The Widows of Wichita County. Jodi Thomas

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      Anna huddled on the first step of the porch and watched the flames dance in the smoke as every hand on the ranch rushed to the fire. She did not need an answer to her question. She knew Davis must be there, somewhere in that smoke. Somewhere near the fire.

      In her mind she painted the scene, closing her thoughts away to the tragedy unfolding before her eyes.

      10:24 a.m.

       Clifton Creek Courthouse

      Helena Whitworth stared out the second-floor window of the Clifton Creek courthouse conference room, watching the Texas wind chase autumn into winter. She had seen pictures of places in New England where fall blanketed the landscape with brilliant hues and piled color in vibrant heaps like haystacks on an artist’s palette. But here, as the leaves began to turn, gusts ripped them from their branches and sent them northeast toward Oklahoma before the metamorphosis of color was given a chance to brighten the gray landscape.

      Clifton Creek was rich in oil and cattle and sunny days, but sometimes, when the scattered patches of green dulled to brown, she felt washed out all the way to her soul.

      The town of six thousand reminded her of a mesquite tree spreading out over the dry land, offering little in comfort or beauty. Even the streets were drawn out like points on a compass, north to south, east to west. No curves, no variance and no tolerance for change. She had lived here all her life, sixty-three years so far, and she always dreaded autumn.

      Slowly, Helena straightened bony shoulders beneath her tailored suit and faced the rest of the city council members. “Gentlemen, it may be years, maybe even beyond our lifetimes, before we see the importance of building even a few small parks. But, mark my words, we will see it.”

      Not one man dared argue. They could have been made of the same mahogany as the bookshelves lining three of the walls. To say Helena Whitworth was a thorn in their sides was as understated as calling skin cancer a blemish.

      “J.D. and I talked it over.” She softened her blow by including her husband so the members would not look on her idea as simply a woman’s way of thinking. “And we’ve come up with a plan….”

      “Mrs. Whitworth,” a plump woman, with a hair bun the size of a cow patty, whispered from the open doorway, “I hate to interrupt, but you have a call.”

      “Not now, Mary. Please take a message.” Helena unfolded a chart, dismissing her assistant without another glance.

      “No, Helena.” Determination hardened Mary’s normally soft voice. “It’s the hospital. Something about J.D.”

      Helena placed the chart on the huge table, moved through the doorway and into the reception room before Mary’s voice settled in the air. In the almost forty years she had been in Helena’s employment, Mary had called her boss by her first name only twice.

      As Mary handed Helena the phone, the two women’s stares locked. The men in the adjacent room would have been surprised at the sympathy in the secretary’s gaze and at the fear in Helena’s.

      “Hello?” She hugged the receiver with both hands. “Yes, this is Mrs. Whitworth.”

      A long pause followed. No questions. No denial of information. No cries. “I understand.” She forced her voice to steady. Years in business served her well. Emotions were a luxury she could not afford to wear. “I’ll be right there.”

      Helena’s shoulders were rod straight now, as if her jacket were still on the hanger. Her voice brittled with forced calmness, for she knew full well the men labored to listen from just beyond the door. They couldn’t see her grip Mary’s hand. They heard no cry as her lips whitened with strain.

      “There’s been an accident on the oil rig J.D. and Shelby Howard are investing in. The nurse said five men were badly burned. Some died before the crew got them to the hospital.”

      “Five?”

      Helena nodded once.

      “J.D.?” Mary whispered.

      “One man’s burned too badly to identify, but he’s still alive.” Helena shook her head. “The odds are not with us.”

      Mary cried in tiny little gulps that sounded like hic-cups. Helena opened her arms to her employee, her friend. Helena had buried two husbands already. Mary had sobbed each time. But, for Helena, there was too much to do, too much to think about for tears.

      She handed Mary a tissue. “Would you go to my house and tell the girls, when they arrive, to stay put until I get back to you? I know as soon as they hear, they’ll come by, and I don’t want them laying siege on the hospital with all their children in tow. Tell them I need them at my house to answer calls. I’ll phone as soon as I know something.”

      “They love J.D. like he’s their father,” Mary lied, as always, trying to be kind.

      Helena pulled her keys from her purse and smiled, thinking J.D. hated her forty-year-old twin daughters only slightly less than he hated bird poachers. If he were burned and near death, Paula and Patricia were the last two he would want at his bedside.

      “He’s got to be the one alive,” Mary mumbled and blew her nose. “He didn’t survive thirty years in the Marines to come home and die in an accident. Three Purple Hearts prove he’s too tough for that.”

      “Before you go, inform the men inside that the meeting is over.” Without another word, Helena turned and marched down the hallway, her steps echoing like a steady heartbeat off the drab walls lined with colorless pictures and maps.

      She was not a woman to make a charade of being dainty or falsely feminine, but she would not wear grief lightly for a third time in her life.

      “Be alive,” she ordered in more than a whisper. “Be alive when I get there.”

      She hurried through the deserted courthouse. The alarm bell from years past hung in a glass case reserved for memorabilia. “Not today,” Helena said as she remembered her childhood during the oil boom. “I’ll hear no bell today. Not for my J.D.”

      10:37 a.m.

       Clifton Creek Elementary

      In a town marinated in secrets, hinted at but never told, Meredith Allen played Alice, innocently lost in Wonderland. At thirty-four, she still wore her hair long with a ribbon and faced life as if all she saw made sense.

      Her path would not have been so tragic if she had wandered blind, but she knew…she knew and she still pretended.

      When pulled from the refuge of teaching her second-grade class to report to the office, Meredith saw a lie in the principal’s eyes. Something he refused to say. Something he could not reveal as he told her she was needed at the hospital. Kevin had been involved in an oil rig accident.

      She asked no questions as they walked back to her classroom, brightly decorated in a papier-mâché autumn. Principal Pickett offered to read the students a story while Meredith gathered her things and organized her desk, putting markers in order and papers in line. She was in no hurry. The lie in what he had not said could wait.

      Meredith compiled lies, organizing them, ranking each, but never confronting any. Her father had been the first master of the craft. Her first memories of Christmas echoed СКАЧАТЬ