Читать книгу Sleigh Belles - Beth Albright - Страница 9

4

That evening, Dallas went home to her empty house. It was a little place near the university that she was renting. If she got that anchor seat, maybe she could afford to buy herself a real place of her own. Maybe she could finally afford to stop running to Atlanta to hide the fact that she shopped at consignment stores. Everyone in town just assumed she had lots of money. She worked hard to make it look that way. But the truth was that reporters didn’t make that much. She had bills to pay and, unlike Blake and Vivi, she didn’t come from family money. But that wouldn’t hold her back. She’d just have to keep climbing her way to the top. Anchors made much more, a lot more. That’s what she had her eye on.

She made her way to the shower, petting her big white cat, Wilhelmina. Wilhelmina was her only companion since she had broken up with Dan Donohugh, Harry Heart’s campaign manager, right after the election. Both of them had really been using each other, hoping to benefit from Harry’s run for the senate, so the brief fling had ended soon after.

Here in her home, Dallas was finally in her safe haven. Just she and Wilhelmina.

Dallas stood under the hot water of her shower thinking of her mother, but trying not to. Why would she be calling after all these years? Dallas had tried to make contact with her when she was still just a teenager. She’d hated living with her father, and she’d really hated living with Blake when her dad had married Blake’s mother, Kitty. Blake had let her know immediately it was her house, so Dallas hadn’t wasted a minute of her time trying to be sisters with her.

Instead, she’d spent her time trying to prove herself worthy of her mother’s love. She’d become a high school cheerleader just as her mother had been when she was young. She’d worked hard to become the most popular—and that had sometimes been nasty work. You didn’t always become popular by being nice, so she’d had to crush a few hearts along the way. Eventually, she had been named the salutatorian of her class. Cal was the valedictorian and had gotten a football scholarship. But Dallas, after receiving a small scholarship of just a thousand dollars, had still been asked to give one of the speeches. She’d pulled together all her courage to call her mother when she found out, but no one had answered the phone. She’d left a message, asking her mother to please come and hear her speak, that it would mean a lot to Dallas to show her what she’d accomplished. She’d never heard back from her mother. Maybe she didn’t get my messages, she always thought to herself. But she knew it wasn’t true.

Eventually, Dallas quit trying to make contact.

As she stood in the shower, the memories of what happened all those years ago haunted her warm oasis.

When Dallas had been only three and her brother, Houston, had been eleven, their father had walked out on their family. He’d left them to marry his secretary, the woman he’d been with just before he’d married Blake’s mother, Kitty. As they’d grown up, Houston had stepped up to become the man of the house and their mother, LouAnn, had leaned on him in that role. The three of them had been an incredibly close, tight-knit family—and, yes, her mother had a thing for Texas and had named her children after her two favorite cities there.

As they grew up, Dallas had loved her brother like no one else in her life. He had been her hero. They had always had an incredibly close relationship. Houston always told her that whoever married her would be the luckiest young man in history, since he would get to have Dallas forever. To say she put him on a pedestal was a major understatement. She used to tell him he was her favorite person in the world. And he’d let her know she was the most special person in his life, too. Even when he’d moved out to campus, they’d still talked all the time and he’d taken her to the movies and out for ice cream once a month. She’d loved him more than anyone. He had been her security.

When Dallas was in the ninth grade, she was basically living life like most teenaged girls her age. Makeup, boys, fashion and cheerleading practice filled her days. Houston, meanwhile, was twenty-two, gorgeous and fixin’ to graduate from Alabama.

One day he’d brought a woman, Eleanor Walsh, home with him to meet his family. As smart and charming as Houston was, they weren’t at all surprised that he’d found someone special. But when Eleanor walked in the door, she was definitely a surprise, all right. She was about thirty years old, though Houston was just barely twenty-two. He was defensive right away, explaining to LouAnn and Dallas that they were in love and that it was serious. He told them he was planning on marrying her. Dallas, being so young, was actually really excited and wanted to get to know her new “older sister” right away. She trusted her brother’s instincts on everything, so if he said this woman was the right one, Dallas was happy to accept it.

As they continued dating, Houston made sure that she and Eleanor became close. They’d take shopping trips together, go to movies and the couple made a real effort to spend time at the house with Dallas and her mother. So one day, Dallas and Eleanor went to Eleanor’s house to get ready to go out to a movie together with Houston. It was the first time she’d been invited to Eleanor’s place, so she was both nervous and excited. When Dallas entered the house, she immediately was shocked at the mess. The home was filthy—dirty pots and pans on the stove, so much old grease on the floor she couldn’t even see the color of the tile. As she moved through the house, following closely behind Eleanor, she heard noises coming from the laundry room. As they passed by, heading up the hall to Eleanor’s bedroom, Dallas caught a figure out of the corner of her eye.

A man was sitting on the floor, surrounded by parts from the washing machine, along with screwdrivers and other tools spread out around him. The man glanced up as Dallas walked by. He locked eyes with young Dallas, and instantly she felt a pang in her stomach: that uh-oh feeling you got when things weren’t quite right. She had a feeling that Houston might not know this woman as well as he thought.

“Who’s that?” she asked Eleanor.

“No one. Just the repairman,” she answered casually.

Dallas still felt that feeling. From another bedroom up the hall, Dallas could hear the sounds of children. One was crying. One was arguing with an older woman. As they walked toward the open door, she could see that the older woman was sitting in a small chair designed for a child. She was smoking a cigarette and staring out the window as she “babysat” the kids. As they walked past the door, the older of the two little boys ran out of the room and latched himself on to Eleanor’s leg, wrapping himself around her. “Mommy! Hi! Will you stay home tonight?”

Dallas was stunned. The child was about four years old and the other looked to be only two. They were Eleanor’s kids. Eleanor had kids! In all the time she’d known her, there had never, not once, been mention of her sons.

“Momma, can’t you do something with them?” Eleanor said to the older woman.

“Y’all get off of your momma now,” the woman said, ashing her cigarette on the windowsill. “She’s goin’ out. Go in there and see what yer daddy’s doin’.”

Dallas couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Was the man with the washing machine the father? She froze in place, trying to take this news in for a second. Several seconds.

Dallas got an instant stomachache. She was afraid she had stumbled onto a secret. Surely her beloved brother had no idea he was dating a married woman, with children. Not dating, but fixin’ to marry!

Dallas didn’t want to go to the movies anymore. She wanted to rush home to save her brother from this horrible woman. She wanted to protect him now. She absolutely knew her brother would never be involved with her if he knew the truth. But as she stood there trying to imagine how she’d break the news, Eleanor shuffled her off to her bedroom and began chatting away as she got ready, as though none of this were out of the ordinary. In shock, Dallas wasn’t able to do much but follow along and wait for the right opportunity to speak up.

Houston, Eleanor and Dallas made it to the movies anyway, but late that night, after they’d dropped Eleanor off, Dallas decided she had to tell Houston what she’d found out. When they pulled into the driveway of her mother’s house, she just blurted it all out in one breath, thinking it might be better to rip it off like a Band-Aid.

“Yeah, I know,” he answered, once Dallas had finished.

“What? You know she’s married and has kids? How could you still want to marry her?”

“I just do, Dallas. You have no idea what the situation really is. Her husband doesn’t love her, and they are getting a divorce.”

“When? I mean he was there fixing the washing machine and her kids were screaming and crying for her to stay home.”

But rather than listen to her concern, rather than talking things out with her as he always did, Houston seemed to have grown cold. “You need to stay out of this. It’s none of your business. She thought no one would be home when she took you there today. I’m sorry you had to see all that.”

“Does Mom know?” she asked.

“Yeah, and she understands,” he said pointedly. “She knows Eleanor loves me and I love her.”

“But what about her kids? They were dirty, and her mother was smoking while she was taking care of them. I mean—” she paused and swallowed hard “—is this the kind of woman you really want to marry? Someone who cares so little about her family? Think about how Dad—”

He cut her off midsentence by hitting his fist on the wheel. Houston had had about all he could take from what he suddenly saw as a meddling little sister.

“Don’t imply she’s not good enough, Dallas. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Now just get out, okay?”

She was brokenhearted as she slowly climbed out of his car and went into the house. Her hero had fallen off his pedestal.

The next morning, she asked her mom all about it, and LouAnn confirmed her worst fears. It was all true. But Dallas wasn’t going to give up that easily. She’d always thought her mom was far too easy with Houston, trying to make up for the fact that she had depended on him to take their father’s place for so much of his life.

“He’s happy and that’s all that matters,” LouAnn said.

“But he won’t be for long. He just likes the attention right now. She’s older. That’s all it is,” Dallas reasoned. “You have to know that. Even I know that.”

“That’s enough,” LouAnn snapped, stopping the conversation cold. She’d walked out of the room, leaving Dallas alone with her worry.

Over the next few weeks, Dallas continued to try in vain to save her precious brother. Her tears and pleas fell on blind eyes and deaf ears. Until one day it reached the boiling point.

“Dallas, you have to stop this,” LouAnn shouted.

“Please, don’t let him ruin his life like this,” she begged through tears. It was just after Houston had graduated from Alabama. He was standing in the hallway, LouAnn in the kitchen with Dallas.

“I’ve had enough of this. I can’t be around her anymore. She’s messing up my life. She’s calling Eleanor at home and asking her to leave me alone,” Houston shouted. He walked into the kitchen and faced his mother. “Get her away from me or you won’t see me anymore.”

One threat to LouAnn and that’s all it took. She’d already lost one man in her life, and she was not going to let that happen twice.

“That’s it, Dallas,” her mother said, turning to look at her. “You’ve been nothing but selfish. Look around! Because of you, my family is falling apart all over again. I will not let you drive my son out of my life. You’re going to live with your father. Pack your things right now.”

“What? No, Mom, please,” Dallas begged. “Please, don’t send me away. Look, I’m sorry. I just love Houston and I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. But...just give me another chance. I promise I won’t say anything else.” Dallas was overwhelmed, hysterical that her mother could really do something like this, that she would lose her home and her mother along with her brother.

“No, I’m sorry, that’s it,” LouAnn said, sitting down in a chair at the kitchen table. She looked older, suddenly. Worn out. Exhausted. And done with Dallas. “I can’t take this anymore. I just can’t...I’m callin’ your daddy. I’m sorry,” LouAnn said, head in her hands.

Houston went storming out the front door and jumped in his car. Dallas cried as she packed, as she heard her mother on the phone with her father. On the drive over, her mother looked like a different person. Like the shell of the mother she’d grown up knowing.

At her father’s that night, she cried herself to sleep and skipped school the next day. Her eyes nearly swollen shut from tears, she began writing what would be the first of many letters to her brother over the next year. She wouldn’t be able to go back to school for several days. Her world had collapsed, snatched away from her by the very people she’d trusted the most, and she couldn’t do a thing about it. She thought of running away, but in the end, she developed a coping mechanism. If the people she loved could be so cold and cruel, then so could she. And the armor and the firewalls began to take shape.

She never even knew what became of her brother after all that. She thought he might still be in Alabama somewhere, but she hadn’t seen him or looked for him. And he had never tried to contact her.

She took in a deep breath and turned off the water, exhausted from reliving the memories she’d buried so deep and tried to forget. Wilhelmina was sitting at her water dish in the bathroom.

“I do love you, little girl,” she said as she reached down to pet her. After drying off, she and Wilhelmina crawled into bed.

Dallas tossed and thrashed all night. Every time she closed her eyes, she remembered one by one the things she’d faced today: the realization that, with Christmas only two and a half weeks away, they’d be announcing the anchor job and, with it, the fate of her career. That she’d been ordered to direct a children’s play when she knew nothing about directing or children. That she’d be stuck working closely with Cal until the play was over—a man who she managed to both despise and be drawn to at the same time. And then, worst of all, the mother who had abandoned her so long ago, who had chosen one of her children over the other, had decided she wanted to be in touch. It was all too much for one day, for one person, and Dallas couldn’t bring herself to face it.

The best thing she could do was to shove it all down as she had been doing for years. She would have to hold herself together just a little longer to get through Christmas. She exhaled and closed her eyes.

Wilhelmina curled up next to her, purring as she snuggled. Dallas tried to rest and fall sleep, but it was almost impossible to turn her mind off.

How much longer could this coping mechanism work?