The Last Innocent Hour Read online

  Also by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  The Volunteer

  The Ninth Step

  THE LAST INNOCENT HOUR

  a novel

  by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  Copyright, 2001 By Barbara Taylor Sissel

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form

  Published by Panther Creek Press

  116 Tree Crest Circle

  P.O. Box 130233

  Panther Creek Station

  Spring, Texas 77393

  Cover photograph by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  Clock image courtesy of:

  Paul D. Phillips Company Antiques, Bryn Mawr, PA

  http://www.antiqueclocksandart.com/

  Cover design by Pamela Copus

  Sonic Media; Plano, Texas

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Printed and bound by Data Duplicators, Inc.,

  Houston, Texas

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Sissel, Barbara Taylor

  Last innocent hour, the

  I. Title II. Fiction

  ISBN 0-9678343-2 5

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright 2011 Barbara Taylor Sissel

  All rights reserved.

  Acknowledgements

  I am grateful to so many people for this miracle.

  First, to The Midwives, Wanda Dionne, Linda Helman, Betty Joffrion and Colleen Thompson, who tirelessly read and reread, and to my dear friend, Jo Merrill, for reading and listening. To Ruby Tolliver who was there at the beginning, and who has known Charlie nearly as long as I have. To Charles Lowrie and David Bumgardner for patiently answering my endless legal questions, and to Tom Martin, who helped me with some finer points of Texas law. And to my wonderful editor, mentor, and friend, Guida Jackson Laufer. Without her support and encouragement none of this would have ever happened.

  And for my sons Michael and David who read and listened and answered so many of my questions, and who continue to be a source of learning and delight.

  To each of you, thank you. You are the wind beneath my wings.

  Chapter One

  They reached town. Beth came out of her seat and rode now braced in the stairwell of the Greyhound bus, bent down, clinging to the pole to keep her balance, staring through the window. Seeing the landmarks, the familiar shapes of the shabby, antiquated buildings that verged on Main Street. Some of them were vacant. Nearly all of them had begun their lives as something else. She could name their evolutions. She’d grown up here, and she’d left this town. Tried ever since not to think of why. Maybe in her absence the old buildings had forgotten. But she hadn’t; she didn’t think she ever would.

  The bus stopped in the alley beside Hickham’s Hardware and Dry Goods Emporium. A grinning cowboy painted on the side of the brick building waved his huge hand in greeting. His white, ten gallon hat looked a little moth-eaten, and his red, western-style shirt was faded, but the big-lettered words: Howdy, Welcome to Wither Creek, Texas, printed in the cartoon cloud floating near his head, were still legible. When she’d lived here, Beth had thought the image was countrified and dumb. Now the sight was a comfort, a distraction from the worry that pressed heavily on her chest.

  The bus doors opened, and Maizie was there, framed in their expanse, her presence as big and solid and reassuring as Beth’s memory of her. Their eyes locked. Beth took a step down, and then froze, suddenly shot through with misgiving. What did Maizie see? What could she be thinking? Suppose she was angry at the way Beth had left with scarcely a glance back or a word of warning?

  But, no. Maizie came toward her, open-armed and murmuring, “Honey, I cain’t believe it’s you. Home at last.”

  And that was all the invitation Beth needed. She was a child again, and powerless to help it, and flinging herself into Maizie’s embrace, she snuggled there. Home. The word floated in her mind. Just the way Maizie said it flooded Beth with memories. Home was the wind in the pines, deep porch, and all her dolls lined up on the swing. Home was pails full of handpicked, ripe, juicy dewberries and wild Mustang grapes, and the smell of summer sun on Maizie’s dark brown skin.

  Huddled against her ample bosom, washed in a near-boneless wave of relief, Beth told herself she’d been right to come back. The farm would provide what they needed, a roof over their heads, time to think. They’d be safe here.

  Maizie held her close a moment longer, then setting her to one side, said, “This must be Miss Christabelle.” She bent toward the child who stood half-concealed behind Beth and laid her fingers carefully against Chrissy's cheek. That was Maizie's way. She’d always said children were like animals, frightened by sudden moves. She ought to know, Beth thought. She’d raised her share, including Beth and Beth’s own mama.

  Chrissy grew still under Maizie’s touch. She was almost four, but they’d moved around a lot, and Beth knew her response to strangers could be unpredictable. As often as not, she’d turn and cling to Beth, pressing her face into her mother’s hip. But Maizie worked her customary magic. Here came a dimpled smile, so like Charlie’s, her daddy’s, smile, and now, Chrissy raised her hand to touch Maizie's brown fingers with her own.

  Maizie chuckled. She was still looking at Chrissy when she addressed Beth. “Honey, ‘cept for that head full of curly hair an’ the fact that she’s got your great-grandmama’s name, this child don't take after you a'tall. Jus’ look at those green eyes.” She glanced up at Charlie who had joined them. “Sure not much Clayton blood showin’ in this one. She's her daddy's girl with those eyes.” Rising, she offered him her hand.

  “Beth’s told me a lot about you,” he said, but his greeting lacked his customary charm. He seemed stiff, out of sorts. But perhaps it was simply that he was worn out from the hours of traveling.

  “Well, I’m pleased to finally meet you. Beth has tol’ me some about you and Miss Chrissy, but I was beginning to think she was never going to bring her family home.”

  “If Beth has been talking about me, I guess there's no use me trying to make a good impression.”

  It was intended to be a joke, but when Charlie glanced at her, Beth saw his eyes were full of speculation, as if maybe he suspected her of complaining to Maizie about him and about the way they'd been living. She hadn’t, but she could have. She could have blamed him for the fact that they were here, but she hadn’t done that either.

  Saying he’d get the luggage, Charlie left Beth with Maizie. Chrissy trailed in his wake.

  Maizie said, “She's tired, bless her heart. It was a long trip, I guess.”

  “Yes.” Beth kept her eye on her husband and small daughter, and when they were out of earshot, she brought her glance back to Maizie’s. “Is he gone?” she asked. “Jason? Mama told me he was, otherwise you know I wouldn't have come.”

  Maizie didn’t answer.

  Beth’s heartbeat slowed, thickened. “Mama lied?”

  “She needs your help, honey.”

  “What? I can’t help her. After everything that happened, how can she think I would?”

  “Charlie don’t know, does he?”

  Beth shook her head as the scope of her error froze in her mind. Mama hardly ever told the truth; why had Beth believed her this time? But it wasn’t as if she could turn back. She and Charlie had spent the last of their money on the bus trip from Miami.

  “You got to tell him, honey.”

  Beth looked at her shoes, a pair of worn leather loafers covered in dust. “I can’t. Not now. I could never explain why I kept it fr
om him.” Even as she spoke, she wondered how she could have been so foolish.

  “He’s bound to find out.” Maizie echoed Beth’s frightened thought, but then she smiled and said, “Never you mind, we’ll sort it out,” and Beth was reassured.

  She started chattering about how that’s why she’d come, because she knew Maizie would help her. Maizie could fix anything. But something was happening to Maizie’s face. The color just drained from her broad cheeks leaving them ashen. Her eyes were wide and mostly white. She raised a hand to her throat.

  “Maizie?” Beth said. “What is it?” Anxiety tightened its grip on her stomach. She put a hand on Maizie’s shoulder, while the other flitted from Maizie's cheek to her brow. The old woman's chest heaved uncertainly. “Is it your heart again? Maizie?”

  She bent slightly at the waist and took several moments to answer. “I'm fine, child. Jus’ give me a minute.” The words wheezed on a thin current of air.

  “We need to get you to the hospital.” Beth looked around for Charlie.

  “No, no. C’mon now. It's your mama we got to be worrying about.” Maizie straightened. She opened the big pocketbook she carried, pulled out a freshly ironed, cotton hankie and mopped her face. “That Tinker's doing something, up to no good. He’s after her to give him the farm.”

  “Well, that’ a joke. Even stoned out of her mind, Mama wouldn't consider that. Would she?”

  Maizie tucked her hankie back into her purse without answering.

  “Why can't she just pack up his stuff and put him out? When I called her the other night, she said she’d filed for divorce; she said she’d even gotten a restraining order to keep him off the property.”

  “There's some things she'll have to tell you herself. It ain't my place, but I know he's been sayin' she can't handle her biz’ness on account of her drinkin', and she been tellin’ me she thinks she already done signed something 'bout the farm. But you know how it is, honey. That liquor really gets her head fuzzed up.”

  “Yes, but when I talked to her, she was sober. It was after six at night, and Mama was sober.”

  “That's right, honey, she was sober. And she has been now for near two days waiting for you and Mr. Charlie and that child a yours.”

  “Forty-eight whole hours.” Beth’s glance rose up over the cowboy’s grinning image, above his ten-gallon hat. Farther, until it topped the roofline of the building. The clouds had thickened since the bus had rolled into town. The air felt stagnant and slabby as old pond water.

  “She needs you, honey, for more reasons than you know. And from the look of you, you need her too.” Maizie nodded toward Charlie, who was coming toward them, now, with Chrissy hustling alongside him. Beth had packed everything they owned into the suitcase he carried in one hand and into either of the two boxes he had tucked, one under each arm.

  “Don't ’pear to me you come back with much more baggage than what you left with five years ago. An’ there’s three of you now. Or can we expect a movin' van at the farm?”

  Beth ducked her chin.

  “I didn’t think so.” Maizie brushed Beth's hair from her cheek. “You look plumb wore out, child, full of shadows.”

  “Don’t be nice to me, Maizie, or I’ll cry,” Beth said, although, truthfully, she almost never did.

  “Lean on me, honey,” Maizie murmured, pulling Beth Close. “Just you lean on me.”

  Chapter Two

  Maizie’s car, a vintage Buick, was parked at the end of the alley. Charlie came with the baggage, and she opened the trunk.

  He put their things inside and closed it, letting his hands rest a moment on the smooth metal curve of the lid. “This car is really something,” he said. “A real classic.”

  Beth was probably the only one who caught the edge of irritation in his voice. He wanted her glance, but she studied the car, too, as if she’d never seen it before.

  Maizie patted the fender, fondly. “Beth's granddaddy gave her to me. Bought it new in nineteen-fifty-eight. Kinda like a bonus. I’d been workin’ for the fam’ly awhile by then. Come there in nineteen-fifty, the year Beth’s mama was born.”

  “Buick, isn't it?”

  “Yessir. Buick Roadmaster. Biggest they made.” Maizie turned aside coughing into her hankie.

  Beth said, “You take better care of this old car than you do yourself. Have you had your heart checked lately? Or are you just dosing yourself up with--”

  “What I dose myself with done healed you up plenty a times, Missy.”

  Beth couldn’t deny it, but fear made her harsh.

  Charlie opened the car door. “Ready to go, Stinkerbelle?”

  “Don't call me Stinkerbelle, Daddy,” Chrissy said sternly as she climbed into the backseat.

  Maizie laughed and said, “Honey, you sound jus' like your mama used to.” She pointed her finger toward a stuffed lamb that had once been white, but was now a less-pristine shade of well-loved gray, tucked under Chrissy's elbow. “Who’s this? I b’lieve I might have seen him somewhere before.” She rolled her eyes at Beth.

  Chrissy held him up for Maizie's inspection. “He was Mommy's, then she got too big to take care of him, and now he's mine. His name’s Lamby. Mommy named him that.”

  “Well, it looks like he could use a new eye.”

  Chrissy put the tip of her finger into the empty socket. “His ear is almost off, too.”

  Maizie bent to take a closer look. “You know what? I've tended him a time or two when your mama had him. If you want, when we get home, we'll see about fixin' him up. How about it?”

  Chrissy nodded and scooted over to make room for her daddy. Beth settled in front.

  On their way through town, Beth pointed out the courthouse and the old Madison Avenue Theater next door.

  “I bet I saw every Disney movie ever made in there,” she said. “Nothing's changed.”

  Maizie said, “You know as well as me that movie theater's been shut down like most of the rest of downtown since before you graduated high school back in nineteen-eighty-eight, wasn’t it? And that been near seven years ago now.”

  “Oh, Maizie, don’t remind me,” Beth murmured. She didn’t want to think of the time that had passed. They entered the freeway, and she turned to look out the back window, watching the outskirts of Wither Creek disappear. “I used to think this place was such a no-account burg. Full of rednecks. Never anything going on. I couldn't wait to leave. Now it looks good to me.”

  Maizie said, “Well, there’s fixin’ to be a lot of changes. Been some developers out here, from Japan. I heard they're payin' top dollar for the land. Some folks has already sold.” Maizie put her foot down on the accelerator. The Buick gathered speed.

  Beth said, “Why do they want to spoil everything?”

  Maizie glanced at Beth. “Don’ know. Could be folks in Wither Creek are wantin' their town to be known as somethin' more than a no-account burg full a rednecks.” She glanced in the rearview mirror. “What sort of work you do, Mister Charlie?”

  “Construction, and it’s just Charlie, please.”

  “All right, Charlie. Should be plenty of that sorta work ‘round here pretty quick.”

  Beth turned to look at him.

  What? his expression seemed to ask. She shook her head and faced front, not wanting him to see her anxiety, yet wishing she were next to him, that she could lean against him.

  A low mutter of thunder rumbled in the distance. Maizie commented that it had looked like rain for days. She shook her finger at the sky. “All them clouds do is tease us.”

  Beth watched the passing scenery. She'd forgotten what pretty country it was. The land seemed to glow, a contoured brocade of tangled silvery green. Maizie's old Buick dashed along, wind blowing through the open windows, ruffling Beth's hair, the front of her shirt. It smelled of heat, and faintly, of the pines that crowded the road. As a little girl, she remembered lying on her back to watch the sway of their supple green tops high overhead; the whisper of long-needled branches was like the voice
of dreams. Daddy always said the pines were an example of how to bend without breaking.

  Why think of that now? When she hadn't in years? Why did she hear his voice? See his image behind her eyes? The old anger rose and threatened to cut her breath. If only he hadn’t died. How different would it be? Would she be safer? Better off? She thought so, knew so.

  “Maizie?” she said, “Is Black Knight still stabled at the farm?”

  “Yes, honey, he is,” Maizie said and then pressed her lips together in a way that let Beth know she was unhappy about it, but Beth couldn’t be … she was dying to see Knight and said so.

  She said, “I’ve missed him, missed having a horse so much.”

  Maizie looked at Charlie in the rearview mirror. “Has this child ever told you how she slept with that horse most every night for a month after its mama died? She'd come out of Knight’s stall of a morning smellin' so you couldn't tell which one was the animal. I can still see it so clear, the way that little ol’ colt followed her most anywhere.”

  “He changed after the fire,” Beth said. “Remember? He turned skittish and wild. He acted like he didn’t know me.”

  “Hmmph. Skittish and wild ain't the half of it now.”

  “I wish I hadn’t had to leave him.”

  “Horse is what done killed your daddy and started this whole mess.”

  Beth shot Maizie an unhappy glance.

  Charlie said, “Are you talking about the horse you promised Chrissy she could ride? It’s the same one that threw your dad?”

  What do you know about horses? The question hung in Beth’s mind. Oh, he could bet on them; Charlie could bet on anything, and he had. He owed so much money to the bookies in Miami, they’d had to leave Florida in a hurry. But as far as Beth knew, Charlie had never ridden a horse in his life, much less fed or exercised one, or mucked out a stall.

  Unless you counted the one he’d helped her with on the day they met. At the racetrack, Calder Race Course in Miami, where she’d been working as a stable hand. She ought to have had better sense than to take up with a gambler. But she’d been bewitched by his humor, his good nature. She’d never known anyone who was plain happy all the way through. Still, they might never have married had she not found herself pregnant with Chrissy, and when she’d told Charlie, he’d been elated, over the moon. That’s just who he was. And he loved her. Beth knew that.