A Texas Rescue Christmas. Caro Carson
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waiting on the weather forecast for Austin. They won’t let us take off if the destination airport is going to close due to ice and snow.”
Becky looked out the window at the snow-covered Boston airport. “It snows every day.”
“Yes, but it’s unusual in Texas.” The flight attendant tapped her wristwatch in a cheerful, apologetic manner. “They’ll update the airport status on the hour, and then we’ll know if we’re cleared for take-off. Don’t worry, Miss Cargill, we’ve got agents standing by to help you make alternate transportation arrangements if the flight is cancelled. You’ll have first priority, of course. We’ll get you home for the holidays.”
Of course, since her last name was Cargill, the flight attendant had assumed Texas was home. Becky simply smiled, a display of pink lip-glossed sweetness, and the attendant moved on to the businessman in the next row, tapping her wristwatch, repeating her apology.
Becky dabbed at her upper lip with her napkin, mortified at the nervous sweat she couldn’t control. She could feel a single bead of moisture rolling slowly down her chest, between her breasts, but, of course, she would not dab there.
Mother must have noticed my absence by now. She’ll call the airport, and I’ll be taken right off the plane, like a child. They won’t card me first, not when she calls and says her daughter is on the plane without her permission.
Miraculously, the pilot came over the speakers and announced that they were going to take off. Becky’s stomach went from fearful nausea to desperately hopeful butterflies. Within minutes, they began taxiing down the runway. She was leaving Boston, and her mother, and the horrible man to whom Becky was expected to sacrifice her virginity.
The pilot’s voice was female, and somehow, that made Becky feel better. The only person Becky knew who could possibly defend her against Hector Ferrique was also a female, and a female pilot was going to get her there safely in an ice storm. With any luck at all, the snow and ice would arrive immediately after they landed, and it would become impossible for her mother to chase her down.
The plane lifted off. Becky had gotten away. Now, she needed to stay away. Even if the Austin airport closed after Becky arrived, her mother could and would find her and drag her back, unless Becky could find someone strong enough to stand up to her. There was only one person in her life who’d ever seemed stronger than Mother, and that was Daddy Cargill’s real daughter, Patricia.
The year that Becky was nine, the year that her mother had married Daddy Cargill, was the year that Becky had worshipped her new stepsister, Patricia. Eight years older than she, Patricia had swept home from boarding school on weekends and vacations to keep Becky’s mother in check. Heavens, she’d kept her own father in check. Becky had watched in wide-eyed wonder as Patricia had plucked the key to the innermost vault of the wine cellar right out of Mother’s hand. I do think there are plenty of other vintages for you to enjoy. Let’s save the Cote de Nuits for an appropriate occasion, shall we?
Then Patricia had given Becky a whole can of Dr Pepper and let her drink it in her bedroom. Sitting at Patricia’s tri-fold vanity mirror, Becky had played with real, red lipstick.
The divorce was inevitable between their parents, of course, and one day, while Patricia was away at her boarding school, Becky and her mother had moved out. Becky had cried and said she wanted to be a Cargill. Her mother had agreed that keeping the name would be wise, which wasn’t what Becky had meant at all.
This morning, as Becky’s mother had announced that Hector Ferrique would be coming to visit his own beach house, the newspaper had announced that Patricia Cargill was getting married in Austin.
Becky had seized on those lines of newsprint, using them as her excuse to get to the airport. How easy to finally use that Cargill name, the one she’d been borrowing since fourth grade, to change the chauffeur’s schedule. “No, my flight leaves this morning. Mother’s will be later this afternoon. My sister, Patricia Cargill, is getting married in Austin this weekend. I’ll be at the wedding while Mother and Hector are in Bimini. No, just the three blue bags are mine. The rest are Mother’s. Thank you.”
Becky was hoping the Cargill name would let her crash a wedding she hadn’t been invited to. If her mother came to drag her away, Becky hoped the bride would kick her former stepmother out of the reception—but let her former stepsister stay. Indefinitely. As plans went, it was weak, but it was all a pure and virginal and obedient person like herself had been able to come up with on a moment’s notice.
Please, Patricia, don’t kick me out. I’m still just little Becky Cargill, and I’ve got nowhere else to go.
Becky peered through the gray haze of winter weather at the endless county road. She spotted another gate for a ranch up ahead. Two posts and a crossbeam in the air, that was the standard ranch entrance in Texas. She’d already turned her rental car into two properties that weren’t the James Hill Ranch. At the first, she’d gotten flustered and made the tiny car’s engine produce horrid sounds as she put it in Reverse. After she’d driven through the second wrong gate, which had clearly been labeled the River Mack Ranch, making her feel like an idiot, she’d tried to make a U-turn to avoid the reverse gear. The U-turn had worked, but all her belongings had been thrown around as the car bounced over rough ground before making it back onto the road.
Becky could make out a letter J on the fence beside the upcoming gate. If the J stood for James, then she hadn’t gotten lost after all, although the clunky GPS system, emblazoned with the rental car company’s logo and bolted onto the car’s dash, had gone silent many miles ago. She was officially out in the middle of nowhere on a two-lane road that had no name, only numerical digits the GPS voice had rattled off before losing its satellite connection.
Her phone, however, still had a signal. It rang again, shrill after being jarred out of the leather purse Becky had stuffed it in. Her mother was calling. She should answer.
Becky gripped the steering wheel. She couldn’t answer the phone. She rarely drove anywhere, and she’d never driven this kind of car, so she had to concentrate. Snow had been falling, rare enough in December, apparently, to make it the sole topic of conversation in the Austin airport. The snow was beginning to look more wet, like sleet.
She would not panic. She’d just keep two hands on the wheel, and she would not answer the phone. I’m twenty-four years old. I can drive a car in bad weather.
She hadn’t wanted to. At the airport, her request for a taxi to the James Hill Ranch had been met with so many chuckles and “you’re not from around here, are you?” responses, she’d given up and gotten in line for the first rental car desk she saw.
Too late, she realized that her mother would be able to use the credit card transaction to find her. Becky had never seen a credit card bill, but she knew her mother could check it, somehow, almost immediately. She hadn’t dared to use her credit card without permission since she was twenty-one. That year, her mother had placed her in a ski school in Aspen with teenagers who belonged to the Right Kind of Families. When her fellow students had learned Becky was actually of legal drinking age, they’d convinced her to buy the booze to go with their energy drinks. The next morning, her mother had asked her to produce the liter of vodka that she’d purchased in town at precisely 8:19 p.m. the evening before. Becky had been confined to her hotel room the rest of the trip—and she’d learned a valuable lesson about credit cards.
The phone rang once more. Her mother had probably tracked her credit card already. Why did you rent such a low-budget car? Look at you, arriving at the Cargills in a rental car like a poor relation. You could have at least taken a limo, for God’s sake.
Becky hadn’t gone to Daddy Cargill’s mansion. She read more sections of the newspaper than her mother did. Outside of the society pages, there’d been a featured real estate listing for the infamous mansion. Photos of the outrageously tacky décor had accompanied the article. Patricia no longer lived there,