The Widows of Wichita County

Five Years Later

October 11

Sunrise

Clifton Creek, Texas

The chrome streetlights rocked with the rhythm of the dawn wind as Meredith Allen crossed Main and headed toward Clifton Creek's only elementary school. She was an hour early. She always arrived an hour early. It had become her routine over the dozen years she had taught school.

Meredith told herself she needed to be up and out of the way to allow her husband, Kevin, to dress without them constantly bumping into one another in the bedroom and bath of their tiny house. She refused to admit her leaving early might be because they had little to say to one another in the morning. After a day apart, they would talk of the news and who they saw or the changes in the weather. But at dawn, conversation had somehow grown as stale as morning breath. She told herself it was to be expected. After all, they had grown up together, and after a decade of marriage they were bound to run out of things to say from time to time.

Parking in the empty school lot, Meredith stared through the cracked windshield of her old Mustang. The sunlight sparkled off the grain silos just beyond the Wal-Mart store and the city limits sign. When she had been a child her father told her the silos were the castle of an evil king who had been forever banned from Clifton Creek.

Meredith smiled. He also told her the oil rigs were dancing to a tune they heard deep in the earth. The huge rigs kept dipping to the beat, trying to pull the melody to the surface so that all could hear.

Her father had been a dreamer. The rigs were no more than ugly mosquitoes, sucking the earth's blood. But that blood had built the town and had kept it alive when many other small communities in West Texas had dried up like wild gourds and blown away. Clifton Creek had survived amid the rocky soil just as she had. This was not just her hometown, this place was a part of her. She belonged here, as native as the cottonwoods and coyotes.

Meredith collected her school bag and purse then climbed out of the Mustang, excited as always. She would have plenty of time to get everything organized before the first student arrived. Her house might be a mess-sometimes her life seemed disjointed-but in her classroom everything had its place. There, a magic happened that only teachers understood.

If her existence were an art gallery, teaching would be shown with colorful brush strokes and her home with careful line-drawn prints.

Not that she hated home. Home was just home and Kevin just Kevin. She could never hate her small town or him; they were both as much a part of her as bone or blood.

At first Kevin had told her how lucky she was to be his girlfriend, and then his wife; as though she needed reminding from time to time. Lately the words had changed; now she should count herself fortunate if he stayed around. As if there were other places he might go. Meredith would just laugh and remind him they belonged here, together. They always had, they always would.

As she walked to the school building she wondered what he was thinking, for he had been moody for weeks. The only blessing she counted each day was the twenty-three smiles looking up at her inside the. sanctuary of her second-grade classroom. Kevin would work through his melancholy state, he always did. In the meantime, she had the children.

She waved as Helena Whitworth passed by in her long white Buick, driving toward downtown. The older woman looked every inch the queen in her small kingdom of Clifton Creek.

Helena Whitworth did not wave back. In fact, she didn't even notice Meredith or the grade school. With the precision of a general about to go into battle, Helena organized her thoughts, rehearsed her orders, and prepared her defense on several fronts.

She had dreaded this day all week. Talking to the city council about increasing the budget would be not only boring, but time-consuming. She needed her wits sharp and alert. Her husband, J.D. had already made her late by joking about what he would like to do this Thanksgiving instead of going over to one of her daughters' homes and being assaulted by grandchildren. He told Helena over eggs Benedict that he planned to take a weed whacker instead of a cane this year. Maybe that would keep the little devils away.

For the hundredth time, Helena wished she had married J.D. first, or even second. Then, maybe they would have been young enough to have children together. Everyone in Clifton Creek thought of him as The Colonel, a hard, career Marine, who married the richest widow in town. But J.D. had taught her to laugh and to love. Despite all her duties and projects, J.D. was her core, the center that made everything else worthwhile.

Helena patted the wheel of her Buick as though the horsepower would respond to her touch. If she planned to get anything accomplished in the council meeting today, she had better stop thinking of J.D. and his jokes and start concentrating on what she planned to say about adding roadside parks at both ends of town.

Another year, maybe two, and she would turn loose her civic responsibilities and travel with J.D. They would go to places she did not know how to pronounce, eat food she had never heard of, and make love like they were still in their fifties.

For the past year J.D. had tried his best to get her to reduce her workload, but he did not understand. Helena needed work like she needed air. She was a workhorse, loving the challenge of each day. She had not slowed down in the forty years of running her own business and today was not the time to even start thinking about it. Maybe tomorrow she would watch the birds a little longer, or take a walk with him hand in hand. Maybe tomorrow there would be more time.

Helena forced her thoughts back to the problems of the day. The meeting should be over by noon. She could still do the final buying for the holiday season if she ate lunch with her secretary in their office above her store. Helena's Choice had not become a quality dress shop by neglecting details. The last of the Christmas orders needed to be placed, and soon.

For almost forty years, she had a motto; buy for Christmas before the first frost and for summer before the trees bud. Helena prided herself on being a woman who lived by timetables. With practiced diligence everything in her life had an order to it. The clock, the calendar, the seasons measured out her days in predictable patterns. And the patterns brought a peace to her aging. These were all things she could count on just as surely as she always counted on J.D.

By the time she pulled into the lot between the courthouse and the post office, Helena felt the weather changing, along with her mood. The day would be long and tedious. It would probably be after dark before she got back to her home that J.D. laughingly called Pigeon Run. There would be no twilight time for them this evening.

One of the Montano Ranch pickups had parked sideways in the lot, and the horse trailer it pulled completely blocked her reserved spot. Helena waited, irritated but not surprised. Ranchers in these parts thought the wide-open spaces extended into town. She had seen them park loaded cattle trucks in the center of Main Street while they ran in for an hour-long cup of coffee.

Helena watched as Davis Montano's young Italian wife hugged her mail and ran for her pickup. Helena could not help but wonder where the stylish woman bought her clothes. For once, the older woman had no idea. All she knew was that Anna Montano did not buy them at Helena's Choice, and they certainly had not come from one of the local discount stores.

"Sorry," Anna Montano shouted, jumping into her truck. "I-I was just picking up the mail."

Anna did not expect the older woman to respond. Most of the people in this town acted as if they could not quite see her, even when she bothered to speak to them. In their eyes she was an outsider and therefore not a real person. The five years she had lived in Clifton Creek might as well have been a month to them.

Anna watched the thin, well-dressed woman park her Buick and hurry into the courthouse.

"Helena Whitworth," Anna said aloud as if her own voice could somehow ease her loneliness.

"Hello, Helena," Anna added as she started the truck. She had long ago accepted the fact that these Texans were not being rude, just unobservant. If she had been from New York, or L.A. they might have passed the time of day, but Anna was from Europe and, for most of them, that might as well be the moon.

Anna gripped the three letters from Italy lying beside her. The first year she had come to Texas as a bride, she found several letters from her family unopened and crushed in the floorboards of the ranch trucks. Unsure of what to say to her husband, she solved the problem by getting a post office box. Whenever she made a trip to town she stopped by, knowing her letters would be waiting. If her husband Davis noticed, he never commented.

That small inconsiderate act made her think about leaving him and going back home where she knew she belonged. Rut she hesitated with indecision in the same halting way that she stuttered in speech. No action was less frightening than action. It seemed every time she acted on impulse or emotion, she had chosen the wrong path. She always had to remind herself to think before she acted, just as she had to think before she spoke. It was her bad luck that her husband was a man deeply involved in his own agenda and who had little time or interest in her problems.

If she had told her family about her thoughts of leaving Davis because he did not deliver her mail, they would have said she was a pampered fool. They would have suggested she stay and grow to love him while learning to overlook his flaws. After five years, Anna sometimes felt as if all her energy had been spent on swimming through the rocky shoals of her marriage. If she did not act, and soon, it would be only a matter of time before she drowned.

Driving past the five buildings that framed the college grounds, Anna took a deep breath and tried to convince herself one more time that everything was all right. She was letting her thoughts run away with her. But she was no longer the schoolgirl Davis brought home to Clifton Creek.

This part of town always welcomed her with its large trees and neatly trimmed grounds. Davis had told her the locals started the college when one of Clifton Creek's first settlers donated his huge home. For years the entire teachers college had operated out of the one building. Dorms, a gym, other classrooms designed in the same aging brick structure, had grown up around the old home.

Anna thought the campus was the only place for miles that anyone might call pretty. She would like to put the area on canvas, a view peeping through the colors of fall to the hundred-year-old home that must have been a mansion in its time.

She slowed. Maybe she would paint it in the violets of sunset, if she could catch the twilight just right. Here, its beauty tiptoed quickly, never overwhelming as it had back home. She would have to work hard to catch the uniqueness of the mansion on canvas.

As Anna passed, a few students hurried from their cars to their early classes, paying little more attention to the traffic than the squirrels did. She noticed a long-legged woman dressed in western clothes crawl out of a Dumpster with a box in each hand.

Anna did not need to hear the woman's words. The look of someone swearing was the same in any language. Anna turned away, not wanting to be a part of another's troubles.

"Damn, damn, and double damn," Randi Howard mumbled as she tossed the boxes in the back of her Jeep. She'd fought like a warrior inside that Dumpster to claim the boxes and both of them smelled like cheap whiskey and hot sauce.

Any clothes she packed in them would reek of the same, but at least she would be seeing this town in her rearview mirror. She thought briefly of packing all her junk in trash bags, but somehow boxes seemed more dignified. She should have invested in some of those fine packing boxes sold by moving companies. As many times as she had moved over the years, she would have worn the boxes out.

Randi climbed into her Jeep and headed back to the trailer park. The sky clouded up as if it might rain, but she planned to be long gone before she got caught in a storm.

She waved as she passed Frankie's Bar thinking of the good times and the bad times she had had there, and wondered about the times she had forgotten to remember the next morning.

She thought of the old adage that said we only regret the things we didn't do. Randi knew it wasn't true. The possibility of regret usually fired her into action. She recalled how she could not wait to get a tattoo on her ankle so she could talk about how sorry she was for doing such a foolish thing. The remorse had been so complete she had added a butterfly to her butt.

When Randi drove by the Y she noticed Crystal Howard jogging around the track on the roof. In days past Randi might have honked, or yelled, but lately she seldom talked to Crystal. Even though they were married to kin, they didn't travel in the same circles anymore.

There had been a time when Frankie's Bar didn't come to life each night until Randi and Crystal stepped through the door. Most evenings they wouldn't have to buy a single drink.

But that was before Crystal had married Shelby Howard, an old oilman with a huge house just outside of town and the dozen oil wells pumping nothing but money. A few weeks later Randi had married his nephew, Jimmy, settling for the younger, poorer Howard. He'd been a good husband and, for a while, a good lover, but like everything else in Randi's life, she figured it was time to run before he yelled "Last call."

The thought of starting over at thirty-three was frightening and she wasn't getting any younger. It was time she left Jimmy to follow her dreams.

That was one thing Randi decided she was proud of-no man had ever left her. She'd never given them the chance. When Jimmy got home tonight, he'd wonder where she was for a while or, more likely, where his supper was. Then he'd check the closet and notice she'd moved on.

She doubted he'd even try to find her and knew he wouldn't take off work to come after her. In a few years, if they crossed paths, they'd remember the good times and laugh. It hadn't been a bad marriage, just one that had ended, as everything does. Seems like most folks thought their relationships were going either forward or backward. Randi felt hers and Jimmy's had just got stuck in neutral. They had some good times. They had some bad times. Now was just the goodbye time.

Randi glanced in her rearview mirror at Crystal. She would have liked to have said goodbye, but that would just complicate things, and Randi had to get busy and untangle her life.

Crystal Howard watched the familiar red Jeep turn into the trailer park gate as she circled the west end of the running track. She lifted her hand to wave, then reconsidered. It was almost eight o'clock. Randi must be running late for work. If Crystal had caught her attention and she had backed up to talk, even for a few minutes, there would be trouble with her boss at the plant.

Slowing to a walk, Crystal began her cool down. Randi would only have told Crystal how lucky she was, no longer having to punch a time clock. Crystal would agree, letting Randi believe that at least one of them was living the dream of marrying rich. Randi didn't need to know about the pain of the cosmetic surgeries, or the two-hour workout each morning, or the overwhelming feeling of living in a world where she didn't belong.

Crystal grabbed her water bottle and sat down on the club's only lawn chair. She told herself that Shelby made her life bearable in this town. Shelby would pick her up and dance around the room with her, yelling that he had the prettiest girl in town. Then, she would forget about the surgeries and the workouts.

He might be thirty years older than she was, but he knew how to make her feel special. He told her once he didn't care about all the other men she had in her life just as long as he was the last.

A breeze cooled the thin layer of sweat on her skin. Crystal shivered. She would be glad when this day was over. There was an uneasiness about it. Shelby would laugh at her if she mentioned her feelings, but she sensed calamity rumbling in with the upcoming storm.

In the early oil boom days of Clifton Creek, Texas, a bell was erected on the courthouse porch. When an accident happened in the oil fields the bell sounded and, within minutes, was echoed by churches and schools. Silently, the children would pack their books and head home…past the clanging… past men rushing to help.

They did not need to be told. They knew. Someone's father, someone's husband, someone's son was dead amid the manmade forest of rigs.

October 11

9:45 a. m.

Montano Ranch

Anna Montano cleared away the breakfast dishes and poured herself the last of the coffee. She collected the letters she had picked up a few hours before and relaxed, finally having time to read. From her perch on a kitchen bar stool she could see all of what Davis called "the company space" in their home. The great room with its wide entry area at the front door and ten-foot fireplace along the north wall. An open dining room filled with an oversize table and ornate chairs, never used except when Davis paid the bills. And the breakfast nook, almost covered over in plants, where she ate most of her meals, alone.

Carlo's familiar honk rattled the morning calm. In the five years they had been in America, Carlo had become more and more Davis's foreman and less her brother. She had grown used to him walking past her to speak to Davis, or inviting her husband to go somewhere without including her.

Anna heard Davis storm from his office, hurry down the hall, and bolt out the front door. She knew by now he would not bother to look in her direction, or say goodbye. She was no more visible to her husband and brother than a piece of the furniture. He did not bother to inform her why he had returned to the house after leaving almost an hour before. She had not bothered to ask.

She watched as Shelby Howard's truck plowed down the road toward the oil rig he was building on their land. She had only met the old oilman once, but he drove like he owned the land he leased. Another car followed in his dust, but Anna could not see the driver. From bits of conversations she had heard Davis having over the phone, Anna knew they needed more money to drill deeper for oil. She guessed the men were having a meeting this morning on the site.

She finished her cup of coffee, enjoying the quiet of the house once more. The sun had been dancing in and out of clouds all morning, making it impossible to trust the light in the back room-the only room in the house she dared to call hers.

Soon after she had arrived as Davis's bride, she began to paint again just as she always had during her lonely childhood. Between the horses and her painting, Anna continued to pass the hours.

Anna watched the horses in the north corral for a while before climbing off the bar stool and washing her coffee cup. When she turned to put away the cup a sound, like a hundred rifles firing at once, thundered through the house, shaking the walls with fury.

By the time the cup had shattered on the tile floor, Anna was at a full run toward the door. Nothing in nature could have made such a sound.

She fought with the latch on the heavy front door, her heart pounding in her throat. When the door finally swung open, yelling came from the barn and bunkhouse. Men raced toward trucks and pickups, shouting at one another to hurry.

Anna held her breath, watching them, trying to figure out what had happened. The very air seemed charged with panic.

Then she saw it. Black smoke billowed from the oil rig site that earlier had been no more than a dot along the horizon.

Carlo's pickup sprayed gravel as it swung around the drive. "Stay here!" he yelled at her.

Anna stared at the smoke blackening the white-clouded sky, like ink spilling onto a linen tablecloth. "Where is Davis?" she whispered as Carlo raced away. He did not bother with the dirt road that ribboned toward the site. He bobbed across the open pasture directly toward the rising fury.

Anna huddled on the first step of the porch and watched the flames dance in the smoke as every hand on the ranch rushed to the fire. She did not need an answer to her question. She knew Davis must be there, somewhere in that smoke. Somewhere near the fire.

In her mind she paintedthe scene, closing her thoughts away to the tragedy unfolding before her eyes.

10:24 a.m.

Clifton Creek Courthouse

Helena Whitworth stared out the second-floor window of the Clifton Creek courthouse conference room, watching the Texas wind chase autumn into winter. She had seen pictures of places in New England where fall blanketed the landscape with brilliant hues and piled color in vibrant heaps like haystacks on an artist's palette. But here, as the leaves began to turn, gusts ripped them from their branches and sent them northeast toward Oklahoma before the metamorphosis of color was given a chance to brighten the gray landscape.

Clifton Creek was rich in oil and cattle and sunny days, but sometimes, when the scattered patches of green dulled to brown, she felt washed out all the way to her soul.

The town of six thousand reminded her of a mesquite tree spreading out over the dry land, offering little in comfort or beauty. Even the streets were drawn out like points on a compass, north to south, east to west. No curves, no variance, and no tolerance for change. She had lived here all her life, sixty-three years so far, and she always dreaded autumn.

Slowly, Helena straightened bony shoulders beneath her tailored suit and faced the rest of the city council members. "Gentlemen, it may be years, maybe even beyond our lifetimes, before we see the importance of building even a few small parks. But, mark my words, we will see it."

Not one man dared argue. They could have been made of the same mahogany as the bookshelves lining three of the walls. To say Helena Whitworth was a thorn in their sides was as understated as calling skin cancer a blemish.

"J.D. and I talked it over." She softened her blow by including her husband so the members would not look on her idea as simply a woman's way of thinking. "And we've come up with a plan…"

"Mrs. Whitworth," a plump woman, with a hair bun the size of a cow patty, whispered from the open doorway, "I hate to interrupt, but you have a call."

"Not now, Mary. Please take a message." Helena unfolded a chart, dismissing her assistant without another glance.

"No, Helena." Determination hardened Mary's normally soft voice. "It's the hospital. Something about J.D.

Helena placed the chart on the huge table, moved through the doorway and into the reception room before Mary's voice settled in the air. In the almost forty years she had been in Helena's employment, Mary had called her boss by her first name only twice.

As Mary handed Helena the phone, the two women's stares locked. The men in the adjacent room would have been surprised at the sympathy in the secretary's gaze and at the fear in Helena's.

"Hello?" She hugged the receiver with both hands. "Yes, this is Mrs. Whitworth."

A long pause followed. No questions. No denial of information. No cries. "I understand." She forced her voice to steady. Years in business served her well. Emotions were a luxury she could not afford to wear. "I'll be right there."

Helena's shoulders were rod straight now, as if her jacket were still on the hanger. Her voice brittled with forced calmness, for she knew full well the men labored to listen from just beyond the door. They couldn't see her grip Mary's hand. They heard no cry as her lips whitened with strain.

"There's been an accident on the oil rig J.D. and Shelby Howard are investing in. The nurse said five men were badly burned. Some died before the crew got them to the hospital„

"Five?"

Helena nodded once.

"J.D.?" Mary whispered.

"One man's burned too badly to identify, but he's still alive." Helena shook her head. "The odds are not with us."

Mary cried in tiny little gulps that sounded like hiccups. Helena opened her arms to her employee, her friend. Helena had buried two husbands already. Mary had sobbed each time. But, for Helena, there was too much to do, too much to think about for tears.

She handed Mary a tissue. "Would you go to my house and tell the girls, when they arrive, to stay put until I get back to you? I know as soon as they hear, they'll come by, and I don't want them laying siege on the hospital with all their children in tow. Tell them I need them at my house to answer calls. I'll phone as soon as I know something."

"They love J.D. like he's their father," Mary lied, as always, trying to be kind.

Helena pulled her keys from her purse and smiled, thinking J.D. hated her forty-year-old twin daughters only slightly less than he hated bird poachers. If he were burned and near death, Paula and Patricia were the last two he would want at his bedside.

"He's got to be the one alive," Mary mumbled and blew her nose. "He didn't survive thirty years in the Marines to come home and die in an accident. Three Purple Hearts prove he's too tough for that."

"Before you go, inform the men inside that the meeting is over." Without another word, Helena turned and marched down the hallway, her steps echoing like a steady heartbeat off the drab walls lined with colorless pictures and maps.

She was not a woman to make a charade of being dainty or falsely feminine, but she would not wear grief lightly for a third time in her life.

"Be alive," she ordered in more than a whisper. "Be alive when I get there."

She hurried through the deserted courthouse. The alarm bell from years past hung in a glass case reserved for memorabilia. "Not today," Helena said as she remembered her childhood during the oil boom. "I'll hear no bell today. Not for my J.D."

10:37 a.m.

Clifton Creek Elementary

In a town marinated in secrets, hinted at but never told, Meredith Allen played Alice, innocently lost in Wonderland. At thirty-four, she still wore her hair long with a ribbon and faced life as if all she saw made sense.

Her path would not have been so tragic if she had wandered blind, but she knew… she knew and she still pretended.

When pulled from the refuge of teaching her second-grade class to report to the office, Meredith saw a lie in the principal's eyes. Something he refused to say. Something he could not reveal as he told her she was needed at the hospital. Kevin had been involved in an oil rig accident.

She asked no questions as they walked back to her classroom, brightly decorated in a papier-mache autumn. Principal Pickett offered to read the students a story while Meredith gathered her things and organized her desk, putting markers in order and papers in line. She was in no hurry. The lie in what he had not said could wait.

Meredith compiled lies, organizing them, ranking each, but never confronting any. Her father had been the first master of the craft. Her first memories of Christmas echoed with stories and half truths. "Things will be better next year."

"This is just as good as what you wanted." He kept up the falsehoods until finally he told his last, "Don't worry, princess, I'm not going to die and leave you."

As Meredith left the school, she thought of how Kevin had fallen right into the shoes of her father with his lies. Only last week he had sworn he no longer left the bank except to eat lunch. He must have lied, for oil rigs did not spring up over cafes. He was probably still leaving the office every chance he got, still staying away too long. His boss would be furious if Kevin lost hours of work or was hurt bad enough to have to take sick days. He might even be fired.

Ten minutes later, Meredith parked in front of the twenty bed hospital, straightened her sweater appliqued with the alphabet and lifted her head, carefully erasing all anger from her face.

County Memorial Hospital stood exactly as it had since the early '70s when Meredith had played on the grass out front while her father died inside. The trees had grown larger. A slice of lawn had been paved over in the '80s to allow for three handicap parking spaces. The eaves, built without any thought of architectural style, now sported aluminum siding and gutters. All else, even the putty-colored door frames, remained the same. Twenty beds available for a town that had never needed ten.

As a young girl, she had tried to imagine a big city hospital where people rushed about shouting orders, and groups huddled in corners speaking in foreign tongues. The busiest night at Memorial had probably been three years prior when the Miller triplets were born. Memorial was not much of a hospital. Even the name, Wichita County Memorial Hospital, that had once been lettered across the front had been shortened to simply County Memorial. It was mostly where the people of Clifton Creek came to give birth and die. If anyone needed surgery or faced a long stay, they drove the hour to Wichita Falls.

Meredith slammed her aging blue Mustang's door three times before it stayed closed. Kevin had promised to fix it a month ago. But he had not, just as he had not done a hundred other things. Or was it a thousand by now? Things had been piling up since they started dating at sixteen and married five years later.

It must be at least a thousand, she thought: the car door, the front lock, the garbage disposal… their marriage. Not that their marriage was crumbling, only cracked, Meredith decided. She had no doubt they both still loved one another. But sometimes, it felt uneven, like a table with one short leg, never in danger of falling, but irritating all the same.

Meredith fought the wind as she hurried into the emergency entrance. She glanced back at the bank of dark, boiling clouds forming to the north. The storm was moving in quickly. She should be in reading circle, not standing in a tiny foyer with the smell of bleach and antiseptic death thickening the air around her.

A swirl of dried leaves charged the automatic door as it closed behind her. She arranged her sweater once more and touched the ribbon that held her natural curly auburn hair away from her face.

Shaking her head, she tried to figure out what Kevin had managed to do now. With all his sports activities and weekend drinking, the hospital was a familiar place. As a junior officer at the bank, he had no business being out at an oil rig. If he had ruined another suit, she would say something this time.

Last summer, she had sat quietly as Kevin told his latest adventure to his friends. He had been looking over land near the south fork of the Red River when an old football buddy begged him to catch one more long pass.

In the end, the buddy got his loan from the bank, and Meredith used half her paycheck for stitches across Kevin's forehead and the other half to replace the three-piece suit he used as "game clothes."

I'm already working two jobs to keep us out of bankruptcy, she reasoned. Every year Kevin found more football buddies who remembered the great games over beer, and every year he found another job after he fumbled.

Amid it all, he somehow managed to remind her of how she had been the lucky one to catch him. Right now she did not feel lucky. She felt frightened and tired to the bone of worrying about money… and guilty for even thinking about it when the only man she had ever loved might be hurt.

"Morning, Mrs. Allen." A candy striper greeted Meredith where three short hallways merged. The center passage doorway had been closed and a sign, No Unauthorized Personnel, taped across the seam.

The girl had that do-you-remember-me? look in her eyes.

"Good morning, Kimberly." Meredith forced a smile. Kimberly had not changed in ten years. She had been a timid second-grader who grew into a hesitant woman. Her age and bust size were well beyond her youthful uniform, but the girl's insecurity clung to one more year of childhood.

"I'm looking for my husband." When Kimberly did not answer, Meredith added, "Kevin Allen."

Meredith glanced at the reception desk but, as usual, it was deserted. Paperwork was usually handled at the nurses' station, or in an emergency room while waiting for one of the town's three doctors.

"This way." Kimberly hurried down the hallway marked with a number 3 above the entrance. Her head low. Her hair curtained her face.

"Has Kevin been admitted?" Meredith hoped not. They could not afford a hospital stay. If he was laid up, she would take a few days of emergency leave and take care of him. Lately, everything in her life boiled down to how to save money, nothing more.

Kimberly did not answer.

"Has he seen the doctor yet?" With the center doors closed maybe the doctors were busy with a birth or a car wreck, and had not had time to get to him yet. "Were there others hurt in the rig accident?"

The timid girl seemed to have gone deaf as well as mute.

Meredith stopped her with a touch. "What is it?" The thought that Kevin might be behind the No Unauthorized Personnel sign worried its way into her thoughts.

Kimberly shook her head. "I don't know nothing. I was just told to ask the widows to wait in the break room."

"Widows," Meredith whispered.

Kimberly shoved open a door at the end of the third hallway and waited for Meredith to step inside a room lined with vending machines.

The blood in Meredith's head sought gravity, leaving her brain suddenly light and airy. She felt nothing, absolutely nothing, as she peered into the cavelike room at the other women who, with one word, had become her clan, her tribe. Widows.

11:03 a.m.

County Memorial Hospital

Black mascara tears trailed down Crystal Howard's tanned face as she stepped into the break room. She looked around with a watery gaze. In a town the size of Clifton Creek, everyone knew everyone. They might never have spoken, but Crystal had seen pictures in the paper, or passed them in a store, or stood behind them in line at the bank. Strangers were people with out-of-state license plates, the women before her were home folks.

"Shelby's been in an accident!" Crystal said to no one in particular. She ran a thumb beneath the stretchy material of her watermelon-colored body suit that fit her curves like a second skin and tried to pull the garment lower over her hips. "He may be dead already, and they're not telling me. I've a right to know. I'm his wife."

"We understand." A tall, silver-haired woman's low voice seemed to fill every inch of the room. "Our husbands were also in the accident. We're all waiting to hear something from the doctors."

"Only one survived," added a woman a few years older than Crystal. "I'm Meredith Allen, Kevin's wife, and this is Helena Whitworth. J. D. Whitworth and my Kevin were at the oil rig when it exploded."

When Crystal just stared the woman continued, "Helen's husband, J.D. planned to invest in the rig. For some reason, my Kevin went along for the ride this morning."

Crystal looked down at Meredith's offered hand. People in Clifton Creek were never friendly to her when Shelby wasn't around. She knew what they said about her, marrying a man thirty years her senior. She'd been a waitress with nothing to her name, and he was a rich engineer, newly widowed. No one would believe they married for love even if Shelby had been willing to shout it from the courthouse roof.

Crystal took the hand. Meredith Allen did not look like the type to listen to gossip, much less spread it. She probably hadn't heard any of the colorful stories about her and Shelby. Crystal found it hard to imagine this woman walking into Frankie's Bar, wearing an ABC sweater, and sitting down to have a drink.

"I'm Mrs. Shelby Howard," Crystal said, daring anyone to comment. She'd been married five years, had her hair bleached blonde at a fancy salon and bought her clothes in Dallas. She had endured three surgeries to mold her body to perfection, but she still felt like street trash. She was prepared to fight every time she met someone new.

"I know your husband." The silver-haired lady stepped forward. "Though he was a few years younger, I went to school with him. He's friends with my husband, J.D. I'm Helena Whitworth."

Crystal tried to pull her jersey jacket closed across her workout clothes. She suddenly wished she'd had time to change. The gym fashion didn't belong here. She swiped a palm across her cheek and stared at the makeup on her hand. Not only was she dressed improperly, if she didn't stop crying she would be without makeup. Shelby was sure to yell at her.

A third woman, Crystal hadn't noticed before, moved away from the shadows. She was tall, but then everyone towered over her five-foot-two-inch frame.

The woman pulled a cloth handkerchief trimmed in lace from the velvet folds of what looked to be an English-style riding jacket. She held the linen square out to Crystal.

Refusing the offer, Crystal added, "Oh, no. I couldn't."

The woman didn't lower the handkerchief. When Crystal met her gaze, she was struck by the natural beauty before her. Huge dark eyes. Long black hair. Breeding that came with generations of old money.

Crystal took the handkerchief and stood up straighter, wishing she had her four-inch heels. "You're not from around here, are you?" The question was out before she knew she'd spoken, but no one looking like this woman ever grew up in Clifton Creek. She reminded Crystal of a picture of Snow White she had seen in an old children's book.

"I-I am Anna," the woman said in a way that made the words sound foreign. "I-I am the wife of D-Davis Montano. The oil rig was being built on our land. I-I have been told Davis was there when the accident happened." Her words stumbled over each other. "A-a nurse said they found his wallet in the pile of burned clothes collected from the emergency room floor."

Crystal nodded, trying not to say anything else to the foreigner. Everyone in the county knew Davis went all the way to Italy for a wife, but few people had ever seen her. Several of the single girls around town were upset when he married. Davis raised racehorses on the good pasture land he inherited. He had traveled to Europe for a new bloodline and had come back with a stallion and a woman.

Wiping her face with the linen of Anna Montano's handkerchief, Crystal decided she might be little better than white trash, but at least she was from around here. Pretty Snow White Anna wouldn't belong here if she lived to be a hundred. In fact, when she died and was buried in the Montano plot, she'd still be the foreign wife Davis had brought home.

Pacing to the door, Crystal crossed her arms over her ample chest. "My Shelby's still alive. Isn't he? They didn't tell me he was dead. They just said to come to the hospital. They wouldn't have said that unless he was still alive." She looked at the older woman she'd seen in the paper a hundred times. Shelby had always pointed her out and called her "one fine lady."

"Isn't he, Mrs. Whitworth? My Shelby's still alive? Don't you figure?"

Helena visibly softened, as if responding to a child. "We don't know. All we've found out so far is there were five men on the rig when it exploded. Four are dead. One is badly burned, and I don't think his chances are good."

Crystal looked around. "You mean all of us are widows except one?"

"That's right, baby doll," came a husky voice from the doorway as a fifth woman entered the room.

11:25 a.m.

County Memorial Hospital

Randi Howard closed the door to the tiny room and leaned against it with all the drama of a breathless heroine in a B movie. "The newspaper and a TV station from Wichita Falls were pulling in when I parked. They say it's hailing between here and the city, but those folks are like roaches, they can live through anything."

When no one commented, she continued, "There's also more cowhands and oil field workers than I could count hanging around in the lobby. It's busier than Frankie's Bar on payday. I had to fight my way through, then convince some nitwit girl dressed like a peppermint that I'd been told to show up here." She brushed raindrops from her westerncut jacket. "We're in for one hell of a storm, gals. This hospital is probably a good place to wait it out."

She scanned her audience of four and shrugged off any acting she might have planned. "I guess folks dying in this county from anything other than old age is big news."

"What are you doing here, Randi?" Crystal's tone held an edge that was not entirely unfriendly. "I thought you were working the day shift now."

"Didn't anyone tell you? My Jimmy was with your Shelby on the rig." Randi twisted her dyed, gypsy-red hair into a braid.

Crystal frowned. "I should've guessed he'd be there. He's always shadowed his uncle Shelby. Jimmy knows more about Howard Drilling than either of Shelby's kids. If there were problems on the rig, Shelby would have wanted Jimmy right there with him, learning all he could." She glanced at the others. "Shelby says Jimmy's been at his side since he was a boy."

Randi nodded and took a seat, propping her red Roper hoots on an empty chair. She pulled out a pack of Marlboros, looked around and reconsidered. So, she thought, these are the newly widowed. An old woman, a foreigner, a Pollyanna who had to be a schoolteacher and darling Crystal who was almost thirty and her husband still called her baby doll.

In truth, she envied Crystal more than disliked her. They had been friends in their single days, sharing everything including boyfriends. The bubbly bleached blonde snagged the rich old Howard while Randi only caught the poor nephew. Oh, old man Shelby always made sure Jimmy was paid well, but Shelby's kids treated her and Jimmy worse than hired help. Which, she had to admit, was better than the way they treated their daddy's second wife, Crystal.

Randi looked directly at Crystal, catching only a glimpse of the girl she had once thought of as a sister. "I might as well tell you, you'll find out soon enough in this town. I was packing to leave Jimmy when the sheriff stopped by our trailer. I quit my job and sold everything I couldn't fit in the back of my Jeep. I've got to get out of here while I can still breathe. I was meant for something more than singing a few songs once a week during talent night. There's a whole world out there that thinks of more than oil and cows. There's got to be. What was it we used to say, `so many men, so little time'?"

Crystal smiled with lips a little fuller than they used to be. "I thought it was so many margaritas, so little time?"

"Well, either way, it's time I moved on. I don't want to grow old and die here, still thinking about what might have been if I'd only been brave enough to go take a look."

Crystal knelt beside Randi, taking both her hands. "You can't leave, Randi. Shelby says Jimmy is doing real well. He'll be in charge of all the drilling soon. You know Jimmy's crazy about you, girl."

Randi shook her head. "I swore nothing would stop me from leaving this time. I'm aging by the hour in this town." She glanced at the machines, hoping one said Coors across the top. "Jimmy loves me, I guess, but that ain't enough. No one in this place seems to understand… life here is sucking the marrow from my bones." She closed her eyes, fighting back tears. "God, I hope he's dead."

Silence crystallized, as though speaking her thoughts had somehow made it possible. The four other women in the room forgot to breathe.

Randi opened her eyes. "If he isn't, I won't be able to leave him hurt and burned," she mumbled, more to herself than anyone. She was not a woman who thought of apologizing for anything she said. "And I won't survive much longer here, just sitting on the porch waiting for sundown."

She raised her head, knowing her words were cruel, but realizing they were true. "If Jimmy's alive, this accident just signed my death warrant."

2:55 p.m.

County Memorial Hospital

Anna Montano sat quietly at the table, watching the women before her. The rain rattling on the roof provided background music to her thoughts. In Italy, women in crisis would be crying and wanting the family close. A priest might be sitting with them, and their hands would hold prayer beads. In Italy, worry and grieving were emotional passings, shared with family. But these Americans only talked and waited. Unlike Anna, they had not seen the fire and the smoke filling the sky above the oil rig. They still held hope close to their breasts.

She closed her eyes and tried to forget what she had seen this morning. Black smoke rising, polluting the morning sky with tragedy's omen. The ranch hands, hurrying to the scene, would not allow her to come with them. But when the first ambulance had left the ranch, Anna followed in her car. She knew her brother Carlo would be upset that she had not told him she was leaving. He considered watching over her part of being Davis's foreman. But today she had not cared and, besides, he had all he could handle putting out the fire.

She could have waited at home. She knew the news would only be bad. But for once, Anna had not wanted to be in her private world at the ranch. Now, curling into herself in the uncomfortable plastic chair, she realized that for the first time in a long while, she did not want to be alone.

Loneliness was nothing new to her. She rode alone each morning, helping to train the horses. Since childhood, horses were as much a part of her life as family, sometimes more so. She worked alone in her small studio and, more often than not, ate alone both noon and evening while Davis and Carlo went somewhere on ranch business.

Anna thought of herself as no more than a bird in a cage filled with toys. One day someone would leave the door open. The only question haunting her thoughts was would she be brave enough to fly away?

She and Davis had run out of anything to say to one another after their first anniversary, when she still was not pregnant. If it had not been for her love of horses and his love of the money they brought, he probably would never have spoken to her at all. But, from time to time, he needed her advice. He needed her skill. Carlo might know horses, but Anna had an instinct about them. Over these past five years Davis Montano had learned to trust that instinct even though he valued little else about her.

Davis was not unkind. He was never unkind. But, she realized after the first year that he had married her to breed children, and she had failed him. Honor and duty were words that described her marriage, not love.

To her surprise, no tears came as she faced the possibility of his death. She married Davis the week after she had turned twenty-one, and they had been little more than strangers. For her, he provided an escape from an overprotected life in Italy. She arrived in Texas with her big brother, who was hired as foreman. Between Carlo and Davis, Anna found littlr freedom in the land of the free. Even the trips she had taken with her mother to hear the great symphonies of Europe were now gone.

"Would you like a soda, dear?" The older woman broke into Anna's thoughts.

"N-no, thank you." Anna liked Helena Whitworth. She wore honesty like a tailor-made garment.

"I could use a beer," Randi grumbled. "How long are they going to keep us waiting?" She and Crystal had been talking about the days when they had spent most of their nights boot scooting at Frankie's. "Surely this place has a happy hour." Randi laughed to herself and began another story that started as the others had, "Remember that night at the bar…"

Anna knew little of such a life, but from the way they talked, their times were more sad than happy. Out of habit, Anna began logging in new words as the women talked. She had learned both English and French before she left for boarding school, but it was the words that were not in the dictionary that fascinated her most. Randi's vocabulary was richly painted in bold strokes.

"M-maybe you would rather be with your f-family?" Anna suggested when Randi and Crystal finally ran out of stories.

Randi shook her red hair. "I don't have none to speak of. My mother ran off with a salesman from the farm and ranch show at the Tri-State Fair the year I was three. My father hasn't called me since last Christmas." She laughed to herself. "He'd probably call on my birthday, if he could remember it. I'm sure he misses kicking the shit out of me every time he gets drunk. The bastard was meaner than the devil's brother and so dumb I'm surprised his sperm knew how to swim. With a father like him, you got nothin' to do but pray you're adopted."

"I'm pretty much the same," Crystal added. "My stepdad booted me out when I was sixteen and told me not to ever bother knocking on their door again. Mom had to sneak me out a bag of my clothes after dark. She gave me forty bucks and wished me well in this life before telling me not to bother calling to ask for money or anything."

Crystal rubbed her hand along her workout suit, smoothing away memories with the wrinkles. "I only have my Shelby. Sometimes, when he's busy doing something, he'll give me forty dollars and tell me to get lost, but before I can leave the room he always laughs and says I'd better not be gone long." Tears tumbled down a face long free of makeup. "His two grown children hate me, though. If he's dead, I'll be lucky to get my clothes out of the house, even in paper bags, before they bar me from the property. Shelby's all I have. All I've ever had."

"You're not in Shelby's will?" Randi pulled the tab on her diet drink.

"I mentioned it once, and Shelby said his son told him that's the reason I married him, to get all his money. I guess Shelby wanted to prove them wrong, 'cause he never changed the will and he kept all of Howard Drilling out of community property. I never asked him about it again."

"You poor thing." Randi draped her long arm around Crystal's shoulder and squeezed. The gesture offered more discomfort than sympathy, but neither woman noticed. "I always figured when you hooked up with him, it was your lucky day."

"I do love him," Crystal cried. "No one understands, but I do. I'd love him if he didn't have the money or the big house. I can't think about what it would be like without Shelby."

Helena lowered herself into the chair next to Anna, directly across from Crystal. "We know you love him." The older woman patted Crystal's arm. "J.D. told me many a time that you must love Shelby to put up with his drinking and pranks."

Anna thought Crystal suddenly looked far younger than her years as the tears ran down her face. She and Randi had to be close to thirty, but Anna felt a lifetime older. They might have lines forming around their eyes, but Anna felt like she had them on her heart. Maybe people who never got involved in life aged faster on the inside. Anna felt sorry for Crystal, the kind of blind love she had for Shelby seemed far sadder than the cold, routine love she had for Davis.

"Shelby isn't so bad." Crystal sniffed. "Oh, he gets crazy and makes me do things that embarrass me something terrible in front of his drinking buddies. But then he says he's sorry and can't live without me. He's always buying me stuff after he hurts my feelings."

"Jewelry?" Randi leaned closer, looking genuinely interested in her friend's whining. The lines on Randi's face reflected years of answering to last call.

"Sure. Lots," Crystal said proudly. "But it's all locked up at the office. Trent won't get it for me unless his daddy tells him to." Crystal blew her nose. "I don't care about the money or the jewelry. I just want Shelby." She sniffed loudly once more. "I don't want to be out on the streets again. I want to be close to him and he feels the same. He says his heart doesn't start each morning until he looks at me."

Anna watched as Helena pulled the crumbling group back under control. "What about you, Meredith? Is there family you'd rather be with?"

The schoolteacher raised her head. She had not said anything in half an hour. The size-too-small sweater she wore was hopelessly twisted, once more making the letters tumble together. "No," she answered. "My mom moved to Arizona to live with her sister when she retired. I have no siblings, or kids of my own. I guess I always figured Kevin is enough of a kid to keep me busy. Since I can't go back to my classroom, this is as good a place as any to wait." She lowered her head, returning to the thread she had been twisting off her sweater.

"Well, I have enough kids for us all." Helena smiled. "I had two girls by my first husband. Twins, though they look nothing alike. My second husband had four children I helped raise, but none of them live close any longer. I was fifty when I married J.D. but if it had been possible, I'd have had his child."

"You're kidding." Randi gulped her drink. "You'd be on Social Security before the kid got out of high school."

Helena laughed. "It's crazy, but I wish I could've done that for him. He's my third husband, and the only man I ever really loved. If he's dead, he'll also be my last. God only made one man like J. D. Whitworth."

"I-I have tried," Anna said slowly, trying not to stutter. "T-to have children, I mean. But there have been no babies."

"Not me." Crystal shook her head. "First, a kid would ruin thousands of dollars of surgery. Second, I might have a brat like Shelby's others. I can't see going through all that to bring someone like Trent Howard into the world."

"That kind of thing is not for me," Randi's low voice was added to the group. "I don't mind running the plays, but I sure don't want to make a touchdown. Western clothes are hard to find in maternity sizes."

Suddenly the talk turned to life, and living life, and making choices all women have to make. Their conversation became real. No need for social barriers or polite lies. Somehow, the accident, on the rig miles away, made them all the same. All equal. All sisters. The fear they shared brought them together, making each stronger because of their bond.

They talked of the joys in their lives and the changes they wished they had made. Helena, as the oldest, perhaps felt she could be the most honest and her honesty cleared the table of all pretenses. She told of marrying young the first time and losing him in Viet Nam, a month after the twins were born.

For a while she had been a single mother trying to start a business and rock two babies at night. After five hard years, she'd married a man ten years her senior for security.

They'd found baby-sitters and housekeepers to manage the children and he'd taught her how to build her small dress shop into Helena's Choice.

When he'd died years later all she could say about him was that he had been a good accountant.

Randi talked of deeds done and regretted, Meredith talked of thoughts she harbored, and somewhere in the confessions the cowgirl and the schoolteacher were the same. The difference lay only in degrees.

Anna mostly listened and smiled to herself. In the strange room so far from Italy, she suddenly felt very much at home. She even told the others of her art, something Davis would never approve of, and, to her surprise, the women were interested.

The room finally grew silent, except for the low rumble of the vending machines. Each woman knew they were opening, showing themselves as they never would have done under normal circumstances. Their honesty bred a calmness that floated like a current through the room, washing away worry and fear.

Helena leaned across the table and touched Crystal's manicured hand with her wrinkled one. "No matter what, we'll survive, dear. If no one else, we have each other. I'll be there for you, if you need me. I swear."

"Helena's right." Meredith added her hand brushing the older woman's. "We can get through this."

Randi joined the covenant. "Oh, well. Hell, why not. I'll help where I can, if any of you need me."

Slowly, Anna's hand finished the circle of fingers in the center of the table. No one said a word, but a pact wove its way around them. They silently agreed to stand beside one another. Women from different worlds within the same small community.

Whatever lay beyond the door did not seem so terrifying knowing someone stood near. They were silent, thinking of what was to come, realizing the news would be bad for some, if not all, in the room.

The door opened with a slight swishing sound. All hands retreated slowly, yet the covenant remained. Invisible. Strong. In the passing of a few hours they had put aside their masks and accepted one another. The world's intrusion would not alter that acceptance. For the first time in her life, Anna did not feel so alone.

"Ladies." A retired doctor shuffled into the room on shoes that never lifted from the floor. He was stooped with age and looked well into his seventies, but intelligence shone from his eyes. "The staff called me in to help right after they sent the ambulance out to the Montano place. I was here by the time the men started arriving. Because I know most of you, I was asked to speak to you."

He nodded a greeting to Helena and Crystal, and then touched Meredith on the shoulder. When his watery gray eyes met Anna's, he said, "I'm Dr. Hamilton." Before Anna spoke he added, "Mrs. Montano."

Randi turned toward him, lifting her coke a few inches. "Doc."

"Randi," he answered with an honest smile.

"We've been waiting." Randi sat up in her chair. "Hope you can tell us something."

He cleared his throat, trying to be professional. "As I'm sure you know, all five of your husbands were on a rig Shelby Howard built that stood on Montano land. The way I hear it from a few of the crew being treated for burns, J.D. planned to invest extra money in the rig so one of the bank officers, Kevin Allen, had to come along for the ride."

He glanced at Randi and added, "Jimmy was there with Shelby. Helping out as always."

"And how many workers were on the rig?" Helena asked, needing the details.

"None," the doctor answered. "Jimmy had offered them a beer from the cooler in his trunk. From what I understand that is pretty much routine."

His eyes bubbled with tears. "Only your husbands were standing on the rig when a box of explosives, that never should have been near the place, exploded."

The women waited, knowing Dr. Hamilton had said the easy part of his tale. He stared just above their heads as he added, "Four were killed. The man still alive is hanging on by a thread. We tried to get a helicopter from Parkland, but the storm's preventing that. I did get a specially trained nurse to drive over from Wichita Falls. She arrived about half an hour ago in her car packed with much needed supplies."

The sheriff slipped into the room and stood behind the doctor. He was tall and solid in his tailored uniform. He stood at attention, official.

Hamilton continued, "I asked Sheriff Farrington to join us in case you have any questions. He's here to help in any way he can. He'll also see you make it past the reporters if you don't feel like talking to them."

Randi was the only one who glanced in the sheriff's direction. The others waited for the doctor to continue.

Hamilton's sorrowful gaze darted from one woman to the other. "I don't know how to say this easily." He clenched his jaw, forcing tears not to fall. His hand shook so badly he had to grip the lapel of his coat to keep his fingers steady.

Anna stood and folded her arms, hugging herself as tightly as she dared. Her riding jacket seemed to offer her no warmth now.

Randi pulled Crystal against her.

Meredith moved close to the door, looking as if she might bolt at any moment.

Only Helena faced the doctor directly. "We've waited long enough, Simon. Say what you have to say and get on with it. Bad news doesn't get any better with age."

The doctor nodded and turned to Meredith. She looked like a firing squad had just drawn aim on her. She did not move.

"I'm sorry, Meredith. We determined Kevin's body by size and blood type. He was a good three inches taller than the others and the only 0 positive among the men."

Meredith opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. She would have slid to the floor, but Sheriff Farrington's arm encircled her and held her up. He seemed a cold man and his hug felt cold now, as though he were only doing his duty, nothing more.

"Kevin," Meredith cried. "I want Kevin. We've been together since we were sixteen. How can he be gone?"

"If it's any comfort, Meredith, he didn't suffer. We think the blast killed him, not the fire that followed." The doctor swallowed hard. "I signed his birth certificate so I asked if I could sign the death certificate."

The sheriff held Meredith steady. She turned her face into his shoulder and sobbed.

Dr. Hamilton looked at Helena. "I'm sorry, Helena. J.D. fought for life all the way into town but died before we could get him stabilized. He was a soldier to the end."

Helena nodded but did not move. She sat like a statue at the end of the table. Not a hair out of place. Not a wrinkle to be seen on her clothing, but her heart crumbled inside.

"The other three men were almost the same height and build. All B positive. They were burned so…" The doctor stopped, not wanting to tell more.

He stared at the center of the table.

"The one still alive only has a slim chance and, if he makes it, it will take months, maybe even years, of care and therapy. He wore a plain wedding band. We had to cut it off."

A single tear rolled down Anna's face. "D-Davis wore no wedding band," she whispered in a blending of English and Italian. She took Helena's hand as she joined the growing ranks of widows.

The doctor raised his fist and slowly opened his palm. "This will tell us who's alive, I guess."

All the women stared at the ring. A plain gold band, badly beaten and twisted, tarnished to black. It belonged to one of the Howard men, either Shelby, Crystal's husband, or his nephew, Jimmy.

Tears streamed, for the first time, down Randi's face. She choked in one deep breath. No one moved.

Anna raised her gaze to meet Randi's terrified stare, then she thought she saw Helena nod slightly to Crystal. The movement was so small no one else but Crystal seemed to notice. In the length of a heartbeat Crystal nodded back, first at Helena, then at Randi.

Meredith's wide-eyed look was unreadable as she stopped her sobbing and watched.

Crystal glanced around at each of the women, then straightened slowly. Her stare locked with Randi's, not on the ring in the doctor's hand. Understanding and sympathy passed between the two women.

Not a woman in the room breathed as Crystal slowly raised her hand and took the ring. She buried it into a white knuckled fist and closed her eyes. "Shelby's alive," she whispered. "Shelby's alive."

Randi pulled her hands off the table, covering her left hand with her right. She huddled into herself as though the room had grown suddenly cold.

Among the riggers in the early days of the Clifton Creek oil boom the question wasn't if you'd be hurt, but when. It was often said, after an accident, that fire climbed the rigs with lightning speed and no one within a hundred feet would be left untouched.