time?'
'Well, either way, it's time I moved on. I don't want to grow old and die here, still thinking about what might have been if I'd only been brave enough to go take a look.'
Crystal knelt beside Randi, taking both her hands. 'You can't leave, Randi. Shelby says Jimmy is doing real well. He'll be in charge of all the drilling soon. You know Jimmy's crazy about you, girl.'
Randi shook her head. 'I swore nothing would stop me from leaving this time. I'm aging by the hour in this town.' She glanced at the machines, hoping one said Coors across the top. 'Jimmy loves me, I guess, but that ain't enough. No one in this place seems to understand… life here is sucking the marrow from my bones.' She closed her eyes, fighting back tears. 'God, I hope he's dead.'
Silence crystallized, as though speaking her thoughts had somehow made it possible. The four other women in the room forgot to breathe.
Randi opened her eyes. 'If he isn't, I won't be able to leave him hurt and burned,' she mumbled, more to herself than anyone. She was not a woman who thought of apologizing for anything she said. 'And I won't survive much longer here, just sitting on the porch waiting for sundown.'
She raised her head, knowing her words were cruel, but realizing they were true. 'If Jimmy's alive, this accident just signed my death warrant.'
Anna Montano sat quietly at the table, watching the women before her. The rain rattling on the roof provided background music to her thoughts. In Italy, women in crisis would be crying and wanting the family close. A priest might be sitting with them, and their hands would hold prayer beads. In Italy, worry and grieving were emotional passings, shared with family. But these Americans only talked and waited. Unlike Anna, they had not seen the fire and the smoke filling the sky above the oil rig. They still held hope close to their breasts.
She closed her eyes and tried to forget what she had seen this morning. Black smoke rising, polluting the morning sky with tragedy's omen. The ranch hands, hurrying to the scene, would not allow her to come with them. But when the first ambulance had left the ranch, Anna followed in her car. She knew her brother Carlo would be upset that she had not told him she was leaving. He considered watching over her part of being Davis's foreman. But today she had not cared and, besides, he had all he could handle putting out the fire.
She could have waited at home. She knew the news would only be bad. But for once, Anna had not wanted to be in her private world at the ranch. Now, curling into herself in the uncomfortable plastic chair, she realized that for the first time in a long while, she did not want to be alone.
Loneliness was nothing new to her. She rode alone each morning, helping to train the horses. Since childhood, horses were as much a part of her life as family, sometimes more so. She worked alone in her small studio and, more often than not, ate alone both noon and evening while Davis and Carlo went somewhere on ranch business.
Anna thought of herself as no more than a bird in a cage filled with toys. One day someone would leave the door open. The only question haunting her thoughts was would she be brave enough to fly away?
She and Davis had run out of anything to say to one another after their first anniversary, when she still was not pregnant. If it had not been for her love of horses and his love of the money they brought, he probably would never have spoken to her at all. But, from time to time, he needed her advice. He needed her skill. Carlo might know horses, but Anna had an instinct about them. Over these past five years Davis Montano had learned to trust that instinct even though he valued little else about her.
Davis was not unkind. He was never unkind. But, she realized after the first year that he had married her to breed children, and she had failed him. Honor and duty were words that described her marriage, not love.
To her surprise, no tears came as she faced the possibility of his death. She married Davis the week after she had turned twenty-one, and they had been little more than strangers. For her, he provided an escape from an overprotected life in Italy. She arrived in Texas with her big brother, who was hired as foreman. Between Carlo and Davis, Anna found littlr freedom in the land of the free. Even the trips she had taken with her mother to hear the great symphonies of Europe were now gone.
'Would you like a soda, dear?' The older woman broke into Anna's thoughts.
'N-no, thank you.' Anna liked Helena Whitworth. She wore honesty like a tailor-made garment.
'I could use a beer,' Randi grumbled. 'How long are they going to keep us waiting?' She and Crystal had been talking about the days when they had spent most of their nights boot scooting at Frankie's. 'Surely this place has a happy hour.' Randi laughed to herself and began another story that started as the others had, 'Remember that night at the bar…'
Anna knew little of such a life, but from the way they talked, their times were more sad than happy. Out of habit, Anna began logging in new words as the women talked. She had learned both English and French before she left for boarding school, but it was the words that were not in the dictionary that fascinated her most. Randi's vocabulary was richly painted in bold strokes.
'M-maybe you would rather be with your f-family?' Anna suggested when Randi and Crystal finally ran out of stories.
Randi shook her red hair. 'I don't have none to speak of. My mother ran off with a salesman from the farm and ranch show at the Tri-State Fair the year I was three. My father hasn't called me since last Christmas.' She laughed to herself. 'He'd probably call on my birthday, if he could remember it. I'm sure he misses kicking the shit out of me every time he gets drunk. The bastard was meaner than the devil's brother and so dumb I'm surprised his sperm knew how to swim. With a father like him, you got nothin' to do but pray you're adopted.'
'I'm pretty much the same,' Crystal added. 'My stepdad booted me out when I was sixteen and told me not to ever bother knocking on their door again. Mom had to sneak me out a bag of my clothes after dark. She gave me forty bucks and wished me well in this life before telling me not to bother calling to ask for money or anything.'
Crystal rubbed her hand along her workout suit, smoothing away memories with the wrinkles. 'I only have my Shelby. Sometimes, when he's busy doing something, he'll give me forty dollars and tell me to get lost, but before I can leave the room he always laughs and says I'd better not be gone long.' Tears tumbled down a face long free of makeup. 'His two grown children hate me, though. If he's dead, I'll be lucky to get my clothes out of the house, even in paper bags, before they bar me from the property. Shelby's all I have. All I've ever had.'
'You're not in Shelby's will?' Randi pulled the tab on her diet drink.
'I mentioned it once, and Shelby said his son told him that's the reason I married him, to get all his money. I guess Shelby wanted to prove them wrong, 'cause he never changed the will and he kept all of Howard Drilling out of community property. I never asked him about it again.'
'You poor thing.' Randi draped her long arm around Crystal's shoulder and squeezed. The gesture offered more discomfort than sympathy, but neither woman noticed. 'I always figured when you hooked up with him, it was your lucky day.'
'I do love him,' Crystal cried. 'No one understands, but I do. I'd love him if he didn't have the money or the big house. I can't think about what it would be like without Shelby.'
Helena lowered herself into the chair next to Anna, directly across from Crystal. 'We know you love him.' The older woman patted Crystal's arm. 'J.D. told me many a time that you must love Shelby to put up with his drinking and pranks.'
Anna thought Crystal suddenly looked far younger than her years as the tears ran down her face. She and Randi had to be close to thirty, but Anna felt a lifetime older. They might have lines forming around their eyes, but Anna felt like she had them on her heart. Maybe people who never got involved in life aged faster on the inside. Anna felt sorry for Crystal, the kind of blind love she had for Shelby seemed far sadder than the cold, routine love she had for Davis.
'Shelby isn't so bad.' Crystal sniffed. 'Oh, he gets crazy and makes me do things that embarrass me something terrible in front of his drinking buddies. But then he says he's sorry and can't live without me. He's always buying me stuff after he hurts my feelings.'
'Jewelry?' Randi leaned closer, looking genuinely interested in her friend's whining. The lines on Randi's face reflected years of answering to last call.
