell out of here? Besides, Leeann, you got a date waitin’ on you in downtown Dalton with your new probation officer. He’s gonna fix you up so you can get fitted for an ankle monitor.” I was guessing that was one of the terms of my release, and it didn’t seem so bad compared to the alternative.

I nodded at her and we all three got into the cab of Jess’s truck. She was driving, so Donny and I took advantage of this by seeing which of us could stick our tongues the furthest down each other’s throats for the sixty mile ride back to Dalton.

Jess said “Leeann, I am real pleased to see that my warnings about you not acting like a pathetic whore have gone over so well.”

Donny laughed at her and said “Shut up, Jess. The way I figure it is seeing how bad your driving is, why most people seeing us coming will just be too busy trying to get away from you. Sure, they’ll be trying too hard not to die to be looking inside the cab. Besides Jessie, I am merely doing my duty as an old family friend by trying to comfort the bereaved at this difficult time in her life.”

Jess nodded like she thought that made real good sense, and said “Well shit, Donny, I ain’t gonna argue with you. I sure do understand that everybody grieves in their own way.”

Well that broke all three of us up so bad that I think people in oncoming cars must have heard us laughing.

Now I don’t want you to think that I am just the worst person alive and that I was laughing at George being dead and all because I did not find that funny in any way at all. No, it was more like what my daddy calls “whistling in the dark”. That’s when you’re real afraid but don’t want to show it, so you sing or whistle, something to act brave, even if you’re not feeling so brave.

See, I was sorry George was dead, and I hated people thinking I had anything to do with it but, to be fair to me, I had been arrested, charged, jailed and now, just for a minute, here in the truck with Donny beside me, and Jess at the wheel … well I knew ahead of me was a probation officer, Miz Willets and a murder charge still hanging over my head. No doubt ole Robina was still lying in wait for me too. And maybe there was even a little baby in my stomach that would need a lot from me.

Behind me was the horrible jail cell where I had just spent the night wondering if I wanted to live or not, but right here and now I could just be an eighteen year old girl, leaning into the only boy that God ever made for me … and the best friend any girl ever had at the wheel, and Skynards ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ blasting from the stereo. Shoot, I was so pleased to be alive in that moment that I didn’t even flinch when Jessie reached down and pulled out my Britney CD from the stack and tossed it out the window with a rebel yell.

Chapter 40

I’ll make my life with you.

I might not be the brightest bulb in the box, it’s true, but I am smart enough to know this much; in that moment right then and right there, well it might easy have been the last good moment I would ever have. Funny thing, though; thinking it might be the last didn’t make it one drop less sweet for all that.

Sure, I wanted real bad to ask Jessie to drive forever straight past Dalton and on and on to maybe Texas, or Mexico, but I knew I couldn’t. I knew that nothing had really changed either with Donny and Carlene. I knew too that, much as I might wish it otherwise, Robina and me had unfinished business.

I knew all that just as certain as I knew my name was Leeann Worthier Willets. So maybe that’s why I was laughing, and kissing Donny too, while I could. Maybe that’s part of what whistling in the dark is … just going forward like there is something to go forward to, even if maybe all that’s in front of you is the end of everything you ever loved or wanted.

That ride ended all too soon; in no time at all we were back in Dalton. Jessie pulled up in front of the courthouse and, of course, parked in the only handicapped space. Donny was shaking his head, but I could see that really, same as me, he thought Jessie hung the moon.

Waiting for us outside were Mama and Daddy, Randy, Sara Beth, and even Mark. Seeing Mark standing there touched me deeply. He had to have taken the day off from one of his jobs to be there for me. I felt tears start in my eyes. I loved these people - my people.

Donny and Jess seeing me start to cry each reacted in their own way. Jess told me “This ain’t no time to fall apart like a damn pussy, Leeann.” And Donny, he asked Jess to go on ahead, and get everybody inside to the probation officer’s office. He said that we’d be in right after them.

Jessie looked hard at him and then nodded. I watched her approach Daddy through my tears. It was pretty obvious that, whatever Jess was saying, my daddy didn’t agree with one bit. He started heading to the truck but then Jess grabbed his arm, and I don’t know what she said, but I could see he didn’t like it none, though he let her lead him up the stairs. Once he started, the rest of them followed, and then Donny and I were alone in the cab of Jess’s truck. He turned down the radio, which was now playing Jessie’s favorite lesbian music by K.D Lang ‘Constant Craving’ … well if that ain’t the truth I thought.

It’s for sure that, for me, Donny was always going to be an itch I could never scratch enough. He was sitting in the driver’s seat now where he had scooted over to when Jess got out. I understood the why of him not being close to me; I just didn’t have to like it. I started to speak, but he shook his head at me. He said there were a few things he needed me to hear before we got out and went inside. That “circumstances being what they were”, he didn’t know when we would have another chance to speak private. I just nodded, and told him to go on then.

“Leeann, Sugar, right off, I am real sorry I said those things to you out back at Willets House.”

Oh shoot, I had to interrupt him and start telling him how damn sorry I was that I had called his wife a whore and junkie and stuff. I said I couldn’t believe that he had put his precious eighteen wheeler up for me. That no matter what, I would see at the least that he got his money back, and that he was the best.

At that point he thanked me in this real dry voice for not interrupting him and all. I had to laugh then and I made zipping motions at my lips to show that I would be real quiet now.

He nodded and started talking again. “Well, Leeann Girl, about Carlene, there ain’t nothing to apologize for as she is in truth a junkie whore, and the second biggest damn mistake I ever made.” Oh I loved hearing him say it. I was just bursting to ask him what the first biggest mistake was, and he must have seen that because he grinned and said “The worst mistake I ever made was not realizing a long time ago that you were no damn little sister to me. Hell, I love you fiercely, Leeann - you’re the one for me. I swear to God, Girl, when I saw you in that church standing there in that dress looking like an angel, well I felt gut shot. I wanted to kill that poor asshole George right then and … oh shit … well, I wish I hadn’t said that exactly, considering everything, but … well, when you fainted at that reception and it was me that picked you up, I never wanted to let you go. Then after what happened between us up to Willets House, well shoot, Baby, why are you crying like this? I thought you might feel the same.”

I couldn’t keep my mouth shut one more second. I had to tell him that I was crying ‘cause this was the happiest damn day of my life and, to tell the strict truth, it was. Maybe I had an old probation officer waiting up in the courthouse for me, and maybe all the dogs of hell were on my heels - Robina in the lead, but none of that mattered. He loved me! So I threw my last little piece of pride right away and told him right then and there how I had loved him every minute of the day since I had been a little girl. I told him about my dreams of our little house out at Lake Injun and even how I had planned to up and seduce him into loving me one day too.

I said “Donny, when you married Carlene, I found out what being gut shot was.” And then since he was grinning at me like an egg suck dog, I went on ahead and told him something else. “Last night Robina came to me in jail and told me that you and me had made us a little baby together. You know what, Donny? I know she spoke the truth and it’s going to be a boy! And I want him to be called after his daddy.”

Well then I finally ran out of breath, so I just sat there panting and grinning back at him. I must have looked like an egg suck dog too, but maybe he liked egg suck dogs, because he said “Well shoot, maybe old dead Robina has her good sides after all. But I think we’ll name this first one Charlie after your brother and your daddy. The next one we’ll call Donny, unless she’s a girl. But if we are going to have us nine of ‘em, well we’ll get our junior eventually, huh?”

I was yelling I was so damn happy. “Well hell, Donny Readle, I don’t know about that; you going to turn Mormon on me and keep two wives or something? Nine kids is too damn much for one woman.” I was just teasing him, though; I’d have twenty if he wanted ‘em. I knew he could fix anything in our way and I wasn’t worried about much right then, to be strictly honest.

He shook his head real serious now. “No, Leeann, I sure as hell am not turning Mormon. I am staying a damn Baptist, just like our kids will be. I am going to divorce Carlene so fast it’ll make your head spin and, if that sends her back on drugs again, well that ain’t my fault. No, I’ll tell you what, we gotta get these charges beat for you right quick,and while one lawyer is working on that, the other one is going to get me a divorce. And about one minute after I is divorced, well you and me are going to drive up to Las Vegas and get one of them Elvis impersonators, a real good one too, to marry us and then we’re coming home to Dalton. It might take me a while, Girl, but one day I’m going to build you that little house out to Lake Injun. What do you think about that?”

Well shoot, it’s a good thing he was so beautiful and all, obviously being dumb as a box of rocks. What did I think about that? It should have been obvious to a dead person - oh shoot, another poor expression. Anyways, he should have known that if I got any happier my heart might explode from it, and that’s just what I told him, though I had to say “Donny, Sugar, a wedding in Vegas, I don’t know, what about …?” but he cut me right off, saying “Baby, you have had enough big weddings while you are already knocked up to last you a while I think. Besides I have always wanted to see Las Vegas, and I’m betting your daddy has too. Woo, girl, we will have a time. I think I’ll get you dressed up in one of those showgirl outfits, and see what we can make of that.”

I had to laugh and tell him that, inside my head where no one could see, I was already doing real bad stuff to him. Donny said he’d take me up on that later but that, right now, we had better get inside before they came looking for me “You being a wanted criminal and all.”

I had to kick him a little and tell him that when we were married I was going to nag and henpeck him to death, just for being so contrary right now. He just looked me up and down in a way that made my legs go weak, and told me I could sure try.

Chapter 41

Damn, it was real hard to get my mind back on present matters, but walking inside the courthouse surely did do it. By the time we were outside the office of Billy Ray Tabors, the probation officer, I was back in the real world again with a thump. Billy Ray was a pretty good guy - he knew Daddy from Downey’s and all. Speaking of Daddy, he was eyeing me and Donny like he weren’t born yesterday, which he purely was not.

I sighed inside, figuring I could look forward to a talk about that when he got me home. Well, no matter, it took Billy Ray about twenty minutes to get my ankle bracelet hooked up, probably on account of Daddy standing over him the whole time saying “You better watch where your hands are at boy.” When he was finally done, he told me that if I went beyond Mama and Daddy’s front porch or back step, then it would set off an alarm and he would come and get me and I would be ”Hauled back to Maybeetle right quick.”

Daddy got all important telling Billy Ray that I would be in his sight every minute of the day and not to worry about a damn thing.

Billy Ray said he knew he could count on him to see I was kept in line.

Jess of course had to ask in this real innocent voice “Billy Ray, will Leann’s ankle monitor start buzzing if Charlie hauls her off to Downey’s to keep a strict eye on her?”

That set everyone, including Billy Ray, to laughing. Why, he even clapped Mark on the back and asked him if he didn’t want him to put one of these ankle monitors on Jess. “If that hellcat were my woman, I’d be keeping a strict eye on her.”

Mark pretended to be considering this offer, just about long enough for Jess, to tell him “Mark, I swear to God, if you don’t hurry up and say hell no and take me on home now, you won’t need to concern yourself with my whereabouts, ‘cause really what the hell does a eunuch care where his woman is?”

Like I have said, Mark is real smart, so he just told Billy Ray thanks but no thanks. And then him and Jess hugged me goodbye.

Jess said “I’ll see you tomorrow, you dang convict. But, Leeann, so help me God, if you want to call me early in the morning, well maybe you should just shoot yourself first because it will save me the trouble and the cost of a bullet. Now I think of it, I’ll be saving the taxpayers a heap on your trial too!”

I hugged her as tight as she’d let me and I said I didn’t really know how to thank her for what she had done. Jess just rolled her eyes, and slinging her arm around Mark’s waist, they took off.

Then my family was gathering around, Daddy and Randy thanking Donny for what he had done … Daddy even saying that Donny was another son to him.

Seeing what was in our real immediate future, I was damn glad he felt that way. Mama was asking Donny if he wanted to come home with us for supper but, deliberately ignoring my begging face, he said he better get on back; that he had a lot to do in the next few days. He gave me this secret look, just for the two of us. I knew what he meant - telling Carlene to take a hike and such.

Because we had to pretend for a while, I just told him “Well thank you for everything again, Donny. You sure are a good friend and I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon.” Randy and Sarah Beth said they had to pick up Tallulah from her other grandma’s before coming on over to the house, and could they drop Donny off? He said that sounded good, and then it was just Mama and Daddy and me. Daddy held my arm the whole way to his pickup. My daddy is a real smart man and I know that he was holding my arm more because he felt I might go running after Donny Readle, than because he thought I might be trying to become a fugitive from justice, or what was passing for justice in Dalton right now.

Chapter 42

Over dinner that night which, I must say, having eaten Mama’s chicken fried steak about one million times before, was still the best meal I have ever had, my jail experiences having given me a new appreciation for good food, Randy was awful serious.

For about one semester, before he knocked up Sarah Beth, (this being something of a pattern in our family apparently), he had planned to be a lawyer. And he would have made a damn fine one too, being smart as hell. But, anyway, based on this knowledge he had, Randy had pegged my public defender as a nickel-plated loser right from the get go.

I had to agree when he said that if we couldn’t figure out how to get me a real criminal attorney, I might end up celebrating a lot of holidays up to Maybeetle. I told Randy then about how Donny and Jessie had tried to get my jewelry out of Willets House, but they had been foiled by the guards. Randy said that no matter what, that jewelry was mine. He told us that he did think that the Willets could put a stop to me touching George’s bank account and even the house, me being an accused murderess and all, (Randy winked when he said it though, thank God) ‘cause it isn’t so funny to joke about things like that when it’s you who is the accused killer in question.

My brother announced that he himself was going to take off work all day tomorrow to figure out how to file an injunction asking Judge Styles to order the return of my jewelry. He said he figured we had a pretty good chance. Then once I had that jewelry in my hot little hand, that him and Daddy would go on up to Dallas where they had the kind of jewelers that handled such fancy stuff and sell it and hire me a lawyer, all in the same day if they could. That sounded like an awful good plan to me, and I told him so. Heck by then Sarah Beth was looking at him like he could walk on water. Little Tallulah cracked us all up by asking, if I was going up to Maybeetle, could she have my old canopy bed? Then Mama made us all get real quiet by asking me what I thought we should do about the funeral.

Oh shoot - George’s funeral.

I asked her what she knew about it, and she told me that it was the day after tomorrow at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. She said that she thought me or Daddy better call Billy Ray up tomorrow to ask permission for me to go. I told her that I didn’t think I could stand it and she bowed up and told me I had better stand it.

She said “George was your lawfully wedded husband, Little Missy Leeann. What do you think people would say if our whole family, especially George’s widow, wasn’t there?”

I knew she was right but I knew that Miz Willets wouldn’t like it, and I told her so. Mama told me in quick return that Miz Willets having just lost her own son, a grief that she, Mama, knew all too well, would be too busy grieving to care about me. I knew she was wrong about that, but I knew I had to go.

Thinking about George’s funeral made me tired, so I excused myself. I kissed everyone goodnight and, grabbing up Muffin from the couch on the way, I went upstairs to my sweet little lavender bedroom. The whole time I was brushing my teeth, and getting ready for bed, I was thinking not of Donny now, but of Robina. I knew she would come for me. I prayed to have the courage of Jessie, the fierce heart of a lion like she had, because when Robina tried to take me with her tonight to show me what she had to, I was going.

Then, wouldn’t you know it, she didn’t come. I lay awake for an hour, even trying to be open to her spirit, like Jess had told me to, but nothing strange at all happened. I hoped this didn’t mean she was now done with me, that having framed me for George’s murder, she would just leave me to hang for it.

Thinking like this does not help someone get to sleep, so instead I put my hands on my stomach, thinking that inside there, real tiny now but alive, was a little boy, one with his daddy’s green eyes and his grin. Ah, then I could feel my muscles loosen up. Thinking about my boys was a lot better road to walk on the way to sleeping, and I know I was still smiling about that littlest boy when my eyes closed.

Chapter 43

For no other reason than because I could, I stayed in bed all the next day. I knew I wouldn’t be seeing Donny. Randy and Daddy had headed on up to OKC to see about filing an injunction, and Mama had gone back down to work at Elma’s Occasion Dresses, so I was just laying there in my bed minding my own business with Muffin curled up beside me, when Jessie came in and jumped on me.

“So what the hell happened last night? Did Robina show you them … whatever they was, you know, them pictures? Well speak up girl! I haven’t got all day to lie around like you do, laying there like a fat hog, acting like a big old tragedy queen. Some of us have to work for a living.”

Shoot, I knew somehow Robina not showing up was going to be my fault in Jessie’s book. I told her that nothing happened last night, and don’t start with me. I said “I mean it, Jess, because, hell, I just laid here for hours stretched out like a dead carp, trying to be open like you said and still nothing happened.”

Jess got quiet for a minute as she was thinking this over. Then she asked me to repeat everything Robina had said that night in jail. I did, and then she got this real serious doom and gloom look on her face. I knew she was waiting so I said it. “What, Jess, what are you thinking?”

“Well, Leeann, don’t you see, she said she couldn’t go so far. When she asked you to come home, I don’t think she meant here … I think she meant Willets House.”

“Oh hell no, Jess, and I mean it this time! And even if I were feeling like going into Willets House and seeing Robina’s private home movies, which I purely am not, you told me yourself that Miz Willets hired guards and that’s why you and Donnie couldn’t get in for the jewelry. So, see, you can take that sad idea right off the table there.”

She nodded like she agreed with me, which I knew was pure grade A bullpoop, so I just laid there waiting.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right, Leeann. Hell, I don’t know what I was thinking of. Oh, and by the way, congratulations on your latest illegitimate pregnancy.” We both had to laugh then of course, but she wasn’t done. “Yep, the more I consider this, the more I realize that Robina is sure nuff done with you. After all, George is dead and everyone thinks you are Dalton’s own Lizzie Borden, so what more could Robina do to you? Well, excepting that it seems to me that she mentioned something about that there baby in your stomach. I am just assuming here now of course, but I was thinking that you might be a little more excited about this here baby than, say, your last go round; am I right there?”

I put my hands protectively around my stomach and sat up in bed. “What are you saying, Jess?”

“Well, didn’t ole Robina mention that baby, Leeann?”

I just nodded. My mouth was dry now.

“Well see, Leeann, that worries me. Seems to me Robina has already proved she is no ordinary ghost. Looks from where I’m sittin’ that she can talk to you wherever you are and she killed your brother, she killed George, and, somehow, I get the feeling that it might be better to do what she wants from here on in.” Jessie grinned at me real wide. “Well, unless she goes telling you to kill someone for her, because I swear to God, Girl, unless it’s Miz Willets, well killing someone would be plain wrong!”

I was too scared to laugh this time. “What do you think I should do, Jess?”

She shook her head a little. For the first time in living memory, she didn’t look like she was certain, and I didn’t like that at all. Jess knowing what the hell everybody should do all the time was a constant in my world.

“Leeann …shit, I’m not sure here. But I think we have to get you back into that house. And once we do that, I think you have to fall asleep. Wherever she’s taking you, I think you have to be asleep, or at least unconscious, for it to happen. Now stop looking at me like that! I’m going to be sitting right beside you the whole time, so if she tries to knife up your sleeping body, well then, I will sure try my damndest to stop her. And as to getting inside that house, well somehow, and I don’t even know why I am saying this, I think it won’t be hard this time. I think we’ll have help this time.”

She sat there looking at me, dead serious, her big gold eyes just looking at me, to see if I had as much courage in my whole body as she did in her little finger.

I breathed in deep. “Yeah, okay, Jess, let’s do this. I don’t know where she wants to take me, and I don’t know why it’s me to start with, except I’ve been thinking about this a while now and I figure maybe it’s because we kind of had the same story, you know?” Jess nodded, so I went on kind of thinking out loud while I was talking to her. “Yeah, see, two girls, with maybe not much going for them except people thinking they were pretty and all, and then we both married into that terrible family, and nobody liked us doing it. But I’ll tell you, Jess, the story changes out real quick right there because she loved Roger, but I didn’t ever love George, and she had living children by him and then killed them! And if she ever loved Roger Willets one millionth as much as I love Donny Readle, then how she could have killed his babies no matter what, is something I will never live long enough to understand. So now maybe Robina, see, she picked me because she thinks we are alike, but we’re not! And Jess?” I reached over and took her hand here, even though I knew she hated stuff like that, “I’ll tell you something else; maybe one of the reasons we aren’t alike, could never be alike, is because Robina it seems like lived out her whole damn life alone … all alone and without one person she could trust. And see, I’m different there for sure, ‘cause no matter what happens to me in that house, and no matter how much I love Donny Readle, for me … well now, and all the rest of my life too, God willing, that one person for me, it’s you. So now what I’m going to say, you had best listen to real good because this ain’t easy for me either, Jessie. So you best stop crying right now, because if anyone around here is going to act like a pussy, well I get to; I am, after all, in a fragile condition here.”

Jess laughed a little but she was still crying hard.

“Okay Jess, here it is. You promise now. You swear to me, on all our years together, that if she comes for you, that no matter what, if I am asleep or not, that you will get the fuck out of there as fast as you can. You are gonna do this Jess or it’s no deal. Because, so help me God, if I wake up, and you are dead then there won’t be no need for Robina to kill me, ‘cause I will take care of that myself, even if it means taking my baby with me. Oh shoot, maybe I am just like her after all, huh?”

Jess had crawled up in bed with me now. We were all wound around each other, like we used to sleep when we were real little. And, just like then, I was rubbing her back while she cried. What I knew, and no one else did, is that about a thousand nights during our childhood this was how Jess fell asleep. Oh shoot, yeah, there came a day when she got so damn tough and hard that nothing more could touch her, but for awhile there, when we were just little girls, well it took her a while to understand why her daddy never came home, why Santa always forgot their house, and why her drunken whore of a mama brought other men home. Sure it took her a while to get big enough and tired enough to know that her mama was gonna hit on her hard every chance she could, right up until the days when she started to think Jessie might just hit her back.

Anyway, this isn’t something I like to talk or even think about. Jessie is like the bones in my body but her secrets aren’t mine to tell. I have only said this much because what people might never understand otherwise is how it is with Jess and me. Shoot, I never doubted for one second that Jess wouldn’t risk her life to save mine, but I wasn’t going to let it go down like that.

The way I saw this was I had dug this hole all by my lonesome … my stupid greed, my choice to sleep with George and marry him … all my choices. Now here was my Jessie, finally, after ten bad lifetimes in that bad house she grew up in, finally happy with her sweet Mark, living the life God intended for her at last, and I would be damned, literally damned, if because of her love for me, and her little lion’s heart, I were to let her stay there and be killed by Robina, killed in a place that she never would have been if it hadn’t been for me. Well let’s just say there are lots worse things than dying. Funny enough, I knew that was a truth now shared by me and Robina. This secret was one I would never let my Jessie find out if, having survived her parents, she didn’t already know it.

So now, just for a little while, it was like it was back then when it used to be me taking care of her. I rubbed circles on her back and told her it would most probably be okay, and I guessed we would go tomorrow night after George’s funeral because, what the hell, might as well make a day of it, huh?

I felt her little shoulders hitch, maybe laughing a little. I hoped so. I could never be as funny as Jess, or as brave, but I was real good at loving the people I kept close in my heart. So I prayed awhile, hoping that maybe all that deep love I had for Jessie and Donny and my family, for this baby, well maybe it could pull us all through. I believed it would. Either way I was pregnant again and tired again, and it felt so familiar and good to be curled up around Jess that we both fell asleep just like that.

Chapter 44

Of course Jess woke me up with a kick to my shins, saying “Leeann, what the hell? God you are such an irresponsible asshole letting me go to sleep like this! Shit, I’m gonna be late for work for sure and it’s all your fault! Shoot, and now Tully is gonna be pissed at me and I got to ask him if I can take tomorrow night off too so we can go ghost busting. Shit, I figure, he’s gonna be so mad this time, he’ll fire me for keeps!”

Tully fired Jessie about once a week for any number of things, and then usually hired her right back the next day.

As she was rushing out the door, her hair standing straight up and her clothes all wrinkled, I thought she looked like the world’s prettiest chipmunk, and I laughed at her, which of course made her mad so she told me “Well, maybe I do look like one of them nasty old tree rats, but you look like the village slut lying there in bed all day like a worthless thing. Now that I think about it, calling you the village slut, well in light of recent events …” Jessie was grinning and on her way out the door she said “Well, anyway, I’ll see you at the funeral tomorrow, young Miz Willets. We’ll get together after that to plan our escapade, that is if old Miz Willets doesn’t up and kill you at the services. You know, Leeann, that wouldn’t surprise me a bit, course then if old Miz Willets does kill you, it will deprive Carlene of the pleasure of killing you. And you got to admit, Leeann, she has every right to do it, seeing as how you’re such a husband stealing slut and all.”

I told Jess as how that would be a damn shame, as this particular husband stealing slut was just itching to get her hands back on that old boy now that she mentioned it. And that, yeah, go on to work and try to not set anyone on fire.

I was referring to an incident that had taken place where Jess had accidentally, at least I think it was accidental, set fire to one of the customers at Tully’s when she had been making a flambé dessert at the table. But the circumstances were suspicious. That same guy had stiffed her on a tip a week previously, so it’s hard to say, but after firing her for that one, Tully decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and hired her back two days later.

That made her laugh and she took off, and I gave about a minute’s consideration to getting out of bed finally. But after thinking how much I had ahead of me the next day, I just pulled Muffin back to me and started day dreaming about what I would like to do to Donny, say, if we were out at Lake Injun right about now; or in the back of his pickup for that matter and then, thinking about him, made me decide to call him up. He picked up on his cell after one ring and I could tell he couldn’t talk, so I told him just to listen, and then I went on and told him some things I had been thinking about. When I heard him make this pathetic groaning sound, well I figured I had done enough, so I just said that I loved him, and I would see him soon.

Now this part, well it means a lot because I knew Carlene was with him … probably in the middle of a big ugly argument, but he whispered real low that he loved me too. So after I hung up the phone, why I clutched it to me, all the way back into sleep.

Chapter 45

Today is George’s funeral and, wouldn’t you know it, it’s raining! Rain is something that happens about two days a summer here in Dalton and - of all the damn times - this was one of them, as if this wasn’t morbid and weird enough already.

It was just going to be Mama, Daddy and me, along with Jess, at the funeral. Randy and Mark had already missed too much work, and Sarah Beth, feeling that Tallulah was too young, was staying home with her.

Daddy was already in a state as, no matter what the occasion, him having to put on a suit always made him spoil for a fight.

Mama was doing her usual routine with him. “Now, Charlie Honey, you just settle down here in front of the fan. My, don’t you look handsome? Good Lord, Jessie, what in the name of our creator is that you are wearing child?”

Well you had to laugh despite the solemnity of the occasion. Jess was wearing black but it was not exactly funeral black, if you get my meaning. It was this real small, real tight black dress that I had bought her during our honeymoon in Miami, and she had on the black stilettos I had bought her too.

Now Jess is real tiny, as I have mentioned, but for all that she has perfect legs and perfect boobs too, and you could see a hell of a lot of both in that getup. To make matters worse, she had insisted on wearing this huge black picture hat to top off her ensemble. Jess said Mark had told her she looked just like Audrey Hepburn, which in strict truth she did, except that Audrey Hepburn’s movies were all G rated and Jess was at least PG 13 in that outfit.

Daddy perked up at the sight of her and said that he thought maybe old George would rise from the dead when he saw her. Mama was torn between Daddy being in a good mood and what other people would think when we walked in with Jessie but, as always, she came down on the side of if Daddy liked it, then so did she.

At least Mama was real pleased with my appearance. Knowing that every single person in Dalton would be eyeballing me, I had picked out a real plain grey linen dress and pumps. My hair was in a French twist and the makeup I had on just made me look solemn. Gray eye shadow, and pale lipstick - I looked real dignified.

Daddy said I looked just like an angel, which was good since we were taking the devil to church with us in the form of Jessie. That made us all start laughing … except for Mama, who has no sense of humor about the devil. She told us to pipe down and remember that we were going to a funeral for poor George who had been a beloved member of our family and to be thoughtful of that fact. I saw Daddy and Jess roll their eyes but, out of love for Mama, they settled down and we all squeezed into Mama’s little Datsun car.

The church was packed. It was the same church where I had married George. It had been such a little time ago, but seeming far away now. We had to park a block away and walk in the pouring rain. We were all quiet on the way except Jessie, who cursed the rain, her high heels, and asshole George for being buried on the only rainy day in summer. But I think maybe Jess was just doing her own whistling in the dark, because by the time we got to the doors, she was quiet too.

Chapter 46

We all walked real slowly into our house, everybody including my own mama looking like something the cat dragged in. As soon as we got inside, Daddy tore off his clip-on tie and dropped his suit jacket on the floor. Mama didn’t say anything. Daddy walked right over to the cabinet by the TV, opened it up and got out two big glasses and the Wild Turkey bottle. He poured them both full and handed one to Jessie and started gulping from the other one. Then just in case any of us were ever going to make the mistake of pretending this was just another day, my mama, who has had maybe one glass of wine in her life, said “Charlie, why don’t you pour another one of those for me and Leeann here?”

Daddy didn’t even act shocked; he just went back to the cabinet and did it. He tried to hand me mine but I waved it away. He just shrugged and gulped from it too.

Mama said “Leeann, Honey, I think maybe you had better drink that and also get yourself some ice for that elbow … it’s starting to swell.” As she said, that she took a long swallow from her own drink. She choked and made a face but dived right back in, finishing the whole glass and holding it out for Daddy, who didn’t say anything but just dumped some of his into her glass. I said to Mama that I didn’t want anything to drink because I thought I might be pregnant again. She looked over at me, and said “Oh well, that’s real nice, Honey.”

Any of these actions might have by now indicated to you that maybe the funeral hadn’t gone so well. Oh no, not very well at all. Looking around the room at my daddy leaning against the wall, bright red, gulping whiskey out of two glasses, well maybe that wasn’t so strange, but the sight of my mama sitting in her chair, gulping whiskey and ignoring the announcement that her only daughter was probably having another illegitimate pregnancy, was nothing short of world ending.

Jessie? Well she looked pretty odd too. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her hat was all torn up and hanging halfway over her face. Jess was holding one of her broken heels in one hand and her drink with the other.

I guess I must have looked pretty fine myself. I was barefoot and my hair had fallen out of its pretty French twist. I could feel some of the flowers from George’s casket itching my ears. They must have got tangled in there during the fall. In addition to that, my elbow was the size of a baseball and, staring at it now, I could practically see it enlarging before my eyes.

Shoot, I guess it would be now, wouldn’t it? After all I had hit it on George’s casket hard enough to knock the casket, and George with it, right off the bier. Yes Siree, hard enough for George to come right out of the casket … hard enough even to show what a cheap son of a bitch Dalton’s mortician was. Yes, awful cheap and not so good at his work, because … well because … see, when George came rolling on out of that casket, that casket that was closed before and for real good reasons … well see, it shook him loose. And that’s when I saw, well to be strictly honest all of the people in the church saw, that George didn’t have no arms on him at all.

No arms, but then, oh then there they were, just like in that old rhyme and “Jack came tumbling after”. But it weren’t Jack that came tumbling after … it was just the rest of George that came. Well it was just his arms actually, and they … oh Jesus and Mary, his arms they came down right on either side of me, and that’s when some dumb ass in the church (I think it was May) screamed out “Oh look at that, look! Why it looks like George is trying to hold Leeann; don’t it look like that?”

I guess that’s when I finally fainted, but it was way too late by then because I had already seen and felt George’s arms on me. I guess May was just right too; it must have looked just like he was trying to hold me because that’s sure what it felt like. Daddy must have been picking up on my thoughts because he broke the silence in our living room by saying now “That Bobby Rose is the biggest four flushing, nickel dick S.O. B. I ever did see. Why Sheriff Riffler should have arrested him right then and there for the thieving piece of shit he is. Why I’ll just bet he charged George and Bethany full price for poor young George, and then come to find out that he hadn’t even sewed his arms back on! Shoot, they was just laying there on top of the body, I guess. Hell, if Leeann hadn’t knocked poor old George into the aisle, his folks would have buried that boy thinking he was in one piece.” Seeing my face, he caught himself. “Oh dammit, Sugar, I’m real sorry, I guess I’m just upset like we all are. It was a terrible thing, I’ll say that.” He drained his glass and headed back to the cabinet again.

Nope, I would have to say that today - and considering the recent events of my life this was saying something - but yes indeed, today topped them all as the single worst and most disgusting event of my entire life. I knew the minute we walked into the church that it wasn’t going to be good, or even bearable.

Miz Willets must have somehow sensed my presence even from all the way up front where she was sitting because even though we walked in alongside about a dozen other people, her head turned to look and, when she saw me, I watched her jerk like she had been shot. She tried to stand up but Mr. Willets grabbed her arm and pulled her back down to him. I could see he was talking to her, trying to comfort her, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I could sure hear her, though. Everybody could. “George, why is our son’s killer here? Why isn’t she in jail, locked up like the animal she is? George, you get the sheriff, you show him! Get him now George! George, you let me go!” Saying that, she broke away from him and made a dart towards the aisle. By that time, Sherriff Riffler was already getting up out of his pew. He and Mr. Willets both got to her at the same time. Sheriff Riffler was trying to keep his voice down while he talked to her, but it didn’t matter, you could have heard a pin drop in the church, so we all heard him say “Now, Bethany, you settle down now. Leeann has got herself out on bail, all legal like, and I imagine she has just come here to pay her respects. George was her husband and no one knows all the facts yet. We are all here to bury your son, and he deserves our respect at a sad time like this.”

Mr. Willets put his arm around her and started pulling her back to their pew. He was trying to talk quiet, but of course everybody could hear him all the same. You could almost see ears quivering in that church, bunch of nasty old Uncle Wiggly gossips that they are. “Come on, Sugar Beth, you just ignore her. This here is about our boy,” and then he started to cry too.

Me and Daddy, Mama and Jessie just stood there frozen for a second, and then Jessie put her hand on my arm and guided me over to a pew.

Jakely Sims, from the Tri-weekly, and his wife were sitting there with about eight empty spaces beside them but, when we walked over, they jumped up all offended and went to another pew that was already crowded. Daddy and Mama followed Jessie and me into the pew. Daddy has his head up and that look on his face like he would fight anyone who looked at us funny, but my poor mama, you could see she was dying of shame. Me, I was too shocked to even be embarrassed and Jessie, well, she was throwing evil glances at everyone in church.

Father Moray just stood there silent like a damn fool, so all you could hear was Miz Bethany just wailing George’s name over and over again. Finally he pulled himself together and started this real endless sermon. I didn’t hear a word he said. I was lost thinking of George, and how nice he had always been to me, and hoping that whatever Robina had done to him, that it had been quick. George had never hurt anyone, and he hadn’t deserved this one bit. I felt Mama nudge my ribs. In this real loud whisper she said “Leeann, lower your head, it’s the final prayer.” Oh, I hadn’t even noticed. I guessed it was over now, thank God.

But it wasn’t over. Everybody was standing up and walking towards the casket. What the hell was this? I leaned over and asked Jess because she always knew what was going on. Besides, for about ten minutes there, Susan/Delilah had been a Catholic and had dragged Jessie off to church with her when she was a kid. Jess had always said it was on account of the free communion wine. Jess told me that everybody had to go up front now, and that when we got there to the casket, you were just supposed to bow your head and say a prayer and move on. She whispered to me “Then this fucking nightmare will be over, so let’s just get it done, okay?”

I shook my head and started backing away. No, I couldn’t go up there, but Mama told me with her look that I was going up there. I didn’t see a way out without making more of a scene, so I trailed Jessie up the aisle, Mama and Daddy right behind us.

When we got up to the casket, Jessie had just bowed her head when Miz Willets got loose from Mr. Willets again, and came running at us like a freight train. She got to Jessie and looked her up and down and said in this screechy voice “Look at you! You’re a whore, like your mother’s a whore, like she’s a whore,” pointing at me and then, shoot, before I could try to get away she came at me. I turned, panicked, but behind me were dozens of people and I couldn’t get past them and she was in front of me. So I tried to squeeze in between the casket and the flowers just so I could edge away and make a break for it. But she got to me first; she just plowed into me, driving me backwards. It all happened at once. I heard Jessie scream “Leave her alone you crazy bitch.” I felt Miz Willets hands on my shoulders. I backed up so fast that I felt my elbow slam hard into something. I shouted out from the pain and then there was this horrible sound.

Miz Willets and I, her still on top of me, had knocked into the casket and it was coming off the bier. It seemed to happen in slow motion, the casket sliding, then tipping off, and then hitting on its side. I guess Jesse pulled me back enough not to have it land on me but, as she did, I caught my shoe against the bottom of a pew and fell over onto my side. And that’s just where I was laying when first George rolled out onto the carpet beside me and then something else flew out of the casket … one thing, then two, and they both landed on my chest.

In all the awful confusion and shock, I don’t think I would have known what had landed on me, if I hadn’t heard May scream “his arms.”

Oh God help us all, Robina had cut off his arms, and now George’s arms were on top of me, and, oh, there was George’s head. Why it was right next to mine, and his eyes, his eyes were open, but they were sockets. Where were George’s eyes? And his face, George’s nice big moon face, it was cut something terrible, but there was no blood, just big black stitches where Bobby Rose had tried to stitch his skin back together. But he hadn’t done a very good job because you could see the black stitches real clear, and then the room and George started to spin like crazy.

I could hear Miz Bethany screaming now, over and over, but drowning her screams out in my head, I could hear Robina laughing.

Chapter 47

Mama stood up from her chair and said to no one in particular that she was going upstairs to lie down for a while and that, if anyone was hungry, there were leftovers in the fridge. Daddy put his empty glass down and, without saying a word, followed her up the stairs. I looked over at Jessie and asked her now if she had heard Robina laughing too?

She just looked at me and shook her head. “No, I didn’t hear anything. I think maybe most of Robina’s tricks are saved just for you, well you and the people she cuts up. Jesus, Leeann, did you know that she had cut his arms off?”

I shook my head and told her that my lawyer Jack had tried to tell me the extent of George’s injuries back at the jail, but that I hadn’t wanted to know. I asked her why she thought Robina had torn him up so bad. What had poor George ever done in his life to deserve that? And just thinking now of how bad it must have been, how scared he must have been, I finally started at last to cry just for him. Not for myself, but for George who was only twenty-seven years old and had liked life so much. I prayed for him then.

Jess finally took off what was left of her hat, and crawled over to sit beside me. “I don’t know, Leeann. I don’t think anyone in the world could deserve such a horrible thing. I think that now, whatever Robina is, she just ...well she just hates. I guess we’ll find out tonight if there’s any reasons behind it.”

Oh God, tonight. I wanted to tell Jess that I couldn’t go through with it, but I knew that if I didn’t, that Robina would keep coming, that maybe the next time it would be Donny or my baby. I didn’t know if she could get to them if they weren’t in that house, but I didn’t think I could stand wondering either. I stood up; my elbow hurt and I needed ice.

I asked Jess if she was hungry, and she looked real surprised and said “Yeah, it feels horrible to say it, though, but I am hungry. I didn’t eat this morning ‘cause I figured we’d all get plenty of food at the wake afterwards. But I’m kinda guessing that we are off the invite list now.”

I felt terrible that I was hungry. It made me sick at myself to want to eat after what I had seen today, but that’s just what we did … went into the kitchen and hauled out Mama’s cold ham and pie, and just took our forks to them.

Right then, Randy and Donny both burst into the house without knocking. I guess Sarah Beth had gotten about fifty calls at home after the funeral and she had reached Randy at work. He had picked up Donny on the way over. They were both shouting and yelling about Miz Bethany, and was I all right, was Jessie? Where were Mama and Daddy? Jessie told them to shut up, sit down, have a beer, and she would “recap today’s high points for them.”

Well Randy sat down with a beer. He always was scared of Jessie, but Donny came over to where I was, just picked me up, and then he sat back down with me on his lap. He picked the funeral flowers out of my hair while he listened to Jessie talk. He didn’t interrupt her story but he did ask me in a whisper if I thought the baby got shook up in the fall?

I stroked his cheek and whispered back that I thought our baby was just fine. Donny looked about twenty years younger from relief when I said that. When Jessie finished talking, Randy said he didn’t know who was worse … that cheap piece of crap undertaker or Bethany Willets. He said that he thought in a week or so Judge Sayer would get our request for the jewelry, and then we could get me a first rate attorney, and “put this shit to an end.” Randy seemed to notice for the first time that I was on Donny’s lap. He gestured at us with his beer, and said “When did this start up?” I told him when I was about seven, I guessed.

Donny tightened his arms around me and said to Randy, man to man like, “Randy, you know that you have always been like a brother to me and I know that you know I would never just mess around with Leeann. I’m working right now to make this right. Carlene is heading to Texas tomorrow and I’ve already talked to a lawyer. As soon as I’m divorced, well I’m fixing to marry Miss Leeann here, and I hope that you’ll be happy for us.”

Jessie had to ruin it of course by saying with her mouth still full of ham “Well Donny, my boy, you sure do have some nice timing here. Why poor Leeann’s old husband ain’t only not cold in his grave yet, he probably don’t even have his arms sewn back on yet and, shoot, we haven’t even discussed the shocking adulterous aspects of the situation.”

Donny broke up laughing hard at that and so did Randy, even though I could see that he was a little shocked himself. Me? Well I was just real glad Mama was napping right then.

Randy took a long swallow from his beer and said “Don Boy, I love you like a brother and I guess it’s all right with me, but I think that it might be a real fine idea if we all keep our mouths shut about this until after Leeann is up and cleared. ‘Cause, Son, you got to admit in the wrong hands this could sure as shit look like a motive for killing poor George, God rest his soul.”

Donny nodded and said that we had already figured that out. Jess couldn’t take all this sweetness one more second. She said “I sure hope Leeann goes to trial in a hurry, then, because I don’t think her little pregnant widow look is going to go over real big with a jury.”

At that Randy looked real disturbed and asked how the hell I could be pregnant and, if I was, how the hell it could be Donny’s, and maybe somebody better fill him in around here. Jessie loved that, so then she told him the entire story, including Donny and Charlie’s story. While she was saying that, I felt Donny stiffen up underneath me, so I looked at him real pitiful, whispering “Baby, it’s Jessie, I had to tell her.” He looked pissed still, but then he couldn’t hold it, and he just whispered back asking did I tell Jessie everything, all the time? I made a sexy pout and then grinned and nodded. He turned red and, God, he was so damn cute I had to kiss him right then.

Meantime I saw that Randy looked like he was going to die of shock at the story of Charlie’s death. I got up off Donny’s lap and went behind his chair and put my arms around Randy’s neck. He turned and hugged me. I could feel he was crying, and we stood like that for a minute, till he pulled himself together. He stood up and he looked so much like Daddy for a minute. He looked at Donny and said he figured that they had best burn “that hell’s house to the ground and not a minute too soon.” He asked Donny what he was doing later tonight. Jess shot me a look of panic. I shot her one right back.

Lucky or not, depending on how you look at it, Donny told Randy that he agreed completely, but he said “I’m with you, Randy, but it’s got to wait until Leeann is cleared because that fucking hellhole might still have evidence in it that her new lawyer will need. Besides, Son, there ain’t no way to get into the house now because of the guards Miz Willets has hired. Me and Captain Crazy here (he gestured at Jess who stuck her tongue out at him), we already tried it. They got that place sealed off tighter than old Tutankhamen’s tomb.”

Thank God that Randy agreed with him because, if he and Donny were over setting fire to the place, then how the hell would Jessie and I get in? We had to get in, so that I could see Robina’s pictures and then probably be murdered by her. No, I sure wouldn’t want to miss that. Jess was looking at me all bug-eyed now, like she thought I just might be stupid enough to mention this. But I was sharply aware that Randy and Donny, especially, would never let us go through with it. And even though I did want an out, I knew we had to do this, so I kept my mouth shut.

The vibrating of Jessie’s cell phone woke us up at ten that night. She had told Mark she was staying with me to be of comfort in my bereavement but to call her at ten. We had gone to bed about four that afternoon, beat up by the day, and knowing we would have a hell of a long night ahead of us so we might as well get some sleep.

I laid there petting Muffin, listening to Jessie talk to Mark. To my shock she told him where we were going and told him that if she didn’t call him by three a.m., to get his white ass over to the house and try to save us if he could.

When she got off the phone, I was pissed. I asked her just what the hell was she doing telling Mark, when the deal had been that I couldn’t even tell Donny. She just rolled her eyes and told me to shut the hell up.

She said “Leeann, Mark isn’t going to try to stop us and Donny would have.”

I guess she me had there but I had to ask her why Mark wasn’t going to try to stop us. Jess just laughed and said “My man knows what the hell to ask for and what not to. To my mind that makes him smarter than the average bear. Besides, Mark thinks it’s cool. That crazy S.O.B is still hoping that you and me is gonna let him write a script about this when it is all over.”

I had to laugh - that Mark sure was determined to be the next Wes Craven.

Jess told me that we could discuss this shit later; right now we needed to get into some black clothes and get on over to the house.

Both Jess and I couldn’t believe our luck about the ankle bracelet. I guess Billy Rose just clean forgot to come over and reset it after the excitement of the funeral as he had dismantled it so I could go. Now it was still around my ankle but just as useless as tits on a boar. Jess and I both put on old pairs of my black sweats and t-shirts. My clothes hung on her which, of course, she had to mention, saying that she figured, big as I was getting, that after nine kids or so I could give old Audrey Steppes a run for her money, fat as I already was.

I had to remind Jess that a size four was not exactly huge and that she, being a dwarf as she was, didn’t know crap about regular human sizes. I said “You know, Jess, normally I am too polite to mention your freakishly small size and maybe that’s why you can’t be expected to know stuff like this.”

She laughed but then, hell, the shove she gave me out my bedroom window was a little rough. Jess was not a dwarf but, at five foot nothing, she tended to be sensitive to height jokes.

We knew we couldn’t drive over there because of sounds, so we made the mile walk, ducking behind trees and shrubs anytime a car drove by, which fortunately wasn’t too often as Dalton tends to shut down for the night as soon as darkness falls. Long before I wanted to be there, we were … standing in front of that big white beautiful death house, my wedding gift.

Chapter 48

Seeing it made my teeth chatter and I started to say something to Jess, but she just clapped her hand over my mouth. She pointed at a guard walking around with a flashlight just inside the wrought iron gates.

I nodded to show her I saw and she took her hand away. We both stood there watching him for a minute. I noticed that he was walking only around the front of the house and that he was staying as far away from the actual structure as he could. I wondered if there was another guy around the back, but I noticed that this one kept right up to the front of the gates, glancing back at the house like it might jump on him.

I figured that cheap old Miz Willets would have more guards during the day for show than she had at night because, from the looks of this guy, he was alone and not liking it one bit. After about a minute, Jess gestured to me to follow her and we backtracked to the service alley that ran behind the house.

When we got there she whispered “Okay, I think he’s it for tonight and I don’t think he’s leaving those front gates for nothing. He looks like a pussy to me, so hike me up here, Leeann.” She pointed at the back fence. “Once I’m over, I’ll help pull your fat ass up, okay?”

I just nodded, way too scared now to worry about Jessie calling me fat. I gave her a hoist and she shimmied up like a little monkey and then, leaning over the top, she gave me her hand. It was harder for me, but in a minute we were both over and down. We were standing inside the fence now, facing the huge white back of Willets House with the swimming pool gleaming at us in the moonlight. I couldn’t help but think that, with the moon so bright tonight, it must be just like it was the night Charlie and Donny came here. Jess grabbed my hand and real quietly we stole across the grass to the back door. She whispered to me, asking where the spare key was and, just as she said it, the door opened.

It opened quietly, but all the way, not like a door just falling open, but much more like a door was opened all the way by a hostess eager for your company. I heard Jess draw her breath in and I fell back a little in shock but, Jess, well she just nodded like okay, bring it on, and walked inside, so I had to follow her on in.

The house looked just like it had when I had stalked out angrily a week before. My God, only one week; that took poor Mama’s “what a difference a day makes” pretty far. The moonlight lit every surface around us, and it was still beautiful, that is until we got to the front parlor. Jesus and Mary help me in my hour of need, because in here every surface had yellow crime tape. But that was not the worst of it, not by a long shot. Every inch of ivory wall was stained in dark blots; the carpet looked black with it, and there were handprints all over the front door.

I think I knew then that he almost made it out before she cut his arms off. You could see it almost like it was happening in the huge dried pools right in front of the door. Stains that were separated by just the right amount of space that a man’s body would make. I must have made a sound because Jess was right there. She grabbed my hand, her little face dead white. She shook her head and pulled me towards the stairs.

As we went up that grand curving staircase, she was there, everywhere. You could smell a pretty light perfume with a filthy rot lying just underneath the scent, a vile sick smell that made the dumpsters at the Piggly seem sweet. Jessie and I covered our noses, gagging all the way, and somehow we got up to my old bedroom. The door was closed. I said a prayer, opened it and walked in. This room had no smell, no mess or tape. It was just the same, a grand beautiful room, elegant in the moonlight, and I thought I might not ever leave it alive.

Jess closed the door behind her and came over to stand beside me. “Okay, Leeann, this is it. I don’t know how you are gonna do it, but I need you to lie down on that bed and try to fall asleep. I’ll be right beside you and, if it gets too bad…if I can, I’ll wake you up, and we’ll make a run for it, okay?”

I nodded and reminded her of her solemn promise, and she hesitated, but seeing the look in my eyes, she just said yeah, okay, and then she told me she loved me which, more than anything else, made me think this was probably the end. I climbed onto the bed and laid on my back and closed my eyes.

I knew this would never work in one billion years. Scared as I was, I would never fall asleep. But Jessie was there and she was so strong that, in a second, I was asleep and same, as before, felt myself rising up and drifting towards the door.

Chapter 49

It was all changed now, though. The house was bright with daylight. I looked back to see myself on the bed, but I wasn’t there and Jessie wasn’t in the room either. The body on the bed was Robina, a young living, beautiful Robina. She was curled up on her side, sleeping.

There were pill bottles by the bed and I realized then that I wasn’t in my time, but somehow back in hers. I wasn’t drifting anymore either. I found I could move my limbs freely, so I walked back further into the bedroom and looked down at her sleeping. You would never have guessed in a billion years looking at that sweet sleeping face what she would become.

I turned and walked out into the hall because I knew I was supposed to. The house was the same, and it wasn’t. There were worn spots in the hallway carpet and, just up ahead at the landing, was a Barbie doll lying on its side, as though a little girl had dropped it on her way downstairs. I shuddered, and went over and picked it up myself and walked downstairs carrying it … I don’t know why. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I heard the TV coming from the living room and I turned towards it.

Just as I was moving away from the foyer, the front door opened real quiet and a rush of cold air blew in and a woman walked hurriedly by me. She was young, maybe my age. She was beautiful too. The woman had long blond hair and was wearing a retro fur and leather jacket. She didn’t appear to see me, but when she looked through me and up the stairs, as if to check on whether anyone had heard her come in, I saw that I knew her.

It was Miz Willets, only a young beautiful Miz Willets and, scared as I was, I couldn’t help but notice that some things hadn’t changed. Her eyes were still as hard as woodchips. I watched her take in a deep breath and nod to herself, like Jessie had done earlier, steeling herself. And then she did this weird thing; she stripped off all her clothes and left them in a little pile by the door, then, naked, she walked to the back of the house towards the kitchen.

I followed her. When she got there, she took her time going through the drawers, until she pulled out a long serrated bread knife and then, putting her arm behind her back, she walked naked back towards the sound of the TV. I found I could not force myself to walk all the way into the lounge, I leaned my head around the doorway, and glimpsed a Christmas tree, and an old-fashioned cabinet TV set. Lying in front of it, surrounded by toys, were four children - an older boy and girl lying flat on their stomachs watching a show, and behind them two little ones. They were all beautiful dark-haired children.

I knew somehow that I needed to close my eyes now and keep them squeezed tight unless I wanted to be hopelessly insane forever onward. I did hear them though. I heard the littlest girl, say “Aunt Bethany, what are you doing here all naked?” I heard her giggle and I heard the screaming begin. I think …I’m pretty sure … that they tried to run, but …well, they were just little kids and they …oh they must have been so scared and so shocked. What with them being so little and thinking they were in their own house and by their very own Christmas tree … well it must not have seemed real to them, not till it was way too late. I knew those babies never had a chance at all.

I was on my knees outside the room, crying and moaning, wanting to help the little ones and knowing I couldn’t, that they had been killed long before I was even born. She came out of the room.

I opened my eyes when I felt her pass me. She was drenched in blood, shiny with it and she was smiling. Her eyes were wild; they were the eyes of hell. Miz Bethany paused to wipe her feet off on the carpet and then began heading to the stairs. I was puzzled. I knew now who had killed the children, but I also knew that Robina had not been killed in her bedroom. Why was she going upstairs?

Oh, then I knew, the little white nursery “Our baby George”. No, I could not let her kill that baby again. I tried to touch her, to stop her, but my hands, like me, were invisible and she just kept on climbing the stairs. I ran after her. I don’t know what I thought I could have done, but I had to try. I followed her into the pretty white room.

He was just a tiny baby, a little boy with his mama’s dark hair. This time I didn’t see it happen either, but that was because I was facing her, keeping my body (or whatever I was) in between her and the crib. It didn’t matter; I watched, detached now, while the knife went right through me and into the baby behind me. He just made a tiny sound, a squeak like a little mouse, and then no more sound.

She turned and I followed her back down the hall. I was so sad and all leaden inside that I didn’t even feel afraid any more. I’m sorry for posterity’s sake and all, but what I felt, well it isn’t describable.

She walked into the master bedroom and, laughing silently to herself, laid the knife down on the floor, right underneath where Robina’s sleeping hand dangled. Then she went on back down to the kitchen. Still following her, I watched as she gave herself an elaborate spit bath at the kitchen sink, then watched as she re-entered the foyer and dressed herself again. She looked perfect, not a hair out of place. She glanced around once more and, giggling, slipped into the front closet, leaving the door just a tiny bit ajar.

I was sick, I was terrified, and I was also confused. Why had she done these horrible things? I mean I could tell she had just murdered Robina’s children and set her up for the crime, but why? And why in the name of all that was holy was she now hiding in the closet? Before I had time to think about it, I heard the door open again behind me. I spun around, and there he was, Uncle Roger.

He was the handsomest man I have ever seen in my life. My precious Donny is so beautiful to me, but this man, he looked made up he was so perfect. Tall, with black hair all tousled like he did it on purpose, and these huge blue eyes, surrounded by black lashes. I guess he was about the most incredible specimen I had ever seen, but he had a hard sulky mouth.

I knew a few things about men and this one was one of those that you could just tell would always be looking for something or someone else to see if they could please him better.

I had to guess that, just by looking at him, about every female he had ever come across had spent her life doing just that. He dropped his keys on the hall table, and called out in this deep voice “Robina, kids, I’m home.” Then he just stood there for a second like he was waiting for them to all come running.

When no one did, he frowned and headed toward the living room, hearing the TV no doubt. He started to speak. “Hey kids, didn’t you hear me come in?” And then he screamed. Oh it’s a terrible sound when a man screams.

He didn’t even pause; he started running, up the steps into the nursery, gasping after what he saw. He staggered on down the hall to the master bedroom. Miz Willets had closed the door and I watched him stand there gathering himself. I had no doubt he expected to see his wife butchered beyond that door but then, just like everyone else that day, he took a deep breath and walked in.

Now, I was only watching and, when you watch, you cannot truly know what someone is thinking, but I could imagine pretty well. Roger had come home and found all five of his babies butchered, and there she was; his beautiful drugged up wife, just laying there sleeping, with a bloody knife under her hand. He screamed her name and fell down onto his knees. You really did have to feel pity for him then.

She sat up, startled like. “Roger, Honey, oh you’re home. I’m so glad. What is it, Roger, what’s wrong?”

He was on her quick and he dragged her by the hair, right through me standing there. I ran after them as he pulled her down the hallway to the nursery.

“You see.”

He dragged her down those stairs, her body making this horrible sound every time it hit and she was screaming now. When they got to the living room, he threw her in amongst the children, and began punching and kicking her. She wasn’t trying to defend herself, just screaming “no” over and over again … it was horrible. Then I saw him drop the knife down on top of her and fall again to his knees, rocking back and forth.

“Why, Robina … in the name of God, why?”

I watched her stand up and she looked like a woman whose mind had been blasted clean out of her which, considering what she had woken up to, I could understand. She shook her head.

“No, Roger, not me. Her. I heard her. I thought I was dreaming. Not me Roger, not me! No, you … you Roger, you and your whore, you did this, you killed my babies and now, Roger, I am going to kill you.”

And that is just what she did. Robina reached down and picked up the bloody knife and plunged it into his throat. I couldn’t watch anymore. I backed out to the hallway and then went to the foyer, and sat down on the stairs and began rocking myself. She was in there awhile, I guess, stabbing him some more, and then writing on the walls. I heard her come out and she walked past me, unseeing, back up the stairs.

At the top, I heard her scream once when she plunged the knife into herself. I turned my head, not really caring anymore, just watching, while she wrote her babies’ names and their birthdates in her own blood, and I saw her fall down. Then, to my surprise … not shock, I was way far beyond shock by then, I heard her call my name in this real faint voice: “Leeann. Please, Leeann, come here.” I didn’t want to go, but I knew all choices were beyond me now. I walked up the stairs and kneeled beside her where she lay. She smiled up at me and it wasn’t a terrible smile at all - it was sad and sweet. “Leeann, did you see, see my pictures - do you know now?” I just nodded, I was crying again. “Leeann, I’m sorry I had to bring you here. I’m sorry about your brother too. It was wrong of me, so wrong. My anger, my terrible endless rage … do you understand what I want now?“

I just nodded again. I knew. I heard a noise from downstairs and I looked. Miz Willets was coming out of the closet and running to the hall. I ran back down the stairs after her. I watched her fall on Roger’s body, cradling him and screaming. “Roger, oh God no, Roger, she killed you. No! No! No! Roger I love you. I’m having our baby, Roger … I did it for us, for us so you could come to me. Oh, my darling, I am so sorry.” Then she got up and ran for the back doors and I watched her disappear out into the garden.

So Roger was George’s real daddy, and that was what Robina had meant when she said “her child”. I understood everything perfectly now.

Chapter 50

I was standing alone at the bottom of the stairs and it was dark again and hot. I was back in my own time. I started to walk up the stairs but, before I got to the bedroom, I was back in my own body, sitting up in the bed, staring at my Jessie’s little white face. Her hair! There was a white streak at her temple and I reached out wonderingly as I touched it. She looked at me like she didn’t know me and then said in this real distant voice “Oh good, you’re awake. Listen, listen, Leeann, they’ve stopped.”

“What’s stopped Jess?”

“The children, Leeann… they have finally stopped screaming, Oh God, Leeann.”

At that she threw her little body against me and I held her, and we both cried for a long, long time. It fell on me to remind her that we had to leave or Mark would come for us and then the poop would hit the fan. She looked at me calm now “Can we leave, Leeann?”

I nodded and helped her up off the bed and pulled her towards the door. “Yeah, Jess, we can go home now. I know what I have to do.”

By the time we got back outside, Jess had collected herself a little and, before we got to the back fence, she grabbed my wrist hard, and whispered “Oh shit, Leeann, the jewelry! We got to go back in there and get it.”

I shook my head.

“No, Jess, we got to leave it here for a while now. I’ll explain when we get back home.”

We made it back to Mama and Daddy’s house just fine but, when we crawled through the window of my room, there was Daddy … just sitting on my bed looking at us, one hand petting Muffin, the other holding a drink. His eyes looked all glittery; he looked mean. Funny thing was, after where I had been, my daddy didn’t scare me. Matter of fact, I didn’t think from here on in much in this life was going to scare me.

I thought about Jess for a second. Yes, maybe that’s what it took; you had to get your stuffing knocked out of you real hard and, if you got put back together again, you were just made of sterner stuff.

So before he could even start in on us, I let loose, I said “Daddy, you can holler and preach all you want, but first you’re gonna hear us out.”

He was so taken aback, hearing his sweet little girl talk to him like that; all he did was take a long drink, and nod and say “Well talk, then.”

I did and so did Jessie … he didn’t say nothin’. A few times his face wrinkled like his head hurt though and, when we were done, he just looked at me straight and said “What is it she wants, girl?”

I told him, and I told Jessie. Daddy, he just nodded. Daddy, well, he’s a man who knows that some things just have to be done, and I guess now maybe he could see too that if Bethany Willets hadn’t killed those babies, well then there would be no poor crazed murderous ghost left. And if there were no Robina, then his son, his Charlie, would still be alive so, yeah, he understood.

Jessie was a little slower getting onboard. She may be the toughest girl in Dalton, OK, but she was no killer and, anyway you sliced this, it was murder and pre-meditated murder at that. She looked at Daddy. “Charlie, you’re okay with this?”

He put his hand on hers. “Jessie Girl, I am. See, Girl, I have done some things, well it don’t matter, but I ain’t never knowingly set out to damage someone permanently. But this here, well, she killed those babies; she brought about the death of my boy, and she wants to see my girl in jail for something I think that she knows Leeann could never have done. So, yes, I am okay with this, Girl, and even if you can’t be, I need to know that what has been said here tonight will go to the grave. This here has got to stay just between us three - all right there, Jessie Girl?”

Jess laid her head on Daddy’s shoulder. “Yeah Charlie, I promise. How are you going to get her there, though?”

Daddy looked over at me. I nodded. It was done, then. I told them my plan:

“In about four hours, when it’s late enough, I am going to call her and tell her my brother got the injunction for me to get the diamonds and that, tomorrow morning, he and my lawyer will be going inside the house to pick them up. She won’t be able to bear the thought of me having them so, Jess, what I think will happen is this: sometime today she’ll be calling up that company she uses to guard the house and she will make up some story about how the danger is past and all and that they should leave off watching it anymore. Now she’ll do that because, see, she can’t have a record of her going into the house because, when the diamonds aren’t there anymore, suspicion would fall on her. And she won’t tell Mr. Willets about it either because he would discourage the plan, it being theft and all.” Jess and Daddy were nodding at my every word. “And then, well, I’m pretty sure she will wait till it’s dark out and then she’ll go on in after them. See, she doesn’t know that Robina never left … only we know about that, and only we know what’s gonna happen when Miz Willets walks inside.”

Jess just stared at me long and hard, like maybe I had changed beyond recognition, and maybe she was right. But after all it wasn’t like I would be actually doing anything to Miz Willets myself; no, it would be between her and Robina. And me? Well, I don’t know, but I knew that I had my own little baby in my stomach that I already loved, and loving my baby as I did maybe helped me to understand Robina some. And, yes, it was personal for me too. See, if Miz Willets hadn’t done these awful things, then my own big brother would be alive today, and I wouldn’t have been charged with a murder I didn’t commit. Hell, if you looked at it that way, then Miz Willets herself had as good as killed her own son. No, I found that I was going to be able to live with this just fine.

Daddy stood up now. He kissed Jess on the top of her head and then me. He said we needed to get some sleep because, no matter what, Jessie needed to be at work at Tully’s tonight where fifty people or so could see her. And, as for me, even before I called up Miz Willets, he wanted me to call old Billy Rose and remind him that he had forgot to set my ankle monitor back and that I would be real grateful if he could get to that first thing.

Daddy said that he figured he would get some sleep too because he and my brother and Donny would be having a long night at Downey’s that evening. He met my eyes, winked, and told me to have sweet dreams if I had to have any dreams at all, then he left the room.

I reminded Jessie to call Mark, and she did. From what I could hear it was a real subdued conversation. I didn’t much like it when she said she “would tell him everything later,” but when I brought it up to her, she just said “Let it go, Leeann. If you don’t trust me by now, then there is nothing for me to say to you.”

I felt terrible and told her that I trusted her more than anyone alive and that she knew that and, if she wanted to tell Mark, that was fine too. I just didn’t know if he could deal with it.

She said “It’s all right, we’re both on edge, I know that, and I’ll decide what Mark can deal with myself, and now could we please get some sleep? Don’t forget that I have to be able to stay awake long enough tomorrow night to establish my alibi.”

That made us both laugh a little, so I just said sure, and rolled over and turned off the light. Jess must have left at dawn because, when I got up at seven, she was gone.

Chapter 51

I went downstairs, kissed Mama, poured some coffee, and then, avoiding her eyes, told her I had to make some phone calls in private. I snagged the cordless and took it out to the back porch to drink my coffee and do what I had to do.

Just like Daddy had told me, I called up Billy Rose first. I could tell I had woke him up, and so then he had to act all irate, like it was my fault that he hadn’t set the damn monitor in the first place. I played along and said I was awful sorry, I had just forgotten after that horrible funeral. He acted mollified then and said as how he could understand that, and he asked me if my mama had the coffee on. I said she sure did, to come on over. He said he’d see me in about half an hour. Then I dialed Miz Willets. I knew the number from those days before George and I had got married. She answered on the first ring. Maybe she wasn’t sleeping much these days either.

“Hello?”

“Miz Willets, it’s me, Leeann. Don’t hang up.”

“You? What do you want?”

“Well, I guess you could say this is a courtesy call, Miz Willets. See my brother got the injunction to get into the house and retrieve those diamonds George bought me. Tomorrow morning, well, he and my lawyer are going to be going over there first thing with a court order and I just thought you would want to tell your guards so as there is no confusion.”

She was silent, and then she laughed nastily in my ear. “You piece of trash, you piece of shit. You think you’re going to use the jewelry that my son bought you to buy your way out of killing him? Well I wouldn’t count on that, Leeann. No, you’d best count instead on a nice room up at Maybeetle instead. I talked to the warden there and they’re keeping your bed warm for you. Goodbye, Leeann, we won’t be speaking again.”

She hung up on me. I hate to admit it but I grinned a little; she sure was right about us not talking again. I had a moment’s bad worry there though. If she called up Judge Sayers, she would find out there was no injunction yet. Then I might be in trouble. I didn’t think she would do that because then, when the jewelry disappeared, everyone would know it was her for sure, but it did worry me some.

Right then Billy Rose drove on up and Mama came out and gave me the evil eye, asking if I was all done with my private phone calls. I stood up and kissed her on the cheek. I was filled with affection for her. Mama was so good and I knew that what me and Daddy had put in motion must never touch her.

She scowled at me. “Now what are you up to, young lady? Oh, shoot, is that Billy Rose?”

I nodded, told her, yeah, it was and that I had to call him up about the ankle monitor, that’s why I had wanted my privacy. She shook her head and said I hadn’t needed any privacy for that and she knew what was going on. God almighty, I thought I might faint when she said that, but it was okay, ‘cause then she said she knew it had been Donny I called. I just looked down, like I was embarrassed to be caught. She shook her head again, and went on down the steps to greet Billy Rose and tell him that since he was here he might as well stay to breakfast which, to my disgust, he agreed to.

Damn, that was one long ass day. Mama drove me crazy, coming up with projects all morning and into the afternoon as well, and it wasn’t till she finally left for the Piggly at three before I could call Donny for real.

Oh he sounded so good. “How’s my girl doing?”

I told him just fine, but lonely as hell for him.

He said “It won’t be too long now. Carlene is heading out first thing in the morning in a big ass van carting off all my furniture behind her.”

I laughed and told him that was all right. All we needed was a bed.

He said “That’s a damn shame then, ‘cause she is taking that too. But I think if we put some thought into this, we could figure out how to make do. You know, Baby, your daddy called me earlier; told me that him and Randy want me to come on down to Downey’s tonight and sink a few, but I think I might just sneak over to your house instead and come on up to your bedroom window. I figure it’ll be safe with your daddy down to Downey’s and not at home to shoot me.”

I acted real regretful, which wasn’t hard, and told him he better go on ahead and get drunk, ‘cause Mama had been snarky about him all day and she would be eyeing me all night. He said that, oh hell, he didn’t know how much more he could take of not being with me, and I told him I loved him and that over the next fifty years or so he’d be wanting to get away from me, so he might as well enjoy himself while he could.

He laughed, but then real serious he said “I don’t much guess I’ll be wanting to get too far. If God gives me fifty years with you, then I guess I’ll be about the luckiest S.O.B. to ever be born.”

I started to cry, and told him “Donny Readle, I don’t know if you are the luckiest but I know I am the luckiest damn girl and if …oh shoot, here’s Mama back from the store.”

He told me to be a good girl for my Mama and hung up, laughing. Mama wasn’t actually back. I had just not been able to keep talking to the man I loved, him being so perfect and good and all, on this day with this secret inside me. I went on upstairs, hoping to just go to sleep and wake up tomorrow with it all over. But then Mama did come back for real and I had to go down and unload groceries and help her with dinner.

Dinner was not much fun either. Mama was all heated up about Daddy taking Randy out drinking on a work night, and they had some sharp words between them, which was strange but finally … finally Daddy left, and Mama went upstairs to have a bath. She asked me if I wanted to watch TV with her later, but I said I guessed I would just go to bed early. She let it be, so at last I was in my bed holding Muffin to me and watching out the window …wondering.

I must have fallen asleep, because I know I was woken up by the phone ringing downstairs. I looked at my clock and it was after eleven. I ran down real fast to get it before Mama woke up. It was Jessie. I could hear noise in the background.

I asked her where she was. She said she was still at work and would be for another couple hours because Tully had asked her to close, and she had agreed, even though she thought she might die, she was so tired. But that wasn’t what she was calling for. She was calling to tell me that Mark had just shown up at Tully’s and he said he had driven by Willets House on the way and Miz Bethany’s Lexus was in the driveway there.

I said “Oh”.

I knew then Jess had told Mark, but that wasn’t why I couldn’t talk. I knew then if it hadn’t already happened that it would soon, so that’s all I said was “Oh”.

Jess said, yeah, she just thought I’d want to know.

I thanked her and hung up. On the way back upstairs I ran into Mama who asked me if that was Daddy on the phone.

I told her, no, it was just Jess and Mama said “Well that tears it. I am going to just kill that man for keeping those boys out all night when decent people got to work in the morning.”

I just nodded, kissed her and said not to worry, them boys would be okay, and went back up to my room. I was wide awake now and waiting. Two hours later, when Daddy came in, he was accompanied by Sheriff Riffler who, no surprise, had been drinking at Downey’s when his dispatch had reached him to say that George Willets had called saying his wife wasn’t home and that he was worried. It hadn’t taken a deputy too long after that to cruise by Willets House and spot her Lexus in the driveway.

The Sherriff told his deputies to go on in and that he would meet them there in a minute. By the time he did get there, both young deputies were out in the yard puking their guts up and I guess that was fitting because there was so little identifiable left of Miz Bethany Willets that her guts might have been the biggest part left of her.

Sheriff Riffler had come over to our house because my daddy had insisted he do so. He wanted the sheriff right then and there to admit that there was some crazed serial killer loose in Dalton and it sure wasn’t his little girl. Sheriff Riffler had come, I think, because he liked my Mama and Daddy, and he too was still somewhat drunk and in shock. So when Daddy had followed him to Willets House and started demanding that he come with him, he had just gone along.

He was real nice to me, and said “Leeann Honey, I can’t do anything here in the middle of the night, but that after this horrible incident at Willets House, well it does put things in a different light.”

Then he looked at Mama and Daddy and said “No offense, Charlie, Elma, but I just got to ask Leeann here to step off the porch so as I can make sure that damn ankle bracelet is working … just a formality you understand.”

Daddy scowled at him something horrible but waved me down off the porch just the same. The alarm started screeching immediately and even set off an alarm in Sheriff Riffler’s car. He nodded and waved me back up onto the porch but the damn thing didn’t stop, so it was still screeching fifteen minutes later when up drove Billy Rose in his pajamas and, right after him, Donny and Randy and Mark and Jessie.

I was firmly in my Donny’s arms the whole time that Billy Rose was turning that bracelet off. Nobody, including Sheriff Riffler or my own mama, said a word or even looked at us funny. Just for a second, though, over Donny’s shoulder, I saw Jess eyeing me. But then she must have decided that I had only done what I had to do because she nodded at me and I knew we were going to be okay.

There’s just one thing, and I don’t even know if I should mention it, it’s probably nothing. I’m sure it was just kids that thought they were being real clever and messing around but well, anyway, that night when we were all in bed, the phone rang about two a.m.. I heard Daddy get up and stomp down the stairs cursing all the way about “damn idiots who have no respect.”

Then I heard him yell “Hello, this better be an emergency!” Then a little silence, and then, oh, he was really hollering. “Who the hell is this? This shit is not funny, and you better watch your ass if I find out who this is.” I heard him slam down the phone. I was real curious, so I went downstairs and Daddy was just standing in the kitchen holding the phone and looking at it like it might be a snake that had bit him. I asked him who he had been talking to, and he just looked at me real funny “I don’t know, Sugar, some crazy asshole, I guess.”

“What do you mean, Daddy? What did they say?”

He shook his head to clear it like and said that when he answered the phone, some crazy gal pretending to be Miz Bethany was on the line and she said to tell me that I could come get the jewelry now, she didn’t need it no more.

Daddy looked at me like maybe I would laugh, but I didn’t laugh, I was mad. I stalked over and grabbed the phone from his hand, hung it up and punched in star sixty nine. The phone rang, and then the answering machine came on. It was my voice. “Hi, you’ve reached George and Leeann’s house but we aren’t here so leave a message and we might call you back, if we don’t have anything better to do.”

I hung up the phone.

Epilogue

Dalton Tri-Weekly September 1-7

Charlie and Elma Worthier proudly announce the engagement of their daughter, Leeann Worthier Willets, to Donny Angus Readle. The couple will marry in Las Vegas on October tenth and return to make their home in Dalton. They plan to build a house out on Lake Shining Water. Our sincere congratulations to the bride and groom.

The Piggly Wiggly has asked us to print the following notice:

Anyone found out back taking target practice at the rats will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law! Live ammo is not appropriate in the parking lot of a grocery store! Also there is a sale on Heinz Ketchup: buy one get one free, valid thru September 10th. No coupon necessary!

Dalton Tri Weekly April 1-7

Donny and Leeann Readle announce the birth of their son, Charlie Angus Readle. The baby weighed in at 9lbs 6 ozs, mother and child are doing fine.

April Fool’s pranks get out of hand. Sherriff Riffler announces that there will be increased patrols by the Dalton Sheriff’s office following the defacement at Dalton High on the evening of April 1st.

Jakely Simms - Dalton

AP News Oklahoma City Dalton Oklahoma June 11, 2006

The body of George Willets Sr. was found inside the stately home known in Dalton as Willets House. This is the fourth person found dead inside the palatial mansion since a series of homicides back in the late seventies.

Authorities in Dalton claim that there was no foul play involved. Mr. Willets’ heart simply gave out, stated Dalton’s Sheriff Riffler. This reporter however has been unable to obtain a copy of Mr. Willets’ autopsy report, or indeed any reason as to why the deceased may have been at the empty home to begin with.

This death follows the murder of Mr. Willets’ son in June of 2005, and that of his wife in July of the same year. These homicides remain unsolved, though local authorities state that “they are following up leads.”

Maria Ruiz. Oklahoma City.

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The Wedding Gift