Chapter 16: The Crawford Family Name

Later that night, Lettie went over to meet her little sister at Honky Tonk. Aubrey had left about a million messages on Lettie’s answering machine earlier in the day, raving and ranting about “that Bellerose girl” and how for heaven’s sake why weren’t she and Nana answering the phone. Nana had been outside working in the garden, and Aubrey knew that’s what Nana did in the afternoons, but on a day with a new Bellerose in town, it didn’t seem to matter to the youngest Crawford girl what anybody else normally did.

So Lettie had to meet Aubrey, who everyone still half the time called Little Aubrey, at the bar because she had to talk to Ryan and Lettie, and if Lettie could get Nana to come that would be good too. Except there was no way in hell Nana was going to, as she put it, “that dirty old place Ryan works, for land’s sakes, why won’t he quit,” so it was just Lettie heading over in the old truck.

Once inside she immediately spotted Little Aubrey, 20-years-old and pregnant as a full moon with her fourth baby, balanced precariously on a bar stool next to Sheriff Song. She looked so furious Lettie could almost see the steam coming out her ears. She was also clutching a bottle of Wild Turkey, her knuckles turned white.

Lettie went straight to her. “You better not be drinkin’ that, Little Aubrey,” she said.

Aubrey just stared in the direction of the booths. “Do you see this?” she raged. “Do you see how he just sullies our good family name?”

Lettie followed Aubrey’s brown eyed gaze and found Ryan leaning over a table with Marie Barrilleaux and—oh hell, that was the Bellerose girl. No wonder Aubrey was flipping.

Lettie glanced back at her little sister and tried not to smirk. Being pregnant with her fourth child since 16 and sitting at the bar with cheap whiskey probably sullied the good Crawford name more than anything Ryan was doing right at the moment, but Lettie didn’t say so. Instead she gently pried the Wild Turkey from Little Aubrey’s hand and asked, “Did you drink this?”

Aubrey shook her head, long hair swishing. She was still a pretty girl after three kids, prettier than Lettie had ever thought of herself being, with hair the color of mahogany and eyes to match. But she wasn’t the smartest either, and she was also as ornery as all hell. That, and she hated the Belleroses more than any Crawford in the past 40 years. Lettie knew she needed to keep an eye on her.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” Little Aubrey asked. Then she lowered her voice and leaned in to whisper in Lettie’s ear, “Besides, Sheriff Song is right there.”

Lettie shook her head. As if Sheriff Song cared about underage drinking or even pregnant drinking for that matter. The man, and the office, was a joke.

Lettie glanced back at Ryan and wanted to slap her palm to her forehead. The boy was grinning all get out, practically swooning over that girl. Jesus. What was she going to do? Little Aubrey was going to kill him, and the whole town expected her to too. She was a Crawford after all, and so was Ryan, and, well, Crawfords did not swoon over Belleroses. That, and no Crawford woman would put up with a Crawford man selling out to a Bellerose.

Hell.

But then, by some miracle of God, the door to the bar slapped open again, and Jimmy Dean Carpett and Roy paraded in. Well, Jimmy Dean paraded in. Roy shuffled behind with an armful of leaves.

“Hi!” Jimmy Dean boomed at Lettie and Little Aubrey. Then his blue eyes found the Bellerose, and he made a beeline for her like a magnet to a fridge.

Immediately Ryan was overwhelmed as Jimmy Dean pumped his hand up and down, bumped him out of the way, and began makin’ eyes at the new Bellerose. They began talking as if they’d met before, which was a little weird, but then again, so was Jimmy Dean.

Ryan shook his head, suddenly pushed away from the table, and then looked over at the bar. When he caught sight of Little Aubrey, he grimaced and turned away, skirting around the bar and into the back while his youngest sister hollered after him to “git over here.”

Lettie knew she needed to yell too—people were looking at her like she should—but it wasn’t in her anymore. She’d seen the girl and her dog this afternoon. There wasn’t anything to hate. And she was pretty, as pretty as Little Aubrey if not more so, and Ryan had every right to be attracted to her, Bellerose or not.

But that wasn’t the way things went around here. She was supposed to hate, had been raised to hate. So she said, “I’ll go talk some sense into that damn fool,” in an angry tone, the same one she’d put on in the kitchen that afternoon, and stomped toward the back. Little Aubrey didn’t follow; she was too big to get off the stool.

Chapter 15: Town Gossip

Revised and edited October 9, 2011.

Nella had been in Honky Tonky for all of ten minutes before everyone started staring at her. Well, they weren’t outright staring. It was more of a sneaky peering sort of thing, when they thought she wouldn’t notice, but of course she did. She wasn’t blind.

She’d come with her grandfather’s maid, a girl named Marie who had worked under Miss Loretta for the past few years. Somehow they’d ended up talking and Nella hadn’t even seen more of the house than the foyer before Marie’d insisted they go out to dinner together to, as Marie put it, the best and only bar in town, Honky Tonk.

And so they’d hopped into Marie’s car, a little green hatchback thing, and cruised over. Honky Tonk had turned out to be a small establishment that served alcohol and food on the opposite side of Antlers from her grandfather's house. In fact, it turned out there was a bit more to Antlers than the little downtown area she'd been in that morning. Marie had explained it all on the way over.

"Oh, Antlers ain't that big, cherie," she’d said in her strange way of talking, a mixture of Cajun and East Texan, as they rumbled down what Marie called the river road back to town, "but it's not just Carl Abbott's office neither, this."

She had gone on to explain people lived all around Antlers in the woods like Nella's granddaddy and down in the bayou, like Marie's family did. Then there were townsfolk, and surely she'd seen some of those houses on the way to the big house.

Nella had noticed that both Marie and Miss Loretta called her grandfather’s house “the big house.” She didn’t know if that was because it was huge or if it was some hold over from plantation days. Either way she figured it was the biggest place in town, and people were probably pretty proud of it.

Once they were inside Honky Tonk, Nella was very surprised to see that most of the town appeared to be stuffed into the bar too, and moreover, the majority of them were line dancing, if they weren’t too busy staring at her.

"Come on, let's go us get a table," Marie had said and led her over to one of the booths that lined the window.

Immediately a waitress had appeared. She was wearing cowboy boots, a tight jean skirt, and a white top. She was probably in her mid-20's and had her dark brown hair plaited into two braids that fell to her shoulders. Her name tag read Gracie.

"What can I get y'all?" she asked.

Nella ended up ordering a basket of chicken fingers while Marie ordered some kind of fried something or rather that totally sounded like it'd come out of a swamp.

And now they were waiting on their food, and everyone was off and on staring at them. Marie didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy gossiping about everyone in the bar.

"That over there is Mrs. O'Malley," she said, pointing to an older woman line dancing with the best of them. "She runs the DRT and that sort of thing, although she really oughta let her daughter take over, ya know? She gettin' old, her."

"What's the DRT?" Nella asked.

Marie looked at her like she was from outer space. "Daughters of the Republic of Texas," she replied as if Nella should have known.

Nella raised an eyebrow. "You mean Daughters of the American Revolution?" she asked.

Marie let out a bark of laughter. "We don't care for none of that down this way," she said. "I thought you was from Texas."

"Dallas," Nella said. "The city and the country must be two very different things."

"I 'spose so," Marie said. "Well, Mrs. O'Malley runs all that. You could get in if you want, see. You're a Bellerose. They been here as long as there's been Texas."

Nella nodded, and Marie went on pointing people out in the bar. It seemed the whole town was there, and Marie knew something about all of them. Nella tried to listen, but it was a lot to take in, and her mind and gaze wandered.

And then stopped on the bartender. He was a tall and broad shouldered guy with dark hair and eyes, though Nella couldn't see what color they were in the low lighting of the bar. He was wearing a white shirt that stretched tightly across his muscular frame, and Nella couldn't help staring.

Marie noticed immediately. "Don't go there, cherie," she said.

Nella shifted her gaze back to Marie. "What?" she asked.

"Ryan Crawford," Marie said, "the bartender."

"What's wrong with him?" Nella asked. He did look like the sort of guy who could date several girls at once. He was also ridiculously good looking. A lot of times in Dallas that meant he'd be a jerk.

"Oh, there's nothing wrong with him," Marie said. "In fact, I'd say he perfect, him. It's just that--" She stopped abruptly as though she were about to say something she shouldn't.

"What?" Nella asked. She let her gaze flit back to the bartender and found he was looking at her. Immediately she felt her cheeks heat up and looked back at Marie.

"It's just that, well, I guess somebody'll say soon enough, this," Marie rambled out. "It's that your family and the Crawfords, they don't get along none good."

"What does that mean?" Nella asked, glancing at the bartender again. Now he and the man he was serving, a police officer of some kind--had Marie said he was the sheriff?--were both staring. Oh God. She quickly looked back at Marie again.

"Well, truth be told," Marie said, "they hate each other 'cause, well, there just be bad blood between 'em."

"How bad?" Nella asked, getting more and more curious. She was tempted to look at the bartender again but kept her eyes on Marie.

Marie leaned in close across the table, her voice low. "Real bad, them," she said. "There's--"

But she stopped because someone was standing over them. Nella looked up quickly, her eyes meeting a pair of dark, mossy green ones.

It was the bartender, Ryan Crawford.

Chapter 14: Honky Tonk

Ryan Crawford's favorite thing about bartending at Honky Tonk was that, as the only real bar in Antlers, he got to see just about everyone in town on a weekly basis, and better yet, he sometimes even got to watch some of them attempt to dance.

For example, right now Blake Shelton's "Honey Bee" was playing on the new electric jukebox Edgar, the owner, had gotten updated recently, and just about half the town was doing some sorry form of line dancing across the scuffed up wooden floor, laughing and singing.

Ryan shook his head, trying not to laugh, and finished pouring the stiff whiskey the sheriff, a man named Daniel Song, had asked for. Sheriff Song came in on Mondays usually, always ordered a Jack Daniels on the rocks, but today was Friday, so Ryan was a little surprised to see the man.

"How you doin', sheriff?" Ryan asked, sliding the whiskey tumbler in front of the older man.

Sheriff Song shrugged. "All right, I guess," he said. "Thought I'd stop in tonight, seein' as how that Bellerose got here today."

This was the first Ryan had heard of it. "What Bellerose?"

Sheriff Song looked at him funny. "You serious, Ryan? It's all anybody's been goin' on about. Mrs. O'Malley's downright in a tizzy."

Mrs. O'Malley was one of Antlers' old society ladies, and Ryan realized that, hell, she was in a tizzy. Sure, she came into Honky Tonk like the rest of them, but Ryan realized she'd come up to the bar more than usual. She'd had at least three glasses of wine, and the woman was in her seventies. How had he not even noticed? And wait, was that her dancing with the others? Hell.

Sheriff Song was smiling, the skin around his eyes crinkling up even more than it already was. "So you got a lot on yer mind, Ryan?"

Ryan shook his head, feeling a little embarrassed for being so unobservant. "Not really," he said, "but maybe I'm thinkin' more than I realized."

Sheriff Song laughed at that and took a sip of his drink. "Well, she's here all right. Old Bellerose's granddaughter. You know, the one Miss Emma had when she was gone, the one we never seen."

Ryan nodded. He'd heard about the baby Miss Emma had had when she'd been gone, when she'd left with that man from the city. No one had ever seen the girl. She had to be in her early twenties now, Ryan thought, a few years younger than himself.

"I seen her now though," Sheriff Song said. "Most e'rbody did. She was over at Abbott and Abbott sniffin' around and then went out down the river road to the big house. Nobody's shut up 'bout it since."

"Wouldn't expect them to," Ryan said.

Sheriff Song looked at Ryan quizzically with his sharp brown eyes. "What'd you think about it, son? Being a Crawford and all."

Ryan shrugged and took a swig of his own drink, the whiskey sour he'd made himself behind the counter once Edgar had left for the night. "Don't want to think much about it," he said.

"What'd your nana say? Your sisters?" Sheriff Song asked.

"Don't know," Ryan said. "Don't want to think about that either." Nana and Lettie and Little Aubrey, well, they would be in more of a tizzy than Mrs. O'Malley, and unlike Mrs. O'Malley, they wouldn't be happy about it. Not happy at all.

Just then the door to Honky Tonk banged open, swinging crazily on its hinges as it always did and crashing into the wall behind it. In walked Marie Barrilleaux, the one and only maid working under Miss Loretta out at Bellerose House, a dark, cajun beauty that Ryan had always been attracted to, and behind her was a pretty blond girl, petite, with porcelein skin and green eyes that could belong to no one but a Bellerose.

"That's 'er," Sheriff Song said under his breath, now laced with whiskey, "that's the Bellerose girl from Dallas."

Chapter 13: Bayou Drive

Lettie held perfectly still until the Bellerose girl called the yellow lab away from her and back to the house. She cursed under her breath as she stood and quickly made her way back to the truck. She’d almost been caught.

Back in the truck she asked herself why she’d even come over to Bellerose House. It’d been stupid. No matter what she wanted to believe, she was just as caught up as the rest of the town, wondering what the Bellerose girl looked like, hoping she’d be what Antlers needed now that Old Man Bellerose and Miss Emma were gone.

Lettie had been too far away to really discern much about the new Bellerose. She’d been short and thin, had long blond hair, and that was about all Lettie could see. Miss Loretta had taken her straight into the house too, just like she was supposed to. The dog had gone along too.

Lettie started the truck up and headed home. She still lived in the little house on the bayou, with her grandmother, the woman who’d raised her and Ryan and their little sister, Aubrey. They both had their own places now, but she and Nana had always been close, and Lettie couldn’t leave her out here all alone.

Besides, out here, she was closer to Bellerose House.

Nana would never approve of her going and spying on the Belleroses though. For one, it wasn’t polite to be a peeping tom. For another, the Belleroses were not to be trusted, and there was no reason to be anywhere near them. Every Crawford knew that.

She wondered what Nana would think about the new Bellerose. This girl couldn’t even be a Bellerose. She was Emma’s daughter. She couldn’t have the last name; it was probably something different. Thinking of it, Lettie realized there technically were no Belleroses left.

So did that mean they could be friends? For a moment, Lettie savored the idea. She could go into Bellerose House. She could stop all this nonsense about hating the Belleroses. She could relax. And everyone would stop thinking the Crawfords were up to something, plotting against the Belleroses like they had in the twenties.

Lettie shook her head as she turned onto her gravel drive. That couldn’t be though. This girl, whoever she was, was a Bellerose. She had the same destiny every Bellerose did and everyone knew it. There was nothing any Crawford, let alone Lettie, could do.

Chapter 12: Miss Loretta

Nella’s heart did four back flips before she realized the door was being opened by an older black woman with a halo of gray-white hair.

“Why, hello they-uh!” came the old woman’s smooth, southern drawl. “You must be Miss Nella McDonald! Mr. Abbott said you’d be along today.”

Did he? It seemed Carl Abbott, Jr., had never planned to meet her at all. Nella thought that was little suspicious, but she didn’t have much more time to think on it because the woman was coming down the porch steps toward her.

“I’m Miss Loretta Byrd,” the woman said, smoothing the flowered apron she was wearing over her dress, “your granddaddy’s housekeeper.” She said keeper like keep-uh.

Nella held out her hand politely even though she was still stewing on the lawyer. “Pleased to meet you,” she said.

“The pleasure’s all mine,” the housekeeper said. “We’ve been waitin’ on yuh.”

Nella raised an eyebrow. “You have, um, Miss Byrd?”

“Please, call me Miss Loretta. E'rbody else does.” Miss Loretta took Nella’s arm and led her toward the house, which suddenly didn’t seem so creepy. “Please, come inside.”

Nella turned back for a moment and whistled for Daisy, who charged toward the house from where she’d been sniffing around the tree line.

“That your dog?” Miss Loretta asked. “Why, what a pretty animal!”

“Thank you,” Nella said. “Her name is Daisy.”

“How precious,” Miss Loretta said, continuing to compliment. “Please, come inside.”

Daisy loped onto the porch, but the moment she got there, she stopped in her tracks, lowered her head, and growled.

“Daisy!” Nella cried, embarrassed. “No! Bad dog!”

Miss Loretta shook her head. “Don’t worry, honey. It ain’t me she’s growlin’ at. It’s this old house.”

Nella looked up at the house, through the front door, into the foyer where she could see the beginnings of a wide staircase.

“The house?” she repeated.

Miss Loretta let go of Nella’s arm and approached Daisy. Daisy ignored her and continued to stare at the house, her brown eyes wide with what Nella now realized was fear. The housekeeper laid a soft hand on the dog’s yellow head. Abruptly Daisy stopped growling, looked up at Miss Loretta, and wagged her tail.

Nella could only stare in disbelief. What had just happened?

Miss Loretta smiled. “That’s better,” she said. “Now come on inside.”

She took Nella’s arm again and led her through the doorway, into a wide, sweeping foyer with a staircase so grand, Nella could hardly comprehend it. When Daisy galloped into the house and came to their side, the great oak door slammed shut behind them.

Chapter 11: Bellerose House

Nella stared at the house. It was huge. Massive. Enormous. It had also wandered out of Gone with the Wind. It had clearly once been the heart of a plantation.

The house looked just like a classic plantation house should. It was towering and rectangular, its white facade lined with elegant Greek columns. A sweeping porch made of red brick wrapped around the sides of the house, and a veranda did the same on the second story, lined with black, rose patterned iron balusters. Four chimneys and several dormer windows rose out of the steep roof, and finally, most noticeably, was the widow's walk enclosed by a white railing.

It was a magnificent house. But there was something off about it too, something queer and strange. It was, like the rest of Antlers, run down. Its white paint was peeling. Its windows were dark and dirty, and vines crawled up the sides of the house, ivy and some kind of flower. Leaves had gathered on the porch and the veranda. An old swing, also painted white, swung slowly in a slight breeze on the front porch. In the silence that surrounded them out here, away from everything, Nella could hear the chains creak.

Daisy barked and Nella jumped. They were still sitting in the Jeep. Slowly, Nella opened her door and slid out, still staring up at the house. It was so huge, so beautiful, yet something about it looked wrong.

Daisy bounded out behind her, hitting the gravel drive and immediately dashing into the field, or yard, Nella didn't know, to sniff around.

Nella realized her mother had lived in this house, had probably died here. She didn't know. Her father hadn't told her all the details, just that her mother had died when she was four.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to conjure an image of her mother, something she could associate with this place. But there were no pictures, nothing for her to remember by. Her father hadn't kept any. The only thing Nella knew about her mother, what she looked like, was something her father had let slip once. She and her mother had the same green eyes.

Nella opened those green eyes and stared at the house again. Why had her father kept her from this place?

His warning echoed in her mind--it's dangerous.

But this place didn't seem dangerous. Just sad. There was a melancholy hanging about the house that couldn't be shaken. Nella also felt like someone was watching her.

No, not someone. The house. It was watching her, with its dark window eyes and towering columns. It was waiting for her to make her next move.

Nella took a step forward, hesitantly, toward the massive oak front door.

Slowly, the door began to open.

Chapter 10: Life and Death on the River Road

Lettie left work shortly after that. She just couldn't stay and listen to all that stupid chatter about the new Bellerose, the last Bellerose, the Bellerose from Dallas. The prodigal return. It was all such a crock.

But when she left Lucy Loo's, Lettie couldn't help getting into her truck and driving down the river road toward Bellerose House. She normally took the river road anyway; her house was near the bayou too, but when she was supposed to turn off and go down the fork, her old Ford rumbled toward the big house instead.

That was what everyone called it: the big house. It had once been a massive plantation, a titan amidst the smaller farms that lay around Antlers back before the Civil War. All of Antlers had revolved around in back then. Hell, the Crawford family had revolved around it then. But that was a long time ago, and even though the town still circled the big house like planets around a sun, the Crawford family had long since broken away.

Which was why Lettie never got her obsession with the stupid place, with the stupid family, with everything Bellerose. She would never admit it to anyone, but she had spent countless hours of her childhood watching the big house.

She'd even been there the day Emma Bellerose had died. Lettie remembered that day vividly. She'd been just five-years-old, but somehow that day had been stamped onto her mind in deep, dark ink.

Her older brother, Ryan, had run into the house to get her. He'd seen an ambulance go down the river road.

"Come on!" he'd shouted, and they'd run along the river and dashed across one of the old sugar cane fields to get around to the front of the big house without being seen. There they crouched down in the overgrown brush on the outskirts of the wide lawn, peering through the briars to watch the scene unfolding in front of the sprawling plantation house.

The ambulance was parked in the circle drive, lights off. Two police cars had beaten it there. Lettie had stared in wonder at the scene, not understanding what was going on at first. Then Old Man Bellerose, though he wasn't so old then, had come outside. His face was drawn and haggard, those famous Bellerose eyes still a deep and startling green but somehow hollow now.

At the time, Lettie and Ryan had not known his daughter, Emma Bellerose, was dead. Lettie was five and Ryan was six, and all they knew was that something bad had happened.

Then the black body bag was brought out on a stretcher. Lettie still hadn't understood, but Ryan, only a year older, somehow knew.

"Miss Emma's in that bag," he had said quietly.

Lettie had stared, her blue eyes big and wide. "What's she doin' in that bag, Ryan?" she asked.

Ryan didn't answer for a moment. He watched them load the body bag and stretcher into the ambulance. Still the lights didn't turn on, and finally Ryan had said, flatly, "Because she's dead."