Sherryl Woods - After Tex

Megan searched her memory. The image of a freckle-faced blond boy with an untamable cowlick and a shy smile came to mind. “You married Johnny Barkley?”

“Who else?” Peggy said. “I mooned over him long enough. I guess I just wore him down. We have three children, two boys and a girl, which explains how I’ve managed to put on twenty pounds I don’t need and turned most of my hair gray, though you can’t tell it because of the blond rinse I’ve been using. I’ll be darned if I’m going to look old before my time the way my mama did. Of course, she looks terrific now that she’s down in Arizona. She had herself a facelift last year. I swear she looks almost as young as me.”

“Well, you certainly look wonderful,” Megan said with total sincerity. Despite the extra weight, Peggy looked healthy and happy—contented in a way that Megan found herself envying without knowing why. Her green eyes sparkled with merriment, just as they had when she and Megan were children.

“Go on into the living room and have a seat,” Megan urged. “I’ll have Mrs. Gomez fix us some tea. Or would you rather have coffee?”

“I’ll have a soda if she has one. Any kind will do.”

“A Dr Pepper,” Megan said, suddenly remembering. They had gone through cases of the stuff. “I’ll bet there are some in the fridge.”

In the kitchen, she found the housekeeper trying to stuff the already overloaded refrigerator with yet another casserole that had just been delivered to the back door by a neighbor who hadn’t wanted to bother Megan.

“It’s a good thing the funeral’s tomorrow or all this food would go bad,” she said. “Not much of a loss, if you ask me. There’s not an enchilada in the lot of them.”

“Maybe folks figure your spicy cooking is what put Tex in his grave and they’re not taking any chances,” Megan teased, then regretted it when she saw the sheen of tears in the housekeeper’s eyes. Megan wrapped her arms around her. “Don’t you dare cry. If you do, you’ll have me weeping.”

“Crying might do you some good. Better to let your emotions out than keep them all bottled up the way Tex made you do,” the housekeeper said with undisguised disapproval. “You remember when that boy—Bobby Temple, Sí? He shoved you down in the mud in your brand-new winter coat. You were crying and carrying on. Tex gave you one of those looks of his and said, ‘Girl, an O’Rourke always holds his chin up high and we never, ever cry over things that are over and done.’”

Mrs. Gomez had captured Tex’s words exactly. Megan had heard them often enough. She gave the housekeeper another hug. “Oh, I’ll do my share of crying before this is over,” she assured her. “Right now, though, Peggy’s here and we were wondering if there’s any Dr Pepper around.”

Mrs. Gomez’s expression brightened. “I believe there’s some in the pantry. I’ll fill some tall glasses with lots of ice the way you used to like it, and I’ll bring it right along.”

“I’ll get it. You have enough to do.” Megan found an entire case of the soft drink in the pantry. Emerging with a couple of cans, she regarded the housekeeper with a wry look. “I take it you were expecting Peggy to drop by.”

“Of course, niña. She is your best friend. Where else would she be at a time like this?”

Some friend I’ve been, Megan thought as she took the drinks into the living room. Peggy was married and had three children Megan had known nothing about until today. She’d never even asked after her friend when she’d talked to Tex, and he wasn’t one to volunteer information.

In the living room she found Peggy perched on the edge of the sofa as if she still might take off at any second. Once she would have been curled up in a corner of that same overstuffed sofa with her shoes kicked off and a fat pillow hugged to her middle.

Megan handed a glass to her friend and sat at the opposite end. “Okay, then. Married. Three kids. What else have you been up to?”

Peggy gave her an amused look. “I can tell you don’t have kids, if you have to ask a question like that. Three of them, all under the age of ten, pretty much eliminates anything except sleeping six hours a night if I’m lucky.”

Megan thought of Tess and the disruptions she faced to her own life, and shuddered. “I imagine I’ll be finding out for myself soon enough,” she said, testing the idea aloud for the first time.

Though she’d been praying for some other solution, Jake’s words and a long night of restless tossing and turning had left her fully aware that she couldn’t simply abandon the girl, no matter how much either of them would have preferred it. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she simply walked away.

Peggy gave her an understanding look. “Then you know about Tess? I’d wondered.”

“Oh, yes, I know. I found out when I got here.”

“Sweet heaven! Not before?” Peggy asked, clearly shocked. “It’s been the talk of the town for months now. I thought surely Tex would have told you.”

“No one thought to tell me,” Megan said with undisguised bitterness. “Of course, Mrs. Gomez wouldn’t think it was her place. And apparently Tex didn’t think he should mention it in passing during one of his phone calls. Better to let the bomb drop when he’s not around to see the fallout. According to his lawyer, I’m expected to rise to the occasion.”

“It’ll be an adjustment, I’m sure, but it won’t be that bad. She’s a good kid,” Peggy said. “She’s spent some time at our house. She and my girl are friends, at least most days. Tess doesn’t make it easy. Then, who can blame her? It can’t have been easy having a mama walk out and getting left with a man she’d never even met before. That mama of hers ought to roast in hell for what she did.”

“Apparently that place in hell is going to be crowded with Tex’s women,” Megan observed. “The habit goes all the way back to my mother—beyond if you consider the fact that Grandmother died when my mother was barely five.”

Peggy’s cheeks turned bright pink. “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. It’s just that it was so long ago, what happened to you. You’ve done so well, I suppose I never think about the scars it might have left inside.”

“No scars,” Megan insisted staunchly. “You’re right. My life is as close to perfect as anything I could ever have imagined.”

“Perfect, huh? That’s certainly the impression you give on TV and in your magazine. Makes the rest of us downright envious. How’s Tess going to fit into that?”

Megan sighed. “I wish to heaven I knew.”

“Well, if anyone can make it work, it’s you,” Peggy said with absolute confidence. “After all, aren’t you the woman who tells the whole world how to turn lemons into lemonade? I swear to goodness, I think you could take the rattiest old thing lying around and turn it into some fancy decorative accent. I watched that show of yours one day and dragged an old cradle out of the basement and turned it into a planter. Johnny thought at first I was hinting about having another baby, but then I stuck a couple of ferns in there and he admitted it looked right nice. Said the watering’s likely to rot the wood before the next generation comes along, but so what? I doubt they’ll appreciate anything that doesn’t come from some discount store, anyway. Plastic’s practical. Even my mama says that, though it makes me shudder when she does. Last time I went down to Arizona to see her, I swear to goodness I was shocked. Her idea of decorating is picking up whatever’s on sale at Wal-Mart. You should have seen the mishmash. It would have brought tears to your eyes.”

Megan chuckled. “Oh, Peggy, I have missed you. No one cuts through to the heart of things the way you do. Don’t ever change.”