Place Your Betts (The Marilyns) (4 page)

“What are you doing?” Betts leaned forward and tried to read the screen.

“Research.” Lucky’s fingers glided over the keys a mile a minute. “Just getting some background data.”

“No.” Betts shoved the lid of the laptop down. “I don’t want a dossier on my son. I want to get to know him on my own.”

Lucky’s fingers prevented the computer from closing. She righted it. “Suit yourself. Just so you know, he doesn’t have an FBI file. And I don’t think he’s been arrested.” She typed some more. “At least not in the United States. Since I’m in the FBI database, want me to put Gabe Swanson on the ten-most-wanted list?” Lucky looked up at Betts, waiting for an answer.

While doing Gabe harm had merit, she didn’t know his situation with Tom, so having Gabe arrested as a terrorist might not be the best idea. “Maybe later.”

Lucky shrugged. “Whatever. For now, I’ll put him above Alec Baldwin on the ‘No Fly’ list.”

“No.” Betts tried to close to computer again, but Lucky grabbed it and sat back.

“Just kidding.” She smiled in a way that said she probably wasn’t kidding.

“Speaking of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, she saw him and hasn’t spilled.”

“What? My car ran off the road, and he picked me up.” Betts’s voice was doing that high-octave thing again.

“And?” Charlie and Lucky said in unison.

“Nothing.” She wasn’t about to tell them she’d had to ride in the back.

“Tell me he has a comb-over, a beer belly, and a gimpy leg.” Lucky said.

“No, not exactly. He’s, well…the same.” Why was Betts finding it so hard to talk about Gabe to the two women she’d regularly spilled her guts to since she was fourteen?

“You still have a thing for him,” Lucky sing-songed.

“No.” Betts tried to fake giggle, but it came out as a cackle. “I’m still in shock…about Tom. It’s hard to take in.”

Charlie nodded and put her hand on Betts’s knee. “You need a plan. What exactly are you going to do? What’s your end game?”

“I want a life with my baby boy.” Betts hadn’t given it much thought, but out it had come. She really did. She wanted the big house, the white picket fence, and the security of family. But Gabe stood in her way.

She’d floated into Hollisville on the wings of maternal love…and now what?

Charlie reached down to her purple Louis Vuitton Epi Alma and pulled out a purple note pad and a purple Montblanc. Purple was as important to Charlie as sequins were to Mama. In Charlie’s girly, curlycue script, she wrote
Tom
at the top of the page. “Now, step one.” She waited, pen in hand, for someone to respond.

“I don’t want to plan an attack, I want my son.” Based on the encounter she’d had with Gabe earlier today, Tom needed her. And she’d be on her way there right now if her friends hadn’t gotten in her way. Betts stood. “I’m going to go introduce myself.”

Lucky extended a black combat-booted leg out in front of Betts. “May I point out a couple of minor details? First, Tom isn’t likely to run into your open arms and weep with gratitude to meet the mother who gave him up.” She rolled her eyes up to meet Betts’s. “And you’re not wearing any shoes.”

“Oh.” Some of the air came out of Betts’s balloon of maternal hope. The guilt that had licked at her heels since the day Tom was born reared its ugly head. She sat back down. What if he hated her? “But he needs me.”

Lucky closed her laptop and stood. She stepped around the table and squished between Charlie and Betts. “Let’s figure this out together.”

Charlie looked around. “This house is just how you described it—the home that fun forgot.” She scribbled on her tablet. “If you’re serious about Tom, you need a home base.” She gestured with her hand. “I can redecorate this, make it pretty, but this place has a bad feeling. It’s like a black hole sucking all the joy out of life.”

That pretty much summed up Gigi.

Lucky raised her hand. “I vote we burn this place down.”

Charlie and Betts turned slowly to look at her.

“What?” Her eyebrows bounced off her hairline. “I can make it look like an accident.”

Lucky had never quite outgrown her juvenile delinquent phase.

Betts took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The weight of a huge, life-changing event settled in on her. She hadn’t thought about what to do after she met Tom. Her dream until now had been to get him back. What if he didn’t want her? What if Gabe wouldn’t let her see Tom? “Why don’t we back-burner the arson idea and see if there’s something else?”

What if she relocated here? Bought some land, built something nice where she and Tom could live? Even if he didn’t want to see her, she’d wait him out and be close when he changed his mind and decided to love her. “I’m going to stay here for Tom, no matter what. I want to buy something.”

Lucky nodded and picked up her laptop. “You’ll need a house or some land to build on.” She typed on the keyboard. “I’ll see what’s available.”

Charlie pulled out her phone. “I’ll call Mama and tell her to send your clothes.”

Betts grinned to herself. “Have her call Jack and have my tour bus delivered. I can live there until we find a house.”

“Good idea.” Charlie nodded.

Together they could handle anything. If their friendship had a tag line, it would be: Charlie made things pretty, Lucky made things work, and Betts turned it all into a song.

***

The next morning, Betts put her hand on the front door knob. Today, she met her son and she’d do it alone. Not that she didn’t want to involve her two best friends, but she needed to do this on her terms. And they were still asleep. She opened the door.

Rapid-fire cameras worked overtime to get the money shot. How had they already found her? She blew out a long, slow breath. Gabe. He was the only person who knew she was here besides her friends.

He’d sold her out…again.

Betts affixed her media smile, tilted her head coyly to the left, and let them gawk their fill. In her life, nothing was private…only she needed some privacy. She was on her way to the Swanson ranch, and all she needed was a parade of cars following her the whole way.

“I love you.” A blond man with a baritone voice jumped up and down like he was on a pogo stick.

“Sing for us,” chimed in a chubby girl whose long, curly brown hair and glow-in-the-dark blue eye shadow were proof positive that she was stuck in the 1980s.

“I’m praying for you.” That was the deep alto of a stern-faced woman with leathery brown skin and enough wrinkles to put her age anywhere from sixty to six hundred. The glaring sunlight wasn’t kind, outlining every wrinkle.

“Music is love,” came the deep bass of a redheaded guy wearing a
Keep Austin Weird
tee shirt.

If only she could get them all to sing together, she’d have a perfect quartet.

She sized them up. They didn’t look like reporters. Fans…must be. So Gabe had only gone local…so far. He was probably on the phone with the tabloids right now.

“Thank you all so much for your support. I’m sure you understand that I need some space during this terrible time.” Betts shot them her most grief-stricken look. Grief came in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes it was a huge, gaping wound that would never heal, and sometimes it was a nagging paper cut.

Gigi was definitely a paper cut.

Betts glanced to the driveway. No car. Damn. Charlie had driven a rented Lincoln Navigator here from Dallas, but it was missing. She tucked Charlie’s keys back in her front jeans pocket. Damn it, Lucky. She was the only person Betts knew who could hotwire a car.

“Thanks for coming.” She retreated back inside, closed the door, and leaned against it. God only knew where Lucky was, and Betts’s Mercedes was halfway up an embankment on FM 449. How was she supposed to get to Tom without a car?

Her eyes landed on the wooden key holder nailed next to the front door, and her heart rate kicked up a notch. Florescent light sparkled off the metal of Gigi’s car keys. Freedom and the opportunity to defile the only token of vanity Gigi had allowed herself were too good to pass up. Betts grabbed the keys, headed through the kitchen, opened the garage door, and felt around the bare two-by-fours for the light switch. Her fingers made contact, and the garage light hummed and flickered to life.

Right in the middle of the one-bay garage, exactly two feet from the washing machine and lined up perfectly with the stand-up freezer, sat Mavis the Mustang. Cherry-red, waxed to a shine, and the convertible top up, the Mustang was in the very same condition it had been in 1965 when Gigi had walked into the Ford dealership, plunked down a chunk of change, and driven it off the lot.

Gigi had a fondness for beer and muscle cars—if God had struck her mute, she’d have been the most popular woman in town.

Betts punched the garage door button attached to the visor. The well-oiled door rode up on silent hinges. Careful not to hit any fans, she backed out of the driveway. She waved one hand, smiled graciously, and gunned the engine. She glanced at the gas gauge. Full. Thanks be to Gigi.

Betts turned onto Highway 80 and headed east. The Swanson ranch was outside of town off on a two-track that looped the family’s fifteen-hundred-acre cattle spread. She turned on the radio to drown out the queasiness in her stomach. For twenty minutes, she tuned into a country station out of Longview, rode with the windows down, and bolstered her courage. By the time she’d turned on the two-track, her nerves were raw, and her hair was matted and windblown. The trees cast ominous shadows over the road, and the memory of the last time she’d been here weighed heavily. Of its own accord, her right foot eased off the gas and pressed the brake.

On either side of the road, field fence marked Swanson land. Her heart ricocheted off her chest and dropped to the pit of her stomach. Gigi’s house was bad, but this place had torn out Betts’s heart and ground it to dust. The last time she’d been on this road, she’d been walking through a thunderstorm. She rested her head against the back of the seat, closed her eyes, and the memory was waiting for her.

Thunder rolled in the distance, and rain dripped off the tip of her nose. The velvety night was a soggy, wet blanket wrapped around her. Nerves and morning sickness snaked through her stomach as her shaking hand banged the huge, brass doorknocker of Gabe’s house. He’d never brought her here because he’d told her that she deserved better, but she now had nowhere else to go.

The vast, wraparound front porch of the red brick mansion reminded her of Scarlett O’hara and fancy parties where people ate finger sandwiches and waltzed underneath giant chandeliers that looked like upside-down wedding cakes. This was the glamorous life…Gabe’s life. And now it would be hers.

The headmistress had kicked her out of school, so Lucky and Charlie had driven her to Gigi’s only to have the old woman slam the door in her face. Betts had nowhere else to turn. Mama was on “vacation”—county jail on a drug offense and wouldn’t be out for at least a year. And Betts couldn’t face the disappointment in her eyes when she found out that her baby was having a baby. Betts was homeless but not helpless. As soon as Gabe found out about the baby, he’d take her in, and he’d finally stand up to his father. The Swansons would do right by her and the baby. Betts pulled the raincoat tighter around her and beat the door knocker again. Man, she was starving. She’d walked all the way over here from the main road, and her feet were killing her. But everything would be fine soon. It had to be. Betts had decided to take Gabe up on his offer of marriage.

The door swung open, and a pinch-faced woman who looked like she’d just sucked on a dill pickle said, “What do you want?”

“Is Gabe here? I’d like to see him.” Betts raised her chin and refused to cower.

“Wait here. I’ll see if he’s available.” The door slammed in Betts’s face.

Manners obviously weren’t a part of this woman’s daily life.

Betts decided right then and there that she and Gabe were never gonna live in a place like this, full of meanness and spite. They’d get a place of their own, fix it up the way they wanted, and fill it with love.

Five minutes later, the front door opened, and Gabe stepped out.

Relief filled Betts, and the knots in her stomach loosened. Everything would be okay now. Gabe loved her. They would be together.

“Betts… What are you doing here?”

Something was wrong. Gabe hadn’t touched her, and he’d called her Betts. He never called her by her first name. It was always Red. “You haven’t returned my calls. I left messages. I need to talk to you.”

“Now’s not a good time.” Gabe’s eyes roamed down her body. “You’re wet all the way through.”

“I walked up your driveway.” Because the men at the front gate wouldn’t let her through, she’d had to climb the fence.

“I don’t have a lot of time now. Can I call you later?” Gabe stuffed his hands in the front pockets of his jeans as he studied her face. His hungry eyes lingered on every feature like he was trying to memorize them. “My dad’s in one of his moods. We’re in the middle of a party.”

“I need to talk to you now.” Her mouth turned as dry as sand. She swallowed several times. “I’m pregnant.” Best to jump right on in there.

“I know.” Gabe looked away. “Gigi called.”

That bitch. Betts’s heart slammed against her chest. Hate was all she had in her. Why wasn’t he happy? They would be together now. They loved each other. They would make a family together—a family that was full of love and happiness, not coldness and criticism.

“Look, I can’t do this now. Can we talk about it later?”

It felt like someone drop-kicked a fifty-pound lead weight in her stomach. She stepped back. This was all wrong. “I kind of need to know what you’re thinking.”

Because her whole life hinged on them being together.

“Things have changed.” His voice cracked. “The summer’s over. You went home to New Orleans, and I started Kilgore Junior College.”

“But…” Tears burned her eyes. She shivered. They had plans. He loved her. It was simple. Why was he acting this way?

Gabe leaned against the iron railing that fenced in the porch. “Look, we haven’t seen each other in two months. A lot has happened. Maybe you found someone else?” His voice was a monotone like he was reading from a script.