Eventually, she said she was going to leave him, that she still loved him but she'd gotten a job on the sales staff of a sports equipment company and she was leaving for Fort Worth in the morning. That night, the sound of her muffled crying awakened him again. He lay there for a while with his eyes open, and then he jerked her up out of the pillow and hit her across the face. He slapped her once, and then he slapped her again. After that, he pulled on his pants and ran right out of the house so that in years to come, Holly Grace Beaudine would remember she had a son of a bitch husband who hit her, not some stupid kid who had made her cry because he'd killed her baby.
After she left, he spent several months so drunk that he couldn't play golf, even though he was supposed to be getting ready for qualifying school for the pro tour. Skeet eventually called Holly Grace, and she came to see Dallie.
"I'm happy for the first time in a long time," she told him. "Why can't you be happy, too?"
It had taken years for them to learn to love each other in a new way. At first they had tumbled back into bed together, only to find themselves caught up in old arguments. Occasionally they had tried to live with each other for a few months, but they wanted different things from life and it never worked out. The first time he saw her with another man, Dallie wanted to kill him. But a cute little secretary had caught his eye, so he kept his fists to himself.
Over the years they talked about divorce, but neither of them did anything about it. Skeet meant everything in the world to Dallie. Holly Grace loved Winona with all her heart. But the two of them together-Dallie and Holly Grace-they were each other's real family, and people with childhoods as troubled as theirs didn't give up family easily.
Tempest-Tossed
Chapter 19
The building was a squat white rectangle of concrete with four dusty cars parked at the side next to a trash dumpster. A padlocked shack stood behind the dumpster, and fifty yards beyond that was the thin metal finger of the radio antenna that Francesca had been walking toward for nearly two hours. As Beast went off to explore, Francesca wearily climbed the two steps to the front door. Its glass surface was nearly opaque with dust and the smear of countless fingerprints. Decals advertising the Sulphur City Chamber of Commerce, the United Way, and various broadcasting associations covered much of the left side of the door, while the center held the gold call letters KDSC. The bottom half of the C was missing, so it might have been a G, but Francesca knew it wasn't because she had seen the C on the mailbox at the end of the lane when she turned in.
Although she could have positioned herself in front of the door to study her reflection, she didn't bother. Instead, she rubbed the back of her hand over her forehead, pushing aside the damp strands of hair that had stuck there, and brushed off her jeans as best she could. She couldn't do anything about the bloody scrapes on her arms, so she ignored them. Her earlier euphoria had faded, leaving exhaustion and a terrible apprehension.
Pushing open the front door, she found herself in a reception area overstuffed with six cluttered desks, nearly as many clocks, an assortment of bulletin boards, calendars, posters, and cartoons fixed to the walls with curling yellowed tape. A brown and gold striped Danish modern couch sat to her left, the center cushion concave from too much use. The room contained only one window, a large one that looked into a studio where an announcer wearing a headset sat in front of a microphone. His voice was piped into the office through a wall speaker and the volume was turned low.
A chubby red-haired chipmunk of a woman looked up at Francesca from the room's only occupied desk. "Can I help you?"
Francesca cleared her throat, her gaze traveling from the swaying gold crosses hanging from the woman's ears down over her polyester blouse, and then on to the black telephone sitting by her wrist. One call to Wynette and her immediate problems would be over. She would have food, a change of clothes, and a roof over her head. But the idea of running to Dallie for help had lost its old appeal. Despite her exhaustion and fear, something inside her had been unalterably changed back on that deserted dirt road. She was sick of being a pretty ornament getting blown away by every ill wind that swept in her direction. For better or for worse, she was going to take control of her own life.
"I wonder if I might speak with the person in charge," she said to the chipmunk. Francesca spoke carefully, trying her best to sound competent and professional, instead of like someone with a dirty face and dusty, sandaled feet who didn't have a dime in her pocket.
The combination of Francesca's bedraggled appearance and her upper-class British accent obviously interested the woman. "I'm Katie Cathcart, the office manager. Could you tell me what this is about?"
Could an office manager help her? Francesca had no idea, but decided she would be better off with the man at the top. She kept her tone friendly, but firm. "It's rather personal."
The woman hesitated, then got up and went into the office behind her. She reappeared a moment later. "As long as you don't take too long, Miss Padgett'll see you. She's our station manager."
Francesca's nervousness took a quantum leap. Why did the station manager have to be a woman? At
least with a man, she would have stood half a chance. And then she reminded herself that this was an opportunity for a fresh beginning-a new Francesca, one who wasn't going to try to slide through life using the tired old tricks of her former self. Straightening her shoulders, she walked into the station manager's office.
A gold metal nameplate on the desk announced the presence of Clare Padgett, an elegant name for an inelegant woman. In her early forties, she had a masculine, square-jawed face, softened only by the remains of a dab of red lipstick. Her graying brown hair was medium-length and blunt-cut. It looked as though it received nothing more than shampooing by way of attention. She held a cigarette like a man, pushed into the crook between the index and middle finger of her right hand, and when she lifted the cigarette to her mouth she didn't so much inhale the smoke as swallow it.
"What is it?" Clare asked abruptly. She spoke in a professional broadcaster's voice, rich and resonant, but without the slightest trace of friendliness. From the wall speaker behind the desk came the faint sound of the announcer reading a local news report.
Even though she hadn't been offered it, Francesca took the room's single straight-backed chair, deciding in an instant that Clare Padgett didn't look like the sort of person who would respect anyone she could step all over. As she gave her name, she positioned herself on the edge of the seat. "I'm sorry to appear without an appointment, but I wanted to inquire about a possible job." Her voice sounded tentative instead of assertive. What had happened to all that arrogance she used to carry around with her like a cloud of perfume?
After a brief inspection of Francesca's appearance, Clare Padgett returned her attention to her paperwork. "I don't have any jobs."
It was nothing more than Francesca had expected, but she still felt as if she'd had the wind knocked out
of her. She thought of that dusty ribbon of road stretching to the rim of the Texas horizon. Her tongue
felt dry and swollen in her mouth. "Are you absolutely certain you don't have something? I'm willing to