through the storm the first few hours after the explosion, before they knew who he was.'
The man's low voice grew closer. 'Now he has next of kin. It's Crystal's choice, and she's not likely to forget his ravings every time he got drunk and talked about never being taken out of the county to die. He used to swear the big city hospital killed Mom. Too bad they couldn't do the same for him.'
'Stop talking about him, Trent. He might hear you,' a woman's sharp tones answered. 'The hospital is doing what they can. They've turned this room into an ICU, and equipment from the city is coming in by the hour. He's got as much chance here as anywhere. Stop talking about Daddy as though he's already left us.'
'He can't hear. Hell, he wouldn't even be breathing if it wasn't for this machine. All I'd have to do is reach up and…'
'Stop it, Trent! You don't have the guts to kill him.'
'Or the need. What the rig explosion didn't do, the old man's stubbornness about being transferred to a real hospital will. He may have blamed the Dallas hospital for killing Mom, but I'll be able to thank this little place for not having the ability to keep him alive. In a few hours, I'll be running Howard Drilling. Even if he lives, he'll be a vegetable, and I'll take over.'
The woman's tone was cruel. 'And our dear little tramp of a stepmother will be back to waiting tables where shc belongs. I'd feel sorry for her if I thought Daddy ever loved her. But she was just his toy. I'll always believe he married her just to irritate you.'
'He did a good job of that.'
The woman laughed. 'Wait till you see what I brought her as a change of clothing. I find it hard to believe she had the guts to even ask me to do such a thing. She hugged me as if she could comfort me and asked if I'd do her a great favor. She even said it didn't matter what I brought, she just needed a change because she wasn't leaving the hospital until Daddy did.'
'All she'll have left is guts as soon as the old man dies.' Trent laughed.
A door opened. The conversation ended. He drifted with the pain for a while before he heard someone crying again.
'Don't die, darling,' the soft Southern voice whispered over and over. 'Please don't die.'
Her fingers pressed lightly over the bandages on his hand. She willed him to live with a determination stronger than his need to die. Whoever she was, she wasn't giving up. She wasn't letting go.
Through the pain he realized he didn't want her to give up on him. She was the only hope he felt he had ever known.
Sleepy little farming towns flooded overnight with thousands of oil field workers, teamsters and speculators. Gambling houses, saloons and shacks called parlors offered entertainment for a price. Small-town sheriffs from Borger to Port Arthur called in the Texas Rangers to help maintain a modicum of control. When the boom died, the local law stood alone as the towns drifted back to sleep.
The bartender leaned as far over the bar as his huge belly would allow and whispered, 'We're closing, Randi, you want another one?'
Randi Howard stacked her last shot glass beside the others and shook her head. 'Can't seem to drink enough to feel it tonight, Frankie.'
The old boxer behind the bar nodded. 'I've been there, kid, believe me.' He used two of the glasses she'd emptied to pour them each a shot of tequila. 'Jimmy was a good man and he'll be missed. Here's one to him.'
Randi didn't down the offered drink. She just nodded. 'He was a good man. Best damn husband I ever had.' She looked up at Frankie. 'He never beat me. Did you know that? Not once.'
Frankie moved down the bar to the next customer; sympathy and advice were doled out like whiskey, in short shots. He'd been a boxer and a biker before settling down to tending bar. Randi guessed he'd heard every hard luck story over the years, and hers was just one more.
She lifted the last drink to her lips. 'To you, Jimmy. I might not have been able to stand the boredom of living with you any longer, but I'm sure going to miss you now I know you're gone and I can't come running back.'
Blinking away a tear, she remembered how he once told her that she was a one-woman wrecking crew leaving broken hearts wherever she went. He always said things like that to her before they married. Afterward she swore sometimes he looked right through her. He worried more about his uncle Shelby's business than he ever did about her. If the accident hadn't happened, he probably wouldn't have noticed she was gone for at least a week or two.
Randi closed her eyes wishing she could write the kind of sadness that settled in between them into a song. But singers don't sing about love dying by inches or how it feels when there is nothing to feel anymore. None of the sad country songs she knew could ever make her hurt as badly as watching Jimmy slowly stop caring.
She hadn't lost him in an oil fire. She'd lost him a fraction at a time…the day he stopped calling her name when he entered their trailer… the first morning he forgot to kiss her goodbye… the night he rolled away even though he knew she wanted to make love. She hadn't known how to say goodbye then. She wasn't sure she knew how to say goodbye now.
Maybe she should have had a farewell song ready the day she married. Then, every time something cut off a piece of her heart she could have turned up the volume a notch. Eventually, he would have heard it and then her leaving wouldn't be a surprise.
The only thing she could think to do now was to stick with the plan she'd come up with less then twenty-four hours ago. She felt like she'd wasted most of her life trying to figure out what to do. She had been leaving him, heading to Nashville to give herself a chance at a dream she'd had al i her life. She would just pretend Jimmy was back here waiting for her. That he still cared. It shouldn't be much of stretch really, she'd been pretending someone cared about her most of her life. Pretending was easier than believing. Believing could get her hurt, but pretending could go on forever. But now that she had finally decided on a direction, she would cut and run.
'It's time to face the champ!' Frankie yelled from the end of the bar as he raised his fist and tapped the set of boxing gloves hanging above his head.
A young cowhand a few stools down leaned toward Randi. Long past drunk, he smelled of smoke. 'What's he talking about, ma'am?'
Randi smiled, wondering how many times she'd explained Frankie's last call. 'It's time to face the champ. When anyone says that to a fighter, you can bet it is your last round for the night.'
The drunk nodded as if he understood.
Randi lifted her purse along with his hat off the empty stool between them. 'Come on, cowboy. I'll walk you to your pickup.'
'How'd you know what I drove?' he said as she turned him toward the door.
'Lucky guess.'
'Can you drive home, Meredith?' Sheriff Farrington knelt beside the open Mustang door as he helped Meredith Allen into her car.
She worked summers and holidays at the county clerk's office just down the hall from his office, but she could never remember him using her name. Funny, when you are a schoolteacher in a small town everyone calls you by your last name. First students, then their parents. Even the other teachers in the building referred to one another as Misses or Misters. Slowly, the town knows you that way.
Meredith knew what people thought of her. When she had been in school, she had been a 'good girl,' the type boys remembered to open doors for. She figured she would grow into middle age and become a 'fine woman.' Then her hair would turn from auburn to light blue and she would take her place up front in church with all the other widows and become 'a sweet old dear.'
Only now she was already a widow, and not one hair of her curly mass had turned gray. Something had gone
