CHAPTER 56
The next few days were more than usually busy. Mary Dell went to talk to the manager at First Reliable Bank on Monday and was, as she’d predicted, turned down for a loan. She made her pitch to three other banks in the following days and was encouraged when a loan officer in Waco, a woman and a quilter herself, said she thought Mary Dell’s proposal had merit, but was ultimately turned down by the manager. The clock was ticking. By Thursday Mary Dell knew she wasn’t going to be able to raise the money to buy Waterson’s Dry Goods Emporium.
“It’s time to face facts,” she said when the family, including Silky and Velvet, gathered at the big house later that day.
Dutch was outside playing hide-and-seek with the big kids. It was the first time in days that anyone had been able to coax Jeb into doing anything besides moping. Silky stood at the stove, frying chicken, and Velvet at the sink, peeling peaches. Lydia Dale sat in a chair with a receiving blanket over her shoulder, nursing Rob Lee. Mary Dell was setting the table while Taffy sat at the head of it with Howard on her knee, making silly faces at him, trying to get him to smile, which he did readily, to her delight.
“None of the bank managers will give me the time of day,” Mary Dell said despondently as she circled the kitchen table, laying out silverware. “Well, maybe they were right. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea.”
Taffy made a buzzing sound with her lips. Howard beamed in response, his blue eyes laughing.
“It was a good idea,” she said, looking up at Mary Dell. “If anybody could have made that old dry goods store into a going concern, you and your sister could. Those bank managers just don’t have any vision. The odds were against you and so was Marlena Benton, the old she-devil.”
Silky raised her eyebrows and turned over a chicken breast, revealing a crispy, golden-brown skin. “She-devil? I thought you and Marlena were bosom buddies. I thought you wanted to be just like her.”
Taffy stared at her mother as if she’d never heard anything so preposterous. “Where’d you get such an idea? I can’t stand Marlena. Never could.”
“Huh. You don’t say.” Silky gave Velvet a little wink and turned another piece of chicken. Velvet smiled.
“There’s no profit trying to figure out who to blame,” Mary Dell said. “It’s over and done with. Best thing to do now is forget about it and get back to work. I need to rebuild the barn and see about hiring a ranch manager. The insurance adjuster said the claim ought to be approved next week.”
Aunt Velvet rinsed the peach juice off her hands and wiped them on her apron. “Mary Dell, just how badly do you want to open this quilt shop?”
Mary Dell stood near the head of the table with a spoon clutched in her hand, considering the question.
The idea of owning a quilt shop had excited her from the first, but initially, it had been the kind of excitement she experienced when creating a new quilt design or discovering a method for making an old design easier to stitch, the thrill that comes from imagining a new adventure, facing a new challenge. Later, when she began to consider the example she might be setting for Howard by overcoming the obstacles in her path and opening the shop, the thrill of adventure took on a deeper purpose.
But it was her journey to Dallas that really sealed the deal. C. J. Evard had helped her see what it might be like to soar beyond the narrow boundaries she’d set for herself, to push herself cognitively and creatively. Suddenly, she felt like a new car out for a test drive; she longed to be out on the highway with the gas pedal pushed to the floor, to use all her gears and leave the pack behind, to show everybody, her family, her child, herself, and the world what she had under the hood.
And now . . . now that the door was shut and the boundaries were closing in . . .
Mary Dell blinked a few times. “Pretty bad, Aunt Velvet. There’s only one thing I’ve ever wanted more, and that was Howard.”
She bent down over Taffy’s shoulder to kiss Howard on the head, burying her face in his downy hair, and chided herself. If she could only have had one answered prayer in her life and that prayer was Howard, she’d never have right or reason to complain. And she wasn’t complaining, but having stood on the threshold of a new world, it was hard to close the door without feeling a pang of regret for what might have been.
Velvet looked at Silky and raised her brows, as if to say she’d thought as much. Silky lowered the flame under the skillet and turned her back to the stove so she could see her granddaughter.
“If you want it so much, why are you giving up?”
Mary Dell frowned, wondering if her grandmother was starting to lose her hearing. “I told you, Granny,” she said, speaking loudly and distinctly, “I just can’t raise the money. I’ve tried everything.”
“There’s no need to holler at me,” Silky replied with a scowl. “I heard you. I just don’t believe you. You’ve tried some things, the easy things, but you haven’t tried everything.”
“Like what?”
Silky glanced at Velvet, a question in her eyes. Velvet gave a brief nod, as if granting her permission to speak.
“Velvet and I were talking it over. Mary Dell, when it comes to quilting, you’ve got a gift, a special and remarkable gift. We always thought so, but on the other hand, what do we know? We’re just a couple of old ladies from Too Much, and of course, we’re not exactly impartial judges. But when a man like C. J. Evard sees what we see within five minutes of meeting you, then that is something you need to pay attention to, that and your heart. And since it means so much to you . . .” She paused a moment, took in a deep breath, and let it out quickly.
“We think you ought to sell off some land.”
Mary Dell stared at her grandmother, wondering if her own hearing was going bad.
“Excuse me? Are you telling me to sell land so I can raise the money to buy a quilt shop? Flagadine’s land? Our land?”
She looked at her mother and sister, then back to her grandmother and aunt.
“Are you crazy?”
“Well, I think that’s a question that was settled a long time ago,” Silky replied, “but yes. We’re telling you to sell off some land. Not a lot, just as much as you’d need to buy and stock the shop and then fix up the building proper. If you’re going to do it, honey, you should do it right. Selling a hundred acres ought to cover it, a hundred and fifty at the most.”
Mary Dell turned her face to the wall. “I am not listening to this,” she said. “And even if I was, who’d be willing to buy just a hundred acres of our land? For cash and by Monday morning? Nobody in Too Much has that kind of money on hand.”
Velvet stepped forward. “The Bentons do,” she said. “Marlena would buy a piece of our land in a heartbeat, any piece we’d offer, just so she could say she’d done it.”
Mary Dell threw up her hands. “You are crazy! The both of you! No, Aunt Velvet. Absolutely not. I am not going to sell even one acre of the F-Bar-T. Especially not to Marlena Benton!” she shouted.
Silky, who didn’t appreciate being called crazy, shouted back. Velvet stepped between the two to try and calm them down, but had to raise her voice to be heard. Lydia Dale took Rob Lee off her breast, set him on her shoulder, and got up to put in her two cents, arguing that they weren’t going to miss one little piece of ground. Taffy weighed in too, but felt conflicted by the proposition and argued both sides of the question at once—she loved the idea of Mary Dell and Lydia Dale owning a quilt shop, but hated to think of how Marlena would gloat if she got hold of even a little of their land. The sound of five female voices raised in conflict upset Howard, and he began to howl in protest. Then Rob Lee, distressed at being taken from his mother’s breast before his stomach was full, added his cries to his cousin’s.
The din of women arguing and infants crying was so great that nobody heard the sound of a truck pulling up outside, and the childish shouts of joy that greeted the driver, or noticed when the door from the porch to the kitchen opened and someone stepped inside, carrying a shopping bag.
In fact, the commotion was so deafening that not one of the women stopped for so much as a breath until Graydon Bebee, who tried once or twice to announce his presence using a more modulated tone, finally waded into the middle of the fracas, stuck his pinkie fingers into each side of his mouth, blasted out an earsplitting whistle, and hollered louder than all of them.
“What in the hubs of hell is going on here!”