Blake Shelton’s “Honey Bee” played on the truck radio. The girls whispered in the backseat about what they might buy at Miranda Lambert’s Pink Pistol store. Mason kept time with the music on the steering wheel with his thumbs.
Crossing the bridge over the Red River, Annie Rose could see the big “Welcome to Oklahoma” sign. It reminded her of all the bridges she’d burned or crossed in the past two weeks.
Thank God, it seemed like months since she’d jumped when the phone rang or avoided surveillance cameras in service stations and grocery stores. “Daddy, do they have condoms at The Pink Pistol?” Lily leaned up and yelled over the top of Blake’s song.
His thumbs went completely still. “What did you say?”
“She wants to know if they have condoms at The Pink Pistol,” Gabby hollered even louder.
“Where did you even hear such a word?” Mason asked.
“Kenna told us about them. We don’t want any in our house, because Kenna says that they keep babies from being born. And we want a baby sister. We did want a brother like Kenna is getting, but we changed our mind,” Lily said.
“You got us a mama for our ninth birthday. We want a sister for our tenth,” Gabby said.
Mason turned off the radio and glanced over at Annie Rose.
She smiled. “Your turn. I had mine yesterday right in the middle of the Walmart store.”
Mason took a deep breath. “That is not something we are going to discuss today. It’s only been two weeks since your ninth birthday, so it’s too early to talk about the next one.”
“Can we discuss it when we are older?” Lily asked.
Mason looked into the rearview mirror. “Much older.”
“O… kay!” Lily stretched the word out to six syllables.
“Like ten years old,” Gabby pressed.
“Like maybe twelve years old,” Mason said.
“But, Daddy, that’s three whole years. We’d be grown-ups before our baby sister could even walk,” Lily moaned.
“Well, if they have those things we aren’t supposed to talk about at The Pink Pistol, then I’m not even going to look at them,” Gabby said. “I’m using my money to buy stuff for my room. I want a poster of Blake and one of Miranda and I want a T-shirt to wear the first day of school to show everyone that we got to go there and I want to sit up on them bar stools and have a Dr Pepper before we leave because I’m sure that Miranda has set on them bar stools. It’s going to be a wonderful day and when our baby sister is nine years old we’ll take her to The Pink Pistol.”
“By then we’ll be famous enough to open for Miranda on her concert tours,” Lily said.
Annie Rose poked Mason on the shoulder. “Dodged a bullet there, didn’t you?”
He gave her a long sidling look and shook his head. “So how did you fare in Walmart?”
“Not much better,” she admitted.
“So that’s why you bought vending machine items?”
“That and the fact that Dinah Miller works at the drugstore in Whitewright,” she said. Mason had kissed her. Mason had made love to her. Mason had had wild sex with her. And still just sitting close to him turned on hot chemistry that she couldn’t begin to understand or explain. Maybe it had to do with the topic of conversation and the visual of him wearing those neon colors the past few nights.
Lily stopped whispering and exclaimed, “Dinah Miller! Did I hear you say her name? Please, please don’t let them put us in her room next year. Can’t Mama-Nanny homeschool us, Daddy? We’ll be good and do our lessons without fussin’ about it.”
“How do you know about homeschooling?” Mason asked.
“Kenna says her mama might homeschool her next year. If her mama and daddy decide to go do missionary work all the time, then she’ll be homeschooled and she told us all about it. She says that she will get to go to school in her pajamas if the school is right there in her house and her mama is the teacher,” Gabby answered.
“Kenna again,” Mason said out the corner of his mouth.
“Don’t blame her. This is the age of curiosity,” Annie Rose told him.
“You are not going to be homeschooled. If you were, you couldn’t be in 4-H and show your animals. You couldn’t play basketball or be cheerleaders. Do you want that?” Mason asked.
“We’d be damn nuns rather than go to Mrs. Miller’s class. And I’m not saying I’m sorry for cussin’ neither. She’s a…”
“Lily Diane Harper,” Mason said in a low voice.
Gabby took up for her sister. “Well, she is, Daddy. I bet she even has condoms in her house because she wouldn’t want another baby like Damian. He might even be the reason she is so… crazy.”
“The next girl that says that word is going to be grounded to the house for a week. No swimming, no television. I might not even let her have dessert or play with the goats all week either.”
“Whew! It must be worse than cussin’,” Lily said.
Gabby made the gesture for zipping her mouth. “We didn’t know it was a bad word, Daddy.”
“The next person who talks about that word is going to do dishes for a week too,” he said.
Lily abruptly changed the subject. “Gabby, do you think they have petticoats at The Pink Pistol? I need one for my lace skirt so I’ll look like RaeLynn when I sing ‘I Want Your Boyfriend.’ Someday I’m going to be on The Voice and I’m choosing Blake Shelton for my coach.”
“Smart daddy,” Annie Rose said.
“I’ll be a crazy daddy by the time I get them raised.”
They passed the Choctaw Casino on their way to Durant and the flashing billboard out front said that Carrie Underwood would be appearing there in four weeks. Squeals rattled around in the truck like high-pitched echoes in a canyon.
“Daddy, can we go see her? Please. We’ll give up our trip to Six Flags this summer if you’ll take us to see Carrie,” Gabby begged.
“And if we can get a backstage pass to get an autograph, I won’t even burn down the school if they make me be in Mrs. Miller’s room,” Lily declared.
“It’s air-conditioned. Six Flags isn’t,” Annie Rose reminded him.
“That is six weeks away. We’ll see what happens between now and then,” Mason said.
“That means we have to be good for six weeks plus give up our trip to Six Flags, but I guess it’s worth it,” Lily said.
“Hell, yes, it’s worth it! It’s Carrie, baby!” Gabby high-fived with her sister.
“Win one. Lose one.” Annie Rose giggled.
* * *
Miranda renovated an old drugstore to make The Pink Pistol. She kept the soda fountain and the bar stools, and that’s where Mason and Annie Rose headed while Lily and Gabby touched every single item in the store at least a dozen times.
“What can I get for y’all?” the dark-haired girl behind the counter asked.
“Coffee,” Mason said.
“Vanilla Dr Pepper,” Annie Rose told her.
“You were going to tell me the whole story, but we were busy last night,” Mason said.
“If I say that word, will I have to wash dishes for a week?”
“I’ve got a better idea. Every time you say it, we have to use one in the coming week. I wonder if Miranda has pink ones in this store.” He made a show of looking around the place.
“Here you go. You want to wait to see if you buy something else before I run the tab?” the girl asked.
“Yes, please,” Mason said.
“Were you looking around for something particular?” she asked.
“No, ma’am, just checking on my daughters, who intend to spend some serious cash in here.” He smiled.
“Well, let me know if you need anything else,” the girl said and went to the far end of the counter to wait on another customer.
“You blushed!” Annie Rose popped him.
“Is it as sexy as when you blush? Don’t answer that. Nothing is that sexy. Now tell me the story about the things they must not sell in here,” he said.
She told him the whole thing as she sipped the vanilla Dr Pepper.
“You really need to go to the doctor so we don’t have to worry about those things.” He motioned for the girl behind the counter to refill his coffee cup and bring Annie Rose another soda pop.
“I’m making an appointment with a gynecologist in Sherman on Monday. Are you trying to force me to have to use the ladies’ room by buying all these sodas for me?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am, but it will all be up to you about what you buy from the vending machine, since you avoided saying the word through the whole story. However, you did talk about the forbidden word, so I suppose by rights we should buy at least one today. Since the girls want a baby sister, maybe it should be neon pink.”
She leaned in close and said softly, “That’s not even funny after the way we got carried away a few times.”
Mason leaned over, kissed her on the cheek, and said, “I think I’m falling in love with you, Miz Annie Rose.”
“Daddy, Daddy, look! We found petticoats and there’s two of them so we can each have one and look like twin RaeLynns. Can you hold them for us, Mama-Nanny, so no one else will get them? We’re going to look at some more stuff. And guess what, I found a sign for my room but I want to make sure that’s what I really want.” Lily shoved two fluffy petticoats at Annie Rose and disappeared around the end of an aisle that had round racks offering all kinds of Miranda T-shirts.
“I can take those for you and hold them back here until the kids are done,” the girl from behind the counter said.
Annie Rose passed them over to her. “Thank you so much. Now where were we?” She turned back to Mason.
“I said that it would be easy to fall in love with you,” he repeated.
“But would it be wise?”
He cocked his head to one side and their eyes locked in the short space between them. Slowly his chin went up and down in a nod. “I believe it might be the wisest thing I could do in this lifetime.”
“Then you have my permission,” she said.
Gabby ran from the shirt rack over to the soda fountain. “Mama-Nanny, which one do you like better?”
One was pink and the words on the front said, “You gonna pull them pistols or whistle Dixie?” The other one was brown and said “Pink Pistol… for the wild at heart.”
“I’m buying whichever one she doesn’t buy,” Lily said.
“They both look too big for you,” Annie Rose said.
“Not with these,” they said together and whipped blinged-out cowgirl belts from behind their backs.
“We’re goin’ to wear them like dresses with leggin’s under them and our boots and with new belts. We wanted to buy boots, but all they sell is big-girl boots and we don’t have enough money. So we decided on the petticoats, a T-shirt and a belt, and a sign for the door into our rooms,” Lily explained.
“Well, then in that case, I think Lily should have the pink one and Gabby should buy the brown one and you can share,” Annie Rose said.
“What sign?” Mason asked.
Gabby pointed. “That one right there. They’ve got two of them. That one has hot-pink letters and the other one at the back of the store has baby-pink letters. Lily is getting the hot-pink.”
The sign was nothing more than an old piece of barn wood with a big metal Texas star in the middle. “Dang” was written above the star and below it was “Cowgirl.”
“It’s not really cussin’, Daddy,” Lily said.
“And it will remind Lily to say dang instead of damn,” Gabby said.
Annie Rose smiled at Mason. “Sounds like a good deal to me.”
Mason narrowed his eyes at the purchases and said, “It looks like you’ve put a lot of thought into your birthday presents. So if you are sure, we’ll pay the lady and go up to the Dairy Queen for lunch.”
“Well, we did want a Blake calendar, but we ran out of money,” Lily said.
“It’s almost June. The year is more than halfway done,” Annie Rose reminded them.
“But we’d have the pictures forever.” Gabby sighed.
“They’re goin’ on for half price tomorrow and there’s only two left,” the girl behind the counter said.
“So you’d sell them to me for half price?” Annie Rose asked.
She nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, then that will be my present to you girls today,” Annie Rose agreed.
Lily hugged Gabby. “Wow. We got it all. We are going to be stars.”
“You spoil them as bad as I do,” Mason whispered.
She brushed a quick kiss across his lips as the girls ran to the cash register with their purchases. “I know, and I love it.”
You could never walk away from them now. Not them or their father, her inner voice said as she pulled a bill from her purse to pay for the two calendars.
I don’t intend to. I’m falling in love with him, too, she said silently.