Consequences. Margot Dalton

herself to go feed her newest baby, now squalling faintly from his bassinet in the morning room.

      Jim thought about the druggist’s wife. “How can Gloria Wall do any harm to Lucia Osborne?” he asked.

      “Those two women don’t like each other,” J.T. said. “Never have, as far as I can tell, though I don’t rightly know why.”

      “It’s because Lucia’s so beautiful,” Serena said, “and so classy. The way she dresses and carries herself, she probably makes Gloria feel like poor white trash. But I’m sure Lucia’s not even aware of the effect she has on people.”

      “I still don’t see how…” Jim began.

      “Gloria’s the chairwoman of the school board,” J.T. told his guest. “And the word around town is that she’s pushing the board to close the middle school next year and bus the kids over to Holly Grove.”

      Cynthia looked up in alarm at her husband. “Close our middle school? J.T., that’s preposterous.”

      “Gloria Wall is a preposterous woman,” J.T. said grimly. “But she’ll still get lots of support for this crack-brained idea. The town’s been failing in recent years, lots of folks moving to the city. It makes for a heavy tax burden on the ones who stay behind.”

      “And if you tell folks they can cut their taxes by getting rid of a school, they’ll go along with it?” Serena asked in disbelief.

      “Damn right they will,” Cal told his wife.

      Cynthia shook her head, looking troubled. “Oh, dear,” she said. “There’s going to be a terrible fight in town over this. Will we even have a chance to vote on it before they close the school?”

      “From what I hear, the school board is planning to take it to plebiscite in the spring,” J.T. said.

      “After Gloria’s had time to poison the minds of everybody in the county,” Tyler added bitterly.

      “But it all comes down to Lucia Osborne.” J.T. made a wry face as he accepted a dish of low-fat ice cream from Lettie Mae Reese, the Double C’s longtime cook.

      “Why does it all come down to her?” Jim asked, thinking about the slim quiet woman behind her big desk.

      “Lucia’s the one who’s got to rally the town and convince these people her school and her job are worth saving,” J.T. said. “With somebody like Gloria Wall nipping at her heels, she’s going to have to watch herself every step of the way. She sure can’t afford to make any mistakes this winter.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      ON FRIDAY, the autumn day continued warm right into the evening. By twilight, Lucia’s little third-floor apartment was stifling.

      She opened all the windows to let in a breath of air, then wandered downstairs and out to the garden where June Pollock was weeding her pumpkin patch.

      “Hello, Lucia.” June looked up briefly at her as she sank wearily onto a wooden bench at the edge of the garden in the shade of a rustling pecan tree. “How are you tonight?”

      “Well, I’m not feeling so great. Suffering from the heat, I guess.” Lucia watched June’s strong arms as she wielded the hoe.

      Everything about June was strong, from her square shoulders to her sturdy brown legs in denim shorts. She had waist-length blond hair that she wore in a thick braid pinned on top of her head, and blue eyes so level and steady that most people had a hard time looking at her directly.

      June Pollock was probably close to forty, and had lived all her life in Crystal Creek, except for a long-ago fling with an oil wildcatter that had ended her high-school career, broken her heart and left her with a baby girl to raise alone.

      June’s daughter had been born with a club foot, but Carlie Pollock was a sweet girl, beloved by everybody in the town. At nineteen, after numerous surgeries, Carlie was able to walk and run normally, even ice-skate, and was off at college studying marine biology.

      Lucia suspected that June missed Carlie a great deal, though with characteristic stoicism she gave no sign of her feelings. But it was probably loneliness that prompted her to rent parts of her house to strangers. Since her financial windfall a few years earlier, when June sold a valuable antique carousel horse that had been hidden in her cellar for more than sixty years, she no longer had any need of the rental income.

      “You’ve got a good crop here,” Lucia commented, watching June work the hoe carefully around the ripening globes of pumpkins. “This looks like it could be your best year ever, June.”

      “It will be if the nights ever start to cool down a bit.” June paused and brushed her forehead with a tanned arm, then resumed her task. “How’re things at school these days?”

      Lucia looked up in surprise. Her landlady hardly ever initiated conversation of any kind, and certainly didn’t ask about Lucia’s job.

      “It’s…fine, I guess.”

      “Really? Well, I heard at work today that damn Gloria Wall is fixin’ to dump you,” June said with her usual bluntness.

      Lucia gave her landlady a wan smile. “Yes, it appears she’s going to try. But I intend to do my very best not to get dumped.”

      “Well, you’re gonna have your work cut out,” June said. “Lots of folks around this town just gotta hear ‘lower taxes,’ and they’re lining up to sign on the dotted line no matter what they stand to lose. Damn idiots!” she added, pounding away at the dried soil.

      Lucia watched the woman’s muscular arms for a moment as they moved in steady rhythm. At last she ventured a question.

      “June…”

      “Yeah?”

      “What can you tell me about James Whitley?”

      June smiled, showing strong white teeth. “Jimmy Whitley? He grew up in this town, right down the street.”

      “Really?” Lucia asked, startled.

      “His daddy was the middle-school principal when I was a girl, worked in the very same office where you’re sittin’ nowadays. Little Jimmy, he was just the nicest kid,” June said thoughtfully, leaning on her hoe. “All big eyes, curly hair and dimples, and so smart nobody could believe it. We all thought he’d go to the moon someday, or grow up to be president. But he got bit by the rodeo bug as a teenager, and that was pretty much the end of him. It gets to a lot of boys that way.”

      Lucia picked up a trailing vine and wrapped it around her finger, absorbing all this information.

      “What happened to his father?”

      “Well, that was a sad case.” June plied her hoe again, frowning. “Sarah Whitley, that’s Jim’s mother, she died of cancer quite young. After that, Carl Whitley just sort of lost his spirit. One day down at Lake Travis he swum out into the water and never came back. They found his body next day, tangled in some weeds.”

      “And Jim…”

      “He follows the rodeo circuit some years, and teaches school whenever he stays in one place long enough. My cousin up in Lampasas says they had Jim Whitley for a term with their eighth-graders, and he was the best teacher ever to set foot in that place. But he wouldn’t stay another year, even when they begged.”

      “So you think he’d make a competent teacher at my school?”

      June looked at her shrewdly.

      “For God’s sake, Lucia,” she said. “Just hire the man and quit fretting over it. If Gloria Wall’s on your case, you’ll be having yourself a tough enough year ahead without passing up the chance to get a real fine teacher.”

      “Well, I guess your recommendation is good enough for me.”

      “Just