Queen Read online

  Queen

  Sharon Sala

  This book is dedicated to my own families. The ties are long, but they are strong. I know that even if I unwittingly transgress upon their feelings, in the end I will be forgiven, because we share something more than the ties of birth: we share love.

  To the families of Vester and Katie Smith and their descendants…to the families of Christopher and Mabel Shero and their descendants…to the families of Ernest and Agnes Sala, my family by marriage…and to my family—my husband, Bill; my son, Chris, his wife, Kristie Ann, and their daughter, Chelsea; and my daughter, Kathryn.

  This book is for you. Enjoy…and remember the love that binds us all.

  “I’M SORRY FOR A LOT OF THINGS, QUEEN HOUSTON. BUT NOT THAT YOU CAME INTO OUR LIVES.”

  His thumb traced her chin, and he felt her tremble beneath his touch.

  “It was nothing,” she said and moved away, uncomfortable with the lack of space between them.

  He held his breath, expecting her to order him to take her to the bus. But she didn’t ask, and he was afraid to broach the subject of her staying longer. Instead they stood, eye to eye.

  Queen was furious with herself and the fact that she cared…that she’d made the Bonners her responsibility.

  When would someone ever care for her?

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Also by Sharon Sala

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  The night breeze blew against Queen Houston’s face, shifting her hair and cooling the sweat that had formed on her brow moments earlier. She hefted the shotgun to an easier position against her ribs and pressed closer against the outer wall of the house, confident, for the moment, that darkness hid her presence.

  Her mouth thinned, and her eyes narrowed in anger as she watched the man who was standing in the shadows of the alley between their house and Whitelaw’s Bar. She wondered how many times in the past he’d done what he was doing and gotten away with it.

  Queen knew it was her sister Lucky’s bedroom that had captured Morton Whitelaw’s attention. Lucky was probably undressing. Queen mentally ticked off the garments that her sister must be removing by the way Morton Whitelaw increased the depth of his self-gratification. Her finger twitched on the trigger of the shotgun, knowing that it would take less effort to cock the hammer than it took to zip her blue jeans…and less time.

  A small, distinct noise dampened Morton’s lust. The click was loud and ominous and, to a man born to the Tennessee hills, as familiar as his own face. It was the sound of a hammer being cocked on a shotgun. Morton Whitelaw forgot he was at the point of climax as the woman’s voice came drifting through the darkness.

  “You sorry sonofabitch. If Johnny were still alive, he’d kill you,” Queen said, stepping away from the wall of the house.

  Morton paled, although his fear was hidden by the shadows in which he stood. It was Queen Houston! Even in the darkness he recognized her by the tangle of wild red curls surrounding her face. He’d rather have been caught by any one of Johnny Houston’s daughters but this one. She had a hate for men the likes of which he’d never seen. He knew it would take some tall talking to get away with what she must have been witnessing.

  “Step out into the light,” Queen said. “I think you’ve seen enough of the Houstons for one night.”

  He started to shake. It was the quiet, emotionless tone of her voice that made him afraid. That and the fact that she had the shotgun pointed at his crotch. He looked down, realizing as he did that he was still touching himself; he started to move his hand away when she hissed a warning.

  “Leave it,” she ordered. “You like that thing so much, I’d hate for it to get cold.”

  “Now, Queen, you don’t understand,” Morton began. “It isn’t what you think. I was on my way over to your house to bring you girls your money, and I felt nature call. I was just about to—”

  “I know what you were about to do. I could hear your groans from here, you bastard. You want to jerk off, you use someone besides my sister for enticement.”

  “Damn,” Morton muttered, and let his hand fall to his side. “What about the money for your property? You’re still gonna sell, aren’t you?” he asked.

  Queen waved the shotgun toward his pocket. “Hand it over and then get the hell out of this alley before I find myself forced to shoot a prowler. I wouldn’t be accused of anything other than a terrible accident and you know it. We just buried Johnny, remember? No one would blame the Houston girls for being nervous or for protecting themselves with their father barely cold in the ground.”

  “You bitch! When you get this money, that house is no longer your property.”

  “Maybe not,” Queen said. “But you’re buying the house and lot, not me and my sister.”

  He sighed and reached for the envelope he’d stuffed inside his shirt.

  “No! Wait!” Queen ordered as Morton’s hand dipped toward the pocket containing the checks. He did as he was told, frozen by the tone of her voice as well as by the ominous gleam of light on steel as the shotgun’s direction was changed. She was now aiming toward his face.

  “I’d rather you used your left hand, Whitelaw,” she said, remembering what he’d been doing with his right one moments earlier.

  He flushed and swore, but it did no good. Queen Houston didn’t give an inch. Cursing soundly, he yanked the envelope from his pocket, flung it onto the ground between them, and turned and stalked away, silently willing her to hell and back.

  The back door of Whitelaw’s Bar slammed, and it was only then that Queen let out the breath she had been holding and bent down to pick up the envelope that Morton Whitelaw had tossed into the dirt. She walked out of the alley with the gun hanging in the crook of her arm, barrel downward, and paused long enough by the porch to read the names on the three cashier’s checks inside the envelope. The glow of the red Christmas lights hanging across the front of Whitelaw’s—which hung there all year round, regardless of the season—was bright enough for her to see the amount of each check.

  Five thousand dollars! She still couldn’t believe it. And it was all her sister Diamond’s doing. The thought of Diamond’s absence made her want to cry, but tears were not a part of Queen’s life. Instead she stuffed the checks into the envelope and looked over her shoulder once more just to make sure that Morton Whitelaw was gone.

  Remembering the look on Diamond’s face as she’d walked out of their lives two days earlier on the arm of Jesse Eagle, one of Nashville’s hottest singing sensations, was vivid. She’d left Cradle Creek with stars in her eyes and a dream in her heart. Queen envied her optimism, as she herself had long since forgotten what it was like to hope or dream. She’d been too busy raising her two younger sisters as well as herself.

  But now she was holding the first chance she’d had for personal happiness in her entire life. Unfortunately it was inevitable that the three sisters would have to part. Diamond was already gone, and Lucky was inside, just waiting for the chance to leave. She’d had her bus ticket since yesterday and had only been waiting for Morton Whitelaw to pay up.

  Queen blinked, unaware that the reason her vision was blurred was because of tears. She wo
uldn’t have admitted their presence, even to herself. Queen Houston never cried.

  A pack of dogs bayed far off in the hills, and Queen paused in the darkness and listened. Some locals must be running their dogs tonight. She sniffed the air, half expecting to smell the wood smoke from their campfires, imagining how they’d huddle around it, laughing and telling jokes as the finest of dogs from their packs struck trail. But there was only the thick pall of smoke from the coal mines and the stench of car fumes and cigarette smoke coming out through the open windows as the patrons came and went next door at Whitelaw’s Bar.

  A man’s loud, raucous laugh intruded, reminding Queen of where she was and of her vulnerability there. She thought of the anger she’d just seen on Morton Whitelaw’s face and bolted across the porch. She yanked open the screen door, then ran inside, slamming it and the wooden door shut behind her. She turned the lock with shaky fingers and quickly set the shotgun inside a closet beside the door.

  “Queenie…is that you?” Lucky called from the back of the house, unaware of her part in Morton Whitelaw’s downfall at the hands of Johnny Houston’s daughters.

  Queen leaned against the closet door and wiped her hand across her face. But there was no one present to see her moment of weakness, and when she answered, her voice was as strong and confident as ever.

  “Yes, Lucky. It’s me. And guess what? I got our money!”

  The two sisters spent the next morning sorting through their meager belongings.

  Queen stood in the doorway to Lucky’s room and watched as her baby sister flitted from the dresser to the bed and back again, folding and refolding her clothing so that it would fit into a bag that she had purchased at an army surplus store years ago.

  “Did you get Diamond’s check in the mail?” Lucky asked as she packed the last of her clothes.

  Queen nodded.

  “She’s going to be so excited,” Lucky continued, unaware of the tense expression on her older sister’s face. “Shoot, I’ll bet by this time next year that five thousand dollars will be chicken feed to her. She’s going to be famous. I just know it.”

  Queen’s lack of response made Lucky look up. It was then that she realized how difficult this parting was actually going to be. The tears that sprang to her eyes were as inevitable as the sun that came up each morning. Her face crumpled and she started to cry.

  “Be happy for me, Queenie,” she sobbed, and threw her arms around her older sister’s neck. “I won’t be able to leave if you aren’t.”

  Queen’s arms tightened in reflex as she clutched her sister’s body tightly against her. She closed her eyes and willed herself not to think of the coming loneliness. For so many years she’d been the only one who’d cared, the only one responsible for her two younger sisters, and now in the space of a week she was losing them just as they’d lost their father, Johnny Houston, days earlier. The heart attack that had claimed him had been unexpected, just as everything else in his life.

  “I’m happy,” she said, and hugged Lucky even tighter. “I’m just having a hard time letting go. You know how parents are.”

  Lucky’s tears pooled up again. “That’s what’s so awful, Queenie,” she said. “You’re not my parent. You’re my sister.” She turned away and wiped her face with the towel Queen had handed her. “You never even got to be a child. You were too busy taking care of Johnny and of us. Sometimes I forget you’re only four years older than me. You’ve been the only mother Di or I ever knew.” She threw her arms around Queen one more time and pressed a quick, desperate kiss on her cheek before turning away and busying herself with her one piece of luggage.

  Queen inhaled sharply. This was what was so scary. These feelings between her and her sisters had always been there, but until now they’d never been voiced. It was the finality of the entire situation that frightened her. What if she never saw either of them again?

  “You’ll write as soon as you get to Las Vegas,” she said.

  Lucky stopped and looked up. “And mail it where? You’re leaving too, remember?”

  Queen paled. She shoved her hands through her auburn curls and paced, trying to figure out a way for the three of them to keep in touch. Finally she remembered.

  “We’ll both communicate through Diamond. Jesse Eagle gave me his card. I used it when I mailed Diamond her check. There’s an address as well as a phone number. We’ll mail everything to her, and she can relay the information back to us.”

  Lucky smiled. It was an answer to the fear. She should have known that her Queenie would think of something. She always had before.

  Queen suddenly bolted from the room. Moments later Lucky followed and found her digging frantically through her closet for the shirt she’d worn yesterday.

  “I can’t find it,” she said in a panicked voice.

  “You can’t find what?”

  “The card! Jesse Eagle’s card. I had it,” she muttered, flinging her meager wardrobe onto her bed. “I used the address at the post office. I distinctly remember…Oh, God! Lucky! I think I left it on the desk. I’ve got to get to the post office. Maybe it’s still there. Mayrene never cleans. Surely this once it’ll still be—”

  Lucky stopped her sister’s frantic flight by grasping her arm. “That was yesterday,” she reminded her.

  Queen shrugged out of her grasp. “I don’t care if it was two weeks ago. I can’t lose it. How will we ever find each other again? I lost Johnny. We can’t lose each other!”

  She raced from the house, her long legs covering the distance from porch to gate in three steps.

  Lucky followed behind at a slower pace. She didn’t want to be there when Queen discovered the loss, but she couldn’t let her face it alone. Until now their whole lives had been intertwined by the fact that they were the gambler’s daughters. Living down that stigma would have been impossible alone. Together they’d snubbed their noses at the world that had done a royal job of snubbing them.

  Queen disappeared around the corner of the street, a blur of denim jeans and faded brown plaid shirt as she raced the five blocks to the post office. Lucky followed, using the time to take one last look at the rural Tennessee town that had been the only home she could remember.

  She tossed her long black hair over her shoulder and squinted against the glare of sunshine, wishing she’d worn something to travel in other than the faded jeans and yellow shirt. She’d always dreamed of arriving in Las Vegas dressed to kill. She thought again of her silent vow to go back to the source of Johnny’s misfortune —to Nevada, the place where their father had lost the Houston Luck in a poker game, and reclaim that which was theirs.

  It was a childish dream that had taken root years ago. And even maturity had not dimmed the need to find the family heirloom, a gold pocket watch, and bring it back to Johnny. That Johnny Houston now had no use for it didn’t seem to matter. What mattered to Lucky was fulfilling his dream.

  A child cried beyond the doorway of one of the houses as she walked past. She looked away, trying to ignore the slap she heard and the knowledge that sometimes poverty was more than a lack of money: it was a frustration with life that often turned itself inside out and made nice people do ugly things to the ones they loved.

  And the poverty of Cradle Creek was inevitable. The main commerce in town was the small coal mining company that clung to existence as stubbornly as the hill people clung to their privacy. Most of the houses were ramshackle and in sore need of a paint job. Their gray, weathered walls blended perfectly into the monochromatic landscape of a coal mining community. What wasn’t coated with coal dust was layered in dirt.

  Lucky knew that it was acceptable to be poor in a place where everyone was the same. It was not acceptable to live off the weakness of man by gambling for a living. She also knew that acceptance in Cradle Creek came from scraping out a living in the bowels of the earth, not skinning a miner out of his paycheck.

  She stopped mere feet away from the post office and watched as Queen stood transfixed on the top step, stari
ng blankly at the landscape as if her answer could be found floating somewhere in the atmosphere.

  “It’s gone,” Queen said. “The only time Mayrene Tate’s cleaned the damned post office in a month and it had to be now.” Her frustration warred with her fear. She didn’t know whether to scream or just sit down and cry. But she was a Houston. She did neither. Instead she walked off the steps and started back toward their house.

  “How will we stay in touch?” Lucky asked, unable to look away from the despair on Queen’s face.

  “It’ll be all right,” Queen muttered, and slipped her hand in Lucky’s. “It has to be. When we get settled, surely we can just call information and contact Diamond through Jesse’s record label or something. It can’t be all that difficult. Come on,” she said. “You’ve got a bus to catch in less than an hour. And I’ve got to pack, too. I told Whitelaw we’d be out by tomorrow.”

  Lucky skipped in step to match her sister’s long stride. For the last time, they made the trip home together.

  Queen stood in the middle of the street, waving at the back end of the bus long after the dust had settled. The smile she’d fixed on her face slid, turning upside down along with her world. For the first time in her life she was alone. It was terrifying and, at the same time, exhilarating.

  It was her time. She patted her pocket to assure herself that her own share of the money from the sale of their home was safe, then headed for the bank. She walked inside and up to the single teller’s window, took the cashier’s check out of her pocket, and slid it across the counter.

  Tilman Harger had gone to school with Queen Houston. By the time they were in high school, she’d become the unreachable goal they’d all strived for. He, like every other boy in their class, had made bets as to who would screw the curvaceous redhead first. He, like every other boy in class, had come up a loser. If Queen Houston had ever dated, she’d done it quietly and chosen someone other than a local. And he, like every other man in town, had hated her for the slight.