CHAPTER 54
When Mary Dell got home to the trailer and leaned down to unbuckle Howard from his car seat later that morning, she noticed the side mirror of her car was broken.
“Maybe that explains it,” she said to Howard, who was trying, unsuccessfully, to grab hold of her necklace. “Something must have brought on all this bad luck. Mr. Waterson backs out on our deal, the barn burns, and we lose our ranch manager all in the same weekend. And it’s not even Sunday yet.”
She was grimy and her hair and clothing smelled like smoke, but Howard’s needs came first, so she carried the baby inside, changed his diaper, and nursed him, thinking about Graydon all the while. She’d lost her ranch manager, it was true, but more than that, she’d lost a friend. And Howard had lost an uncle, the man she was hoping would be his role model as he grew up, someone who would show him how to ride and rope and whittle and be a man, someone who would be a father figure to her boy, the way he’d been to Jeb. Poor Jeb. He was such a troubled child. He was going to take the news of Graydon’s departure so hard.
In a day or two, Mary Dell figured she’d call those people up in Kansas, the Spreewells, to see if he’d gone back to work for them, but she held out little hope of finding him. Graydon knew how to disappear when he felt like it, as he’d proven before. Those Bebee boys were good at that. It was their fatal flaw, Graydon had said so himself. And he knew how to hold a grudge too. Though, in this instance, she couldn’t blame him.
She couldn’t believe he’d started the fire, not even accidentally. If he had, he’d have owned up to it. And she didn’t care how many empty liquor bottles he’d left behind—if Graydon Bebee said he’d stopped drinking, then he had. He wasn’t a perfect man, no man was, but he was honest. Mary Dell understood why her sister had flown off the handle when she discovered those empty bottles in the shed; Jack Benny’s drinking had been the cause of so much of her misery. But she wished Lydia Dale had stopped to think before she’d acted, to remember that Graydon Bebee was not Jack Benny Benton.
Well, there was no help for it now. Graydon was long gone, surely never to return. And Lydia Dale was on her way to pick up the kids from their father’s, and she’d have to tell them what had happened.
Mary Dell sighed to herself as she tucked Howard into his crib. Graydon’s disappearance was going to break Jeb’s heart. It had already broken Lydia Dale’s. Anybody with eyes in their head could see that Lydia Dale was in love with Graydon.
Mary Dell crept out of the nursery and down the hallway toward her room, unbuttoning her blouse on the way, thinking how good it would be to get that smoke smell out of her hair. She pushed open the bedroom door and gasped, finding it was already occupied.
“Jeb!” she exclaimed, clutching at her blouse and buttoning it up as quickly as she could.
“What are you doing here? Oh, honey! What happened to you?”
Jeb’s face was streaked with soot and dirt and snot. His clothes were disheveled and his hair was a mess, his cowlick standing up like someone had called it to attention. Upon closer inspection, Mary Dell saw that there were red marks on his face and hands and that one of his eyebrows was singed.
“Oh, Jeb. Were you in the barn? What in the world were you doing there?”
Without waiting for his answer, Mary Dell steered the child into the bathroom and made him sit on the lid of the toilet while she got out her first-aid kit and filled the sink with cold water.
She squatted down in front of him and carefully wiped his face with a cold, wet washcloth. “Does that hurt?”
Jeb winced but shook his head anyway.
Mary Dell pressed her lips together, wondering if she should just take him directly to the doctor. The burns didn’t seem too bad, there was no blistering, but still . . .
Mary Dell opened a tube of first-aid cream and dabbed it on his left cheek and eyebrow. “Baby, what were you doing in the barn?”
“Hiding. Daddy got mad and sent me to bed with no supper. I didn’t do anything, Aunt Mary Dell,” he said earnestly. “I swear I didn’t. Daddy asked me what I’d been doing all week, and when I told him that Uncle Graydon was teaching me how to rope so I could enter the breakaway competition at the fair, Daddy got mad. He called me names, and slapped me, and sent me to bed. I didn’t do anything!”
Mary Dell reached up and tenderly tried to smooth his hair. “I know, baby. I believe you.”
“When it got dark,” Jeb went on, “I climbed out the window and came home.”
“But . . . that’s six miles. You walked six miles in the dark all by yourself?” She closed her eyes for a moment. Anything could have happened to him; he could have been hit by a car or attacked by a coyote. Clearly, the child had a guardian angel.
“I knew Momma would be mad at me for running away,” Jeb said quietly. “So I snuck into the barn and climbed into the hayloft. I thought I’d sleep there. But . . .”
He hung his head.
“But what, Jeb?”
“I stole a pack of Daddy’s cigarettes. When I went to light one up, I accidentally dropped the match. The hay caught fire. I tried to put it out. I stomped on it and used my jacket to cover it, but it got so big, so fast. My hands got burned and I got scared, so I ran off into the field. And then I remembered Uncle Graydon and the stock. I was running back to warn him when I saw him run out of the barn, leading the horses.
“I hid out for a while, watching, to make sure everybody was all right. And then . . . then I didn’t know what to do, so I came over here.”
He looked up at her with a miserable, guilt-ridden expression, his eyes swimming with tears and his nose running.
“I’m so sorry,” he gasped, giving way to sobs. “I . . . I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to . . .”
Mary Dell wrapped her arms around the boy and pulled him to her big bosom, rocking him like a baby, her own eyes filling with tears. “I know you didn’t, honey. I know.”
He buried his head on her shoulder, blubbering, saying he was sorry over and over again.
“It’s all my fault. Daddy hates me and now Momma will too.”
“You’re wrong,” Mary Dell murmured. “Your momma could never hate you. She loves you. You’re her baby. Don’t you know that?”
Face still pressed against her shoulder, he shook his head and mumbled, “She’s got Rob Lee.”
He sniffled again and looked up at her with pleading eyes. “Graydon is going to be so mad. He said if he ever caught me smoking, he wouldn’t let me ride for a month. What am I going to tell him, Aunt Mary Dell? Do you think he’s going to hate me too?”
Mary Dell swallowed hard and squeezed him as tight as she could. “Oh, my sweet boy.”