Keeping Christmas Part 15

"For the moment."

"You sure she isn't behind it? I wouldn't put anything past her-even setting up getting shot at to get you on her side."

"Her side? What the h.e.l.l does that mean?"

"Just that Dixie gets things into her head-"

"Like trying to find her mother's relatives?" Chance asked.

Silence. "So she told you."

"Why don't you want her finding out about her mother's family? What are you afraid she's going to uncover?"

"I didn't even know Sarah had had any relatives that were still alive and that's the truth. I just don't want Dixie digging into things that should stay in the past." any relatives that were still alive and that's the truth. I just don't want Dixie digging into things that should stay in the past."

"Too late for that. Wanna tell me what in the past you're afraid is going to come out?"

"I told you there isn't any-"

Chance swore. "Did you go over to her house?"

"Just because the place was messed up doesn't mean Dixie didn't do it herself."

"For h.e.l.l's sake, get your head out of the sand. Dixie's in trouble. If I find out you have anything to do with someone shooting-"

"She's my daughter. daughter. If anyone should know how a man feels about his daughter, it should be you." If anyone should know how a man feels about his daughter, it should be you."

"I mean it," Chance said, ignoring Bonner's last remark. "I won't rest until I see you behind bars if I find out you are in any way involved with trying to harm her."

GLENDORA FERRIS LIVED in a four-story white clapboard apartment house a few blocks from downtown Livingston.

The drive hadn't taken long from White Sulphur Springs. Chance had put country-western music on the radio and Dixie had dozed, too nervous to let herself think about what they might find once they reached Livingston.

Now, in the shadow of a ma.s.sive peak, Dixie climbed out of the pickup to look up at the apartment house. Wind buffeted her hair and whirled snow around her. Christmas lights strung across the front slapped the side of the apartment house to the rhythm of the gusts.

The house was old and in poor shape, paint peeling, the boards of the porch sagging and cracked. Faded curtains hung in what windows she could see from the front. She wondered if Glendora Ferris was watching them from behind one of those curtains.

As they started up the steps, clouds hung low over the town, the light flat, the wind icy-cold, as if another snowstorm was moving in. In the lobby, Dixie glanced at the decrepit elevator. It was small and dark and smelled of cooked cabbage.

She headed for the stairs. Chance didn't argue. As she recalled, he didn't like small, tight s.p.a.ces any more than she did. The cab of the pickup had been intimate enough. She secretly suspected he liked having Beauregard the dog between them.

Because of Montana's higher alt.i.tude and the climb up four floors, Dixie felt winded by the time they reached Glendora Ferris's apartment. Dixie waited a few seconds to catch her breath, knowing part of her hesitancy was fear. She was depending on this woman being her aunt. On finding answers behind this door.

At her knock came the sound of an older female voice on the other side. "Just a minute."

Dixie wiped her palms down the sides of her jeans, jittery with nerves, and glanced at Chance. He gave her an encouraging nod. He was the one person who knew how much was riding on this. Finally, she might get the answers she so desperately needed.

She warned herself not to get her hopes up, but it was too late for that. She couldn't help her excitement as the door opened a crack and a weathered face peered out between the door and chain.

Dixie looked into a pair of watery-blue eyes. "Glendora?"

The woman blinked. "Yes?"

"My name is Dixie Bonner. My mother was Sarah Worth?"

"Elizabeth?" The door closed.

Dixie looked over at Chance. Elizabeth? Elizabeth? The chain grated in the latch. The door opened again. The chain grated in the latch. The door opened again.

The woman standing in front of them was anywhere from her seventies to late eighties. She wore a faded housecoat. Her hands were boney-thin and flecked with age spots. But it was the expression she wore that made Dixie's heart take a nosedive.

The woman looked totally lost, her gray hair poking up at all angles, her eyes blank. "Elizabeth?" She was looking around as if she'd expected someone else.

"I'm the daughter of Sarah Worth," Dixie said, bringing the woman's attention back to her. "I'm looking for her sister Glendora?"

"Elizabeth?" The woman didn't move, but her body began to quiver and she reached for the doorjamb as if needing it for support. Dixie moved quickly to her, putting an arm around the frail shoulders and leading her back inside to the couch.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you," Dixie said, patting the woman's boney hand as she lowered her to the couch.

Behind them, Chance stepped in and closed the door.

The poor woman had no idea who Dixie was.

"Can I get you some water?" Dixie offered, glancing toward the kitchenette.

The woman shook her head, never taking her eyes off Dixie. "I thought you were a ghost." She reached out to take Dixie's hand, pulling her down beside her on the couch. "You look so much like her. Elizabeth isn't with you?"

"Elizabeth?" Dixie asked, fighting her disappointment. This woman wasn't going to be of any help.

"Elizabeth." She seemed unaware of the tears on her translucent cheeks. "That was her real name. Sarah was her middle middle name." name."

Dixie stared at the woman in shock. "Then, you're her sister Glendora?"

The woman smiled. "What did you say your name was?"

"Dixie."

"Dixie." She looked confused again. "I thought her daughter's name was Rebecca?"

Relief washed over Dixie. She laughed. "My older sister's name is Rebecca."

"Elizabeth had more children?" Glendora sounded surprised by that. Almost disapproving. She still hadn't seemed to notice Chance waiting by the door.

"I lost track of Elizabeth after she had her little girl," Glendora said, then lowered her voice as if the walls had ears. "I couldn't understand how she could have two babies with that man. I guess things must have gotten better since she had you. You did say your name was Bonner, right?"

Dixie nodded. "You didn't like her husband?"

"Husband?" Glendora huffed. "He didn't want anything to do with marriage. I never saw him shed a tear for his own own son when he died." She wagged her head. "Elizabeth was so young, so innocent. She didn't know that some men are scoundrels. I tried to warn her about him. I was six years older, more like a mother to her since we'd lost our parents and lived with a maiden aunt." son when he died." She wagged her head. "Elizabeth was so young, so innocent. She didn't know that some men are scoundrels. I tried to warn her about him. I was six years older, more like a mother to her since we'd lost our parents and lived with a maiden aunt."

Dixie listened, trying to imagine her mother, young and naive, falling for a scoundrel.

"She was so heartbroken when she lost her son. I suppose that's why she wanted another baby. That, and to try to hang on to that man." Glendora's expression softened as she reached out to touch Dixie's face. "You look just like her. Is she still..."

Dixie shook her head. "She died when I was thirteen months old."

Glendora's watery eyes filled with tears. "I guess I always knew that she wasn't long for this world. She was too good." She met Dixie's gaze. "She was still with him?"

"Yes," Dixie said.

"I heard he moved her to Texas to work some farm."

The Bonner farm. Was it possible oil hadn't been discovered on the land yet? "So she had the baby boy in...?"

"Idaho, where we lived." She scowled. "Only lived a few weeks."

"Then my brother is buried in Idaho?"

"Ashton." She was staring at Dixie again, her eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears.

"What did she name him?" Dixie asked.

"Beauregard Bonner Junior Worth," Glendora said.

No wonder Dixie hadn't found him. She'd never dreamed her mother hadn't been married yet.

"I never knew what happened to my sister once she went to Texas. He didn't like her having anyone but him." She glanced toward the door and seemed to see Chance for the first time. "You have a handsome husband."

Dixie didn't correct her. "I never knew my father was ever in Idaho." She'd heard her uncle Carl and Mason and Ace all talk about their adventures. Her father hadn't always stayed in Texas, but he'd never said where he'd been. She thought she now knew why.

Strange, though, that he'd never mentioned that was where he'd met her mother. Or that they'd had a son who died up there and then had Rebecca before moving back to Texas.

All to hide the fact that he hadn't married her yet?

Is that why he'd flatly denied knowing the people in the photographs? She'd known he was lying, but she couldn't understand how or why he would lie about his own son and daughter, no matter the situation.

"There must have been something about my father that made her fall in love with him," Dixie said.

"Oh, he was smooth. c.o.c.ky and full of himself. Swept Elizabeth off her feet with all his grandiose plans. Did he ever make anything of himself?"

"Not really," Dixie said, and heard Chance chuckle where he leaned against the wall by the door.

She glanced around the small apartment. "Is there any chance you have a photograph of my mother?"

Glendora looked toward the back of the apartment, her expression vague. "I had some. Let me see if I can find them." She pushed herself up from the couch and disappeared into the bedroom.

Dixie looked over at Chance. She knew what he must be thinking. Why would anyone want to kill her over any of this? It made no sense. There was no mystery here. No deep, dark secret unless it was the fact that Rebecca had been born out of wedlock. Wouldn't Rebecca have a fit if she knew.

"Sounds like your father has a few secrets," Chance said.

She nodded, thinking this would explain why she'd had trouble finding out anything about her mother given that her mother's real name apparently wasn't Sarah, but Elizabeth Sarah Worth and she was born in Idaho-not Texas.

Glendora returned with a rubber-banded shoe box. She set it on the coffee table in front of the couch. "There might be something in here. I've moved so much, a lot of things have been lost over the years."

Dixie slipped off the rubber band and lifted the lid on the shoe box as Glendora joined her on the couch again.

The box was filled with black-and-white photos, the edges rough, the paper yellowed and curled.

She looked up at Chance, then with trembling fingers reached into the box and began to go through the photos.

Glendora couldn't remember most of the names of the people in the snapshots. "It's been too long," she said.

Dixie looked for a face that resembled her own, given that she'd been told she looked like her mother. The deeper she dug in the box, though, the more disappointed she became. Most of the photographs, it turned out, were from Glendora's first husband's family.

"You're so lucky to have a sister," Glendora said. "I wished my sister and I could have stayed together."

Dixie nodded, feeling guilty since she and Rebecca had never been close even though they now lived only a few miles from each other. "Would you like me to send you some photographs? Rebecca has three children."

Glendora smiled, her eyes misty. "I would love that."

Dixie picked up a photograph of a cute little girl with long blond hair making a face at the camera.

"That's Amelia," Glendora said, and reached for the photograph, smiling as she studied the girl's face.

"Amelia?"

"Amelia Hardaway. She married the oldest McCarthy boy." Glendora fell silent and Dixie could see that all this was tiring her. She quickly dug through the rest of the photographs, holding out little hope any of her mother had survived.

Glendora was still clutching the photo of the little girl. "Amelia was your mother's best friend. Those two..." she said, as if lost in the past. "They were inseparable."

Dixie could feel Chance's gaze on her. "Is Amelia still around?"

"I got a Christmas card. Was it this year or last?" She frowned as if trying to remember. "She didn't get far from home. Still lives on the farm outside of Ashton. Or she did. I think she said her husband died."

Dixie turned one of the last photographs over and froze. It was of two young girls, one about eleven, the other in her late teens.

Her heart took off in a gallop as she stared into the face of the younger girl. She felt Chance's palm on her back and looked up, and realized she must have made a sound that brought him to the end of the couch next to her.

She showed the snapshot to Glendora, not wanting to let go of it. "Is that you and my mother?"

Glendora smiled and nodded, eyes misting over. "My baby sister."

Dixie quickly looked through the few remaining photographs, finding only one other one of her mother. In it, both girls were older. Glendora was standing next to a bus, a suitcase at her feet. Beside Glendora was her younger sister holding a baby and next to Dixie's mother was a man wearing a fedora, his face in shadow and turned away from the camera as if he didn't want his photo taken.

"That was the day I left home," Glendora said, leaning in to look at the snapshot. "My aunt took the photo of all of us. It was the last time I saw Elizabeth and Rebecca. Our aunt died a few years later, but Elizabeth didn't come back for the funeral."