Heart of Texas Vol. 3

  “Well, I didn’t exactly hide it, but I didn’t shout it from the rooftops, either.” He paused. “Does it change who I am?”

  “Yes…no.”

  “I’d rather you got to know me for who I am first—without muddying the waters with my success.”

  Although she understood, it hurt that he hadn’t trusted her with the truth. But it was just as well. This simply reinforced what she already knew—that she shouldn’t expect anything from him.

  “You wanted to ask me something?” she said pointedly.

  “I want to go back to Bitter End in the morning.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re missing something important there, Nell. I can feel it, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “I don’t have time to waste. I’ve got work to do around here.”

  He hesitated. “I need you.”

  “Why?” she cried again, standing with her back to him. “You know the way now. You don’t need me.”

  “I do,” he said softly. “But I’ll leave it up to you.” Having said that, he quietly left.

  WHEN MORNING ARRIVED and the children were off to school, Nell had a change of heart. This, she promised herself, would be the last time. From then on, Travis was on his own.

  “I’m glad you’re coming,” he said, smiling as she climbed into the sports utility vehicle, sitting beside him.

  “We ran into a dead end,” she muttered. “And if it was up to me, we’d drop the entire project now.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  It was true she didn’t, but she refused to admit it.

  They parked in the same place they had before and made their way into the ghost town. Even before they reached Bitter End, Nell could feel the sensation approaching. Gradually it descended on her, the intensity mounting with each step she took.

  “What are we looking for?” Nell asked in a whisper, standing close to his side. She’d prefer to keep her distance, but the town frightened her.

  “I don’t know yet,” he said, his voice low.

  As they stood in the center of the street in the middle of Bitter End, Travis surveyed the buildings. “Does anything strike you as familiar?” he asked after a moment, his voice slightly raised.

  “No.” Nothing had changed from the day before except her anxiety to leave, which had only increased.

  “The tree!” he shouted, pointing down the street. He started for it, leaving her behind.

  He stopped some yards from the large dead oak with its gnarled twisted limbs.

  “Wh-what about the tree?” she asked, breathless from running after him.

  “Nell, don’t you remember the quilt? That’s the tree! You can tell by the trunk.”

  Travis walked slowly toward it. “Look. Nell, look.”

  He ran his finger over the rough crude letters in the dead wood.

  Nell’s swift intake of breath was the only sound.

  There, carved into the side of the tree, was the word cursed.

  IT CAME TO TRAVIS THEN, in a blinding flash. The quilt squares they’d found so puzzling held the key to whatever had happened in Bitter End.

  “The quilt,” he said. “The squares tell what happened to the town.”

  “A story quilt! I hadn’t even thought of that.” Nell’s eyes went bright with excitement. It was all Travis could do not to kiss her right then and there. He resisted, with difficulty.

  He might have kissed her, anyway, if he hadn’t felt her withdrawing from him. The fact that he was a successful novelist had come to light at the worst possible moment. In retrospect, he realized he should have told her much sooner, but he’d enjoyed the anonymity. He appreciated being accepted and liked for the man he was and not for what he’d achieved.

  Then, too, her unawareness of his identity, his success, had given him a chance to know her. His career hadn’t intruded on their relationship. They’d simply become friends. Well, more than friends if he had his way.

  Unfortunately he’d felt Nell retreating emotionally as soon as she’d learned the truth about him. She believed he’d misled her and he supposed he had, although he hadn’t meant to. He’d planned to tell her in his own time. And now…

  “Think,” Nell said, biting her lower lip. “What else was on those quilt squares?”

  Travis tried to remember, but his thoughts were on Nell, not on the quilt. There’d only been a handful, five or six squares. Obviously they weren’t enough to complete the entire quilt, which meant some squares were missing, maybe forever lost.

  “Okay, the oak tree. And one of the squares showed a grave marker,” Nell said, counting them on her fingers.

  “One of them showed something that resembled a dry riverbed,” he recalled. “But there’s no river around here.”

  “Gully Creek isn’t far,” she said with a thoughtful frown.

  “It isn’t unheard of for creeks to run dry,” he added.

  “What else?” Nell asked.

  “A frog?”

  “Yes, but a frog doesn’t make sense,” Nell said.

  “If there was a creek here, there could have been frogs.”

  “Yes, but…” She shook her head. “The quilt sounded promising at first, but I’m beginning to have my doubts—especially about the square with a hangman’s noose. What could that possibly mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Travis admitted. Like her, he was feeling some reservations. “You said one of the squares was a grave marker, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you remember what it said?”

  “Yes.” Nell answered and took a deep breath. “It said Edward Abraham Frasier and there was a Bible reference.”

  “I don’t suppose you remember the Bible reference.”

  She nodded. “Matthew 28:46.”

  It didn’t mean anything to Travis. They’d have to wait until they were back on the ranch and had access to a Bible.

  “‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” Nell quoted in a soft voice.

  Travis was impressed. “Great,” he said and reached for her hand, squeezing it gently. He intended to check out the cemetery next to see if they could find the grave marker.

  “I…read that passage frequently after Jake’s death,” she whispered.

  Travis remained silent, knowing this was a difficult moment for her.

  “Let’s go look at the markers in the cemetery here and see if we can find that name,” she finally said.

  The graveyard was behind the church, surrounded by a sun-bleached cedar-rail fence. Several markers still stood, crude crosses, a few headstones.

  Travis wandered among the graves, but found nothing.

  “It’s impossible to read the names,” Nell protested. “Something might have been etched into the wood, but you can’t read it anymore.”

  Travis knelt in front of one headstone, choosing it randomly. A rosebush bloomed nearby. The irony of it didn’t escape him—the only living plants in this town were in the cemetery. God had a great sense of humor.

  He could see that a name had once been visible on the simple stone marker, and not knowing what else to do, he ran the tip of his finger gently over it. After a moment he could make out the first letter.

  “W,” he said aloud.

  “Did you say something?” Nell asked, strolling toward him. She stood at his side while he continued to kneel in front of the marker.

  “A,” he said, his enthusiasm growing. “L…T, I think…E…R.”

  “Walter?”

  “That was his name.” Travis glanced up at her. “Try pressing your finger over the inscription,” he said.

  Nell did as he suggested, kneeling in front of another grave, close to Travis. It wasn’t easy; her hands were callused from ranch work while his were more sensitive. The most strenuous activity he used his hands for was tapping computer keys.

  “A!” she shouted triumphantly.

  “Wonderful,” he said. He removed a small notebook and pen from his pocket. Walter E. B
astien was the first name he entered. If he read the dates correctly, Walter had died at age three.

  “D…E…L…E,” Nell completed excitedly. “Adele!”

  Travis moved on to the next marker. They were able to read nine names before they found Edward Abraham Frasier. He’d died at age five. Of the ten names they’d recorded, Travis noted that eight were children, who’d all died before the age of seven.

  “Life was hard in those days,” Nell said soberly. “My great-grandmother was one of ten children and only five survived to adulthood.”

  “A fifty percent mortality rate.”

  “I couldn’t bear to lose a child, not after…” Nell didn’t need to complete the thought. “Well,” she said abruptly, sitting back on her haunches, “this is all very interesting, but what does it mean?”

  Travis didn’t know and merely shrugged.

  “How can we solve anything? We need to know what happened! Okay, so the quilt is somehow tied in to the town’s history, but what does it tell us? Bitter End does indeed have a tree with the word cursed carved in the wood. And we found the grave marker for Edward Frasier, who’s got to be an ancestor of Ellie’s but it doesn’t mean anything if we don’t know all the facts.”

  “The tree’s dead,” Travis murmured.

  “What else is new?” she said, sounding almost flippant. “Everything in this town is dead.”

  “I want to know why. What happened here? At one time this was a prosperous enough community, but something went very wrong. Something that no one’s ever written about, so we’re stuck with no documentation. Except…what about old newspapers?”

  “If Bitter End ever printed a newspaper, whatever copies were published disappeared a long time ago.”

  “We don’t know that.” His research skills were beginning to kick in. “I’m thinking that if something horrendous happened, it would be reported elsewhere.”

  “Like where?”

  “Perhaps in the Austin newspaper. Maybe San Antonio. It wouldn’t do any harm to check it out.”

  “But how in heaven’s name would we ever find that? Travis, it would take weeks of looking through microfilm.”

  “My dear,” Travis said, slipping his arm around her waist, “haven’t you ever heard of the Internet?”

  ELLIE WAS BUSY READING a cookbook when Glen walked into the kitchen, fresh from the shower. He skidded to a stop when he saw her and pretended to be terrified, shielding his face with both arms.

  “All right, all right,” she said dryly. “Very funny. But I’m not planning to poison you, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Ellie’s limited culinary skills had become a shared joke. She’d learned a few recipes but rarely ventured into new territory.

  “Honey, I don’t mind cooking.”

  Ellie knew that was true, but Glen’s repertoire consisted primarily of roast beef, beef stew and spaghetti with meat sauce, except that he added ingredients not generally associated with those dishes—jalapeños, green olives and walnuts. He was also inventive when it came to salads.

  “Where did you get the cookbook?” he asked.

  “The library,” Ellie said. She couldn’t see investing a lot of money in the project until she was sure she was up to the task.

  “Do I dare inquire what’s for dinner?”

  “Tamale pie, cooked in a kettle.” She had all the ingredients assembled on the kitchen counter. Her sleeves were rolled up and she’d tucked a towel into her waistband. If she looked capable and in control, she figured she might feel that way.

  “That’s your first mistake,” Glen said knowingly.

  “What?”

  “Following a recipe. Use your instincts.”

  “I don’t have any,” Ellie muttered. Her upbringing hadn’t been traditional. From early childhood, it was understood that she’d be taking over the family business. Instead of spending time in the kitchen with her mother learning the conventional domestic skills, she’d been with her father learning about types of feed and tools and worming medications.

  “You’ve got instincts,” Glen insisted. “You just don’t know it yet. Here, let me read the recipe.”

  “Glen…” she protested but knew it would do no good. In the months since their marriage, she’d managed to acquire a few skills. Dovie had given her cooking lessons and taught her the basics. Still, Glen continued to tease her.

  “Tamale pie,” he read over her shoulder. “Look at this,” he said with disgust. “There’s no mention of jalapeños.”

  “There’s chili powder in the sauce.”

  “Instincts, Ellie, instincts.”

  “I’ll add jalapeños as soon as I develop some,” she said. “Instincts, I mean.” She booted him firmly out of the kitchen. “Scoot. Go read the newspaper. Watch television. Worry about the price of beef—whatever—but leave me to my own devices.”

  He gave a disgruntled shrug, then did as she requested. She’d purposely chosen this recipe because it looked simple enough even for her. If all else failed, she had a frozen entrée tucked away in the freezer.

  After reading the recipe twice, she started her task, remembering what Dovie had taught her. One step at a time. Everything went smoothly and she was beginning to think that there might be some Martha Stewart in her, after all. She’d actually enjoyed this, although the kitchen was a disaster. For now, she planned to bask in her success and leave the dirty dishes for later.

  The beauty of this recipe was that the entire dinner was cooked on the stove. The cookbook warned against removing the lid and checking on the cornmeal topping until the required time had passed. While she waited, she glanced through the other recipes, finding three or four casseroles that looked tempting. Glen would eat his words, or more accurately, he’d eat her tamale pie and rave about it.

  “How much longer?” Glen shouted from the living room.

  “Not long.”

  “Are you making a salad?”

  “I was thinking about it.”

  “Want any help?”

  “Oh, all right.” She sighed as though she’d made a major concession. In truth, she was pleased. Glen used his much-vaunted instincts to concoct salads, and tossed together the most amazing creations. He started with the traditional lettuce and tomatoes, then added whatever else he could find, including cheddar cheese, shredded carrot, sliced Bermuda onion and even seedless grapes.

  “Cal mentioned something interesting the other day,” her husband said, his head stuck inside the refrigerator. He reappeared, loaded with ingredients, both plain and exotic.

  “Cal is always interesting.”

  “He said Nell and that reporter friend of hers are looking into solving the mystery of Bitter End.”

  This was news. “How?”

  “He didn’t say. At first I was opposed to the idea and said so.”

  “I’d rather they bulldozed the entire town and set it on fire,” she said, not realizing until now that her feelings ran this strong. She’d been there once with Richard Weston, and that had been enough to last her two lifetimes. Never, ever would she return. Of course it didn’t help that her companion had done his best to scare her half to death.

  Richard had started by blindfolding her for the drive so she wouldn’t be able to find the way on her own—as if she’d want to. When they arrived, he’d promptly disappeared. Then he’d popped up in front of her, frightening her so badly she’d nearly fainted.

  “At first I felt it was best just to let things be,” Glen said.

  “You’ve changed your mind?”

  He washed the lettuce and patiently tore it into small pieces. “Cal’s right about Bitter End.” His tone was thoughtful. “Ever since Richard was airlifted from the town, there’s been plenty of speculation about it. Not many people had heard of it before, but more and more have learned it’s there. Because of Richard.”

  “So we have another thing to thank Richard Weston for,” Ellie said sarcastically. It infuriated her to remember she’d actually dated that lowlife. He’d pr
etended to be enthralled with her, had even proposed marriage. On the other hand, though, if it wasn’t for Richard, Ellie doubted she would have recognized how much she loved Glen.

  Her husband had been equally blind. When he did finally figure out he was in love with her, he’d managed to humiliate her in front of the entire town. Naturally Richard had encouraged that. Even worse, he’d succeeded in convincing Glen that Ellie was going to marry him. That Glen actually believed it was a huge affront to her pride. But in the months since, he’d more than made it up to her.

  Glen was a good husband, and when the time came, he’d make a good father. She loved him immensely, and her love grew stronger every day.

  “In this instance,” Glen said, “I do think we should thank Richard. Bitter End has been a blight on our history for a lot of years.”

  “Something horrible happened there.” One trip to that awful town had proved it. Just thinking about it made her skin crawl.

  “But what?” Glen asked in challenge. “Isn’t that the real mystery?”

  “Yes,” she agreed but stopped herself from saying more. The timer on the stove went off, signaling dinner was ready. She cast an eye to her husband and sincerely hoped this meal turned out to be as appetizing as the cookbook had promised.

  Glen finished preparing his salad, adding last-minute touches of almond slivers, cilantro and goat cheese, tossing everything together with a panache she’d never possess. They carried the meal to the kitchen table and for a while were too busy eating to bother with conversation. Her tamale pie was pronounced an unqualified success and Ellie was thrilled.

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious about Bitter End’s history?” Glen pressed.

  “Yes,” she admitted with some reluctance, “but at the same time I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Unearthing skeletons I’d prefer remained buried,” she murmured. “Suppose it was my ancestors who were responsible? I’d never be able to hold up my head again.”

  “No one’s going to blame you for something that happened over a hundred years ago.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  “It could have been my family,” Glen said, resting his fork beside his plate. “Or the Westons. Whatever made Richard the kind of person he is—well, that had to come from somewhere. There could be a whole lot of dirt disclosed.”