Between Heaven and Texas Read Online Free

Lydia Dale. That, and Mary Dell’s unfortunate tendency to speak her mind in the question-and-answer portion of the competition, spelled her doom. She just wasn’t pageant material.
    Mary Dell was not entirely sorry when her pageant days came to an end. Aside from the fancy costumes, she’d never cared for them and hated being away from home so much. However, she did miss her sister when Lydia Dale was off with Taffy at competitions, and she felt the lack of her mother’s attention, which was now focused like a laser beam on Lydia Dale and her future (Taffy would have said her destiny) as a beauty queen. Every other concern and responsibility, even those Taffy owed to her other child, came a distant second to her desire to see Lydia Dale win.
    Another girl in similar circumstances might have resented her sister, but Mary Dell loved Lydia Dale too much for that. And another girl, desperate for her mother’s attention, might easily have turned rebellious and wild. But fortunately for Mary Dell, Taffy was not the only sun in her orbit.
    When Taffy and Lydia Dale were off at pageants and Dutch was busy on the ranch, Mary Dell spent her weekends at the little house Silky and Velvet shared in town, adored but never coddled by those two worthy old women, especially Silky, who became her mother in all but biology. Silky was the one to whom Mary Dell turned for advice, encouragement, comfort, and womanly example. Mary Dell even adopted her grandmother’s colorful, countrified form of speech, replete with the old-time Texas sayings and exclamations that Taffy, who so wanted to be elegant, had expunged from her vocabulary. Silky loved Mary Dell with all her heart, and the feeling was mutual. That didn’t mean that Mary Dell, at some level, didn’t miss her mother’s affection and regard, but her grandmother’s love filled most of the gaps. And anyway, Mary Dell was never one to moan about things that couldn’t be helped. That was another thing she’d learned from her grandmother.
    Mary Dell loved watching as Silky sat hunched over an ancient Singer Featherweight machine as she worked making dresses or doing alterations. Silky was a master seamstress. Taking in sewing kept her busy and was a supplement to the income she received from the ranch, which had shrunk since Dutch took over the running of the F-Bar-T.
    In time, Mary Dell progressed from watching her grandmother to helping her. At the age of fifteen, she was designing and sewing her own clothes. At sixteen, her school guidance counselor asked if she’d given any thought to what she wanted to do after high school. Without a moment’s hesitation, Mary Dell answered.
    â€œOh, yes, ma’am. I’m going to open a dress boutique on the square. I’ll design and make everything myself. And I’m going to call it Mary Dell’s Too Cute Creations,” she said, lifting her hands and spreading them wide, as if she could already visualize the painted sign of her someday dress shop.
    The counselor glanced at the girl’s transcript with its long list of Cs, the monotony broken by one B in algebra and one A in geometry. Mary Dell was a sweet girl but, the guidance counselor concluded, clearly not college material.
    â€œAmbition is a fine thing to have. But it’s always good to leave yourself open to the possibilities. Why don’t you take a look at this?” She smiled and handed Mary Dell a brochure for a trade school that offered bookkeeping courses.
    The counselor underestimated Mary Dell, but that’s understandable. Mary Dell had not yet bloomed into the full flower of her personality and grit. It would take another fifteen years for that to occur. Back then, Mary Dell was still just a girl, consumed by dreams, as easily distracted by fancies and flirtations as any other, perhaps more so. After all, other girls were not Tudmores. Other girls were not subject to the ungovernable influences of the