Born Under The Lone Star. Darlene Graham
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never going to, Margaret.” Her mother seemed suddenly sincere. “As far as I’m concerned, the whole incident is in the past. I would think you would be glad to have all that in the past, too. Why do you want to stir up trouble now, when your sister’s life has been practically destroyed? You should never have taken that diary out of the box.”
Markie sensed a subterfuge behind Marynell’s persistent blaming. Turning things on the other person was the same old trick her mother always used to defend her actions, no matter how indefensible. What had she done now? Perhaps she had, in fact, told someone else about the baby. Or perhaps for some reason the incident was not really in the past as Marynell claimed.
“If it’s all in the past, why didn’t you simply destroy that diary?”
Marynell’s face grew slightly flushed, the same way it had when she was up on the ladder. “You always insist on twisting the most innocent things,” she hissed. “You do it in order to cast me in a bad light. If you must know the truth,” she sniffed, “I simply forgot all about the silly thing. I didn’t even know it was in that box with that other stuff. P.J. keeps so much old junk up there, anyway.” Her eyes shifted sideways. “I intend to give him a good talking to about that room. That’s nothing but a firetrap up there.”
Markie studied her mother with growing suspicion. “Why were you so anxious to get the diary back from me a while ago?”
“I told you, I don’t see that there’s any reason for you to relive your past mistakes. And I certainly didn’t see any reason for Robbie to have to know what happened. I hope to goodness you haven’t upset her. Where is she?”
Another deflection.
But Marynell’s games didn’t matter now. What mattered now was Brandon. Now that Marynell knew Markie had given her baby up for adoption, what would happen when Brandon Smith showed up in Five Points? Markie wondered if she should put a stop to that plan immediately. But how could she? The sound of Brandon’s voice letting out a yee-haw when she told him he’d been chosen for the internship rang in her ears. How could she possibly disappoint a young man who had worked so hard for this opportunity?
“Markie,” Marynell snapped, “I said, where is Robbie?”
“Upstairs. Packing her stuff.” Markie turned away from her mother and started to cram her own things into a tote.
“Oh, this is just plain ridiculous. Robbie has no business going back out to that farm in her condition after the shock she’s had.” Marynell strode back to the sink, picked up another potato and started peeling it as if the matter were decided. “You are making a mountain out a molehill, Margaret, same as you always do.” She spoke with her back to Markie, dismissing her. “Getting in a snit about something that doesn’t matter anymore.”
But the way Marynell was attacking that potato told Markie that the diary, for some reason, did matter. It mattered very much. She quietly moved to the counter and gave Marynell’s profile a wary once-over, wondering with increasing ire why had the woman kept that diary all this time?
Marynell continued to hack at the potato without looking at Markie, but when she said, “What did you do with it, by the way?” Markie’s suspicions were confirmed.
“The diary?”
“Of course, the diary,” Marynell’s voice became suddenly shrill as she turned on Markie. “What on earth have we been talking about here?”
“What does it matter what I did with it?” Despite herself, the volume of Markie’s voice rose to match her mother’s. “The incident’s in the past, remember?”
“You think this is all about you, don’t you?” Marynell yelled, and tossed the unfinished potato into the pan with the others. “For your information, your sister is in an extremely vulnerable position right now and I am trying to protect her.” Clearly flustered, she pawed in the sink for another potato.
Marynell had claimed the same about Markie upstairs earlier—that she was only trying to protect her. The woman, Markie thought with a healthy dose of skepticism, had become a regular Mother Teresa. “What has my diary got to do with protecting Robbie?”
Marynell whirled to face her daughter again, this time with a hard, meaningful stare, as if she held a gun and was tempted to pull the trigger. “All right, then. If it’s the only way to make you give up that diary, then I’ll tell you, you little—” Before Marynell could spit out whatever was stuck in her craw, from the mud porch attached to the kitchen a familiar Texas twang sang out, “What in tarnation is all this racket?”
Markie and Marynell both started at each other, slapped into an uneasy silence by the sound of P. J. McBride’s voice. In the heat of their exchange, they hadn’t heard the screen door open. Or close. Markie wondered how much her father had heard.
His slender, benign face appeared around the doorjamb. “I could hear you hens squawkin’ all the way down to the barn.” P.J. grinned as he awkwardly pulled off a knee-high mud boot, hopping on one foot to keep his balance.
“Oh, shut up!” Marynell snapped. “And stop slopping mud everywhere!”
“Mom,” Markie chastised. Suddenly it occurred to her that she never called her mother Mom except when her father was being attacked like this.
“Well, honestly,” Marynell huffed, “I can’t stand it when he goes around talking in that hick way. It’s so affected.”
“Mom!” Markie scolded again. “Hi, Daddy.” She stepped into the mudroom and gave P.J. a quick, conciliatory hug and a kiss on the cheek. “How’s that low-water bridge looking?”
“Terrible. Still running high. Almost too high to drive across. What’s going on in here?” His tone was more serious now, though he demonstrated his usual wry perspective. “Or am I already sorry I asked?”
“It was nothing,” Markie explained while her mother presented her back to the two of them.
P.J. shrugged and removed his other boot. Markie went back to packing up at the table while the room grew so painfully quiet that the tick of the grandfather clock that had been passed down on Marynell’s side could be heard from the living room.
“Heard a real interesting rumor in town today.” P.J. spoke as if he were offering the distraction of a cookie to a couple of quarreling toddlers. He stepped into the kitchen and smiled. It broke Markie’s heart the way he always strived for normality.
When neither woman responded to the comment, P.J. tried again. “Robbie’s gonna have a new neighbor. Justin Kilgore’s taking over a big hunk of the Kilgore Ranch, moving into the old mansion.”
Markie’s eyes went wide. Her head snapped up to see her mother returning her stare with similar shock. But Marynell’s expression quickly congealed into a mask of fury. “Now, that is interesting.” Her voice dripped sarcasm as her gaze bored into Markie’s.
P.J. seemed oblivious to the undercurrent between the two women. He had gone to the refrigerator and retrieved a pitcher of iced tea. “Rumor is he’s decided to restore the old ranch house. Got some kind of project going with the Mexicans. I always liked that old house—solid limestone. And I always liked Justin.”
Her father turned and gave Markie a bright look as if something had just occurred to him. “As I recall, you and him was pretty good buddies that summer back when you was volunteering on his father’s campaign.”
“I—” Markie started but found she couldn’t speak.
She swallowed against a thickening in her throat that threatened to choke her. She could feel her cheeks beginning to burn and was relieved when her mother turned her back to them again and resumed working on the potatoes with a renewed vengeance.
Justin was coming to Five Points? To live? Right next door to Robbie? This was impossible, the cruelest blow fate could render. What kind of wormhole of fate had she been sucked into? If she hadn’t promised her sister she would stay until the baby came,