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  Cover – “Franklin Hill” – Artist Susan Klabak

  Photographed by Teresa Nagel

  River Bridge Publishing 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN

  9780692351628

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The town of Franklin Hill exists only in my imagination. It is purely fictional, created from my own childhood memories and impressions and stories others have shared with me over the years. The reader will find similarities to the many small towns that dot the bluffs along the Missouri River, but these are only the ordinary, everyday similarities that small towns have in common when they share a region, lifestyle and people. My thanks to the many family members and friends who have contributed their names to the various characters populating Franklin Hill.

  A really good book must have a truly great editor. I am blessed with an editor who has a magic wand that sprays hyphens like fairy dust and leaves comments like “Damn you, you made me cry!” in the margins. I apologize to R.L. Schwartz for never having an ongoing relationship with a comma. You are truly brilliant and I bow to your grammatical expertise and wisdom.

  — Elizabeth Walker Jennings

  Dedicated with love to my family who read, listened, laughed, cried, pushed, prodded and begged me to finish. This is for you.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  ELIZABETH WALKER JENNINGS

  RETURN TO FRANKLIN HILL

  Prologue

  “Going down to see to that yard.”

  “You reckon she’ll come here?”

  “Yep. Nowhere else in town to stay. We better make it look like something. Old Man Bouche won’t clean it up.”

  “Think we ought to slap a coat of paint ‘round the inside? Flower beds could use some weedin'.”

  The two men looked at each other. The taller man pushed his baseball cap back and scratched his forehead, thinking. A shaft of sunlight traced across the grass and to the small house revealing neglected flower beds, dead leaves drifted against the back screen door and a torn carpet square serving as welcome mat.

  “Nope. Give her somethin’ to think about besides what she’s doing here.”

  A chuckle came from the other man’s broad chest. “One-horse town compared to where she’s been.”

  “Don’t ever need more than one horse.” They walked to the toolshed, supplying themselves with gloves, a rake and a broom and drove the big John Deere riding mower into the yard.

  “Better clean the cobwebs off the front door and round the windows. Won’t be quite so dingy lookin’.”

  Mowing commenced. The back patio with the green awning was swept clean. The faded, ragged carpet square made its way to the trash barrel. A few of the biggest weeds were pulled from between the bricks in the front sidewalk. The dark-haired man wiped a glove along the door frame, shooing a daddy long-legs from its hiding place.

  “Not a bad little house there. Time someone decided to take care of it.” The taller man said later, watching the light bounce across the diamond panes on the upper windows.

  “Once she gets settled we’ll see to it.”

  “Yep. Chicken for dinner tonight, best get on.”

  “See you in the mornin’.”

  “Yep.”

  Chapter One

  Grace let weariness settle over her like a blanket. As she drove over the eastern mountains, crossed the width of Ohio, slogged through Indiana and onto the broad plains of Illinois, she was met by a steady cold rain which persisted well into night. It was nearly 10:30 when she reached the suburbs of northern St. Louis. She curled her toes in the fleece-lined duck shoes and wished for a hot drink and an electric blanket. She ignored the slight chugging sound the car made. Nearly there now, just a hundred or more miles over the hills in the dark.

  Her fingers thumped against the dashboard, “C’mon, c’mon,” a prayer to the Toyota heating gods. She tapped harder. After a whistle that would have done justice to a steaming kettle, the heater grumbled a promise of more warmth.

  The winding asphalt of the St. Louis suburbs gave way to the I-370 outer loop stretching through the flood plains of the Missouri River. Suburbia sprawled here, too, with planned neighborhoods trying to mimic the feel of the town squares she’d known as a child. Under a large round clock tower, a facade of brick advertised a dry cleaner. New salt-box colonials peeked through perfectly spaced, perfectly matched ten-foot-tall Bradford pears, the builder’s cookie-cutter answer to landscaping. Federal-style row houses crowded in, all symmetrical and matching, like marching soldiers. In the dark, just past the development, lay the levees holding back the river with its sloughs and inlets.

  Grace pushed her hair out of her eyes and checked the clock again. Past Columbia, another crossing of the winding River would bring her near home. There was a hum from the rain grooves in the pavement meeting her tires, slick singing as the wet bridge rails flew by. She looked hard, scanning, futilely searching for the thirty-foot-high cutout silhouettes of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark that once graced the bluff overlooking the River. Spotlights should reveal a tall, buckskin-clad pair of explorers on the steep hillside. At some point, someone had scuttled up the bluff and cut off Meriwether and William’s heads. They stood for many years, trekking across that ridge with empty shoulders. Grace and her three sisters would kick their small legs against the deep backseat of the Chevy and point them out, squealing with glee, knowing sight of the explorers promised they were nearing Granny Stillwell’s house.

  Lewis and Clark, tattered and worn, were eventually removed from the river bluff, no view of them now in her mirror, another missing mark of a childhood more than thirty years gone.

  She was leaving her house, her job— just bagging the whole thing. What had once been interesting and fulfilling had become drudgery. She had moved to the east coast years before hoping for better pay and benefits, the holy grail of the office worker. And she had found that grail and made a place for herself there. But as time passed, Grace had found something missing.

  Over the past fifteen years, Grace’s closest friends had moved on to quieter, smaller firms. Shadwell, Klein had evolved into a well-oiled but huge machine, churning out paperwork through office minions as though they were Santa’s elves. The partner she wor
ked with and admired had abandoned ship, off to fulfill his own dreams and raise a family with a fresh-faced Iowa farm girl. Grace had introduced him to that farm girl and then had successfully wished a houseful of children on them. In their last Christmas newsletter, he and Iowa were surrounded by four fresh-faced, strapping boys.

  Grace had wanted out those years before. Away from Franklin Hill. The small town had felt like a trap with high unemployment and depression-era mentalities. But too many years in the city, working all the daylight hours and well into the night at law firms, wasting her intelligence and education in secretarial jobs, had taught Grace to appreciate what Franklin Hill did offer.

  And Grace missed her family. Granny was in her eighties and while still sharp as a tack, the days of her famous fried chicken and blackberry cobbler would soon disappear. Grace had to make the most of the numbered days with her grandmother. This was the chance, for good or for bad, to return to the town she had learned to miss.

  A job offer had finally come. Less pay and probably more work, if that was possible, at the local school district. She’d have to find somewhere to live. A house, definitely. Near Granny, definitely. Her City apartment had been a blank palette of white walls, beige carpet and empty windows. Somewhere out there, in the direction she was driving, she pictured the old wood stove glowing gently, leaves falling from a sugar maple that burned bright yellow, the smell of biscuits, and the click of Granny’s knitting needles. It was just enough warmth to draw her forward.

  She stopped to stretch her denim-clad legs at one of the nondescript rest areas, gulping bad coffee from a vending machine. It was hot and sweet, and better than driving off the highway trying to navigate the canyon of some truck-driver haven. Granny Stillwell would have a hot pot of coffee in her glass percolator any time of day with cream from a local farm waiting to be stirred into a heavy, familiar old mug.

  Emma Stillwell was a dynamo even in her aging years, maintaining a cheeriness she’d developed as a girl and held onto, through the glories and then the trials, the loss of a child and the raising of grandchildren.

  Standing in the bright light of the cold ladies' room, Grace washed her hands and considered her reflection in the rippled and scratched stainless steel of the towel dispenser. Her hair was wild after her run from the car, blown and wet, half-damp waves of dark blonde, darker every year now that she was in her forties. She couldn’t see her face very well in the battered metal, but her eyes seemed tired. Grace ran a hand through her hair, a bad habit she had, constantly messing up whatever style she was attempting. Usually there was safety in wearing it long. At least then she could tie it back when it refused to obey.

  She didn’t think she was an unattractive woman; she had a nice smile, and while she was a fit size twelve, age had been relatively kind to her. No wrinkles had taken away her wide, light-hazel eyes. “If nothing else,” she thought to herself, “I still have all my teeth. If a person were looking for a woman with good teeth, that is.”

  Grace grabbed her cell phone and, searching for a signal, ventured out of the shelter, her back to the wind and light rain, hair blowing wet against her cheeks. It was late, but the phone only rang twice. A too-wide-awake but familiar voice answered “Grace?”

  “I’m nearly there. Go to bed, Ellie. I can let myself in.”

  It was good to have someone waiting, especially someone like her oldest sister who would mother her into a lump of ineptitude within days of her arrival. While Granny Stillwell favored a matter-of-fact approach to maternal nurturing, Ellie would calmly follow her from room to room, asking Grace about the lover she had left 900 miles away, her new job, and why she hadn’t colored her hair again, all the while folding laundry and helping her settle in.

  “I’ve waited this long. Get your rear down here. Granny is dozing in the rocker.”

  “I’m thirty minutes away. Got anything for a hot toddy? This weather...brrr.” Grace crawled back into the fading warmth of the car, shoulders hunched, clutching her phone in numb fingers, and watched the rain drip from her thin windbreaker onto her jeans, bleeding dark blue.

  “Granny always has something around the house. I’ll whip one up for you.” She could hear Ellie softly shutting cabinet doors, looking through cupboards.

  “Lots of sugar. Please.” She felt her eyelids drooping and leaned her head against the steering wheel.

  “Done! Hit the road, weary traveler. We have made a pallet on the floor for you.” Ellie’s enthusiasm at finally seeing her younger sister again sang through the hum of the phone.

  Grace sat up straight and stretched, saying a quick goodbye. A pallet on the floor, she thought. The reference to their family sleep-overs as children. Her aunts’ doors were always open, their dinner tables groaning with good food and the generous hospitality of those who had little, but willingly shared.

  As a rule, there were too many cousins and not enough beds. Quilts and blankets were stacked inches deep and topped with feather pillows, making a warm mattress that was never too hard, never too soft and always provided the close comfort of a sleep so deep only a child could ease into such depths.

  Grace drove through the town square in Franklin Hill, curtseying carefully at the yellow flashing lights. The county sheriff sat parked, dome light glowing in the dark. His hat tilted her direction, examining the out-of-state plate and no doubt taking in the derelict appearance of the small green car. She wondered if it was Boyd Reed. She’d gone to grade school with Boyd who was now the suspender-hitching local yokel in Franklin Hill.

  Boyd had once been an apple-cheeked boy with dark, laughing eyes and an ID bracelet engraved with his name. She had pined after that bracelet for months during her fifth grade year, hoping the dark eyes would turn to her, offer her the bracelet and his affection. Boyd had instead married Becky Wagner, a petite redhead with a temper to match her riotous hair. She lifted a hand to wave at Boyd and was careful to signal her turn onto tree-lined Lee Street. In her forties and remembering her grade school crushes. There would be plenty of that kind of nostalgia in the days to come, no doubt.

  The faint light from the round globe of a hurricane lamp in the window of the tiny stone house pulled her from the car. She grabbed her overnight bag and closed the door, feeling no need to fumble with her keys for the lock button.

  Her grandmother stood in the doorway, a smile on her lined face, silver hair wisping from her hairnet. She wore a gently faded flannel robe. Grace swore it was the same one Granny had worn years before, when Grace left Franklin Hill. She felt comfort filling her, rolling into her, a wave of unconditional affection.

  Grace walked toward Granny, her steps turning to almost a run. As six-year-old Grace would have run. She double skipped the steps, suddenly lighter, shaking off the damp, dark, night and into safety and love after being gone for a very long time.

  Chapter Two

  She woke to the smell of hot, buttery biscuits and percolating coffee. Granny Stillwell was cooking. Grace’s feet hit the cold floor and she hissed, groping blindly for the socks she’d lost during the night under the mountain of quilts. She ran a hand through her thick hair, knotting it at her neck and glanced in the mirror, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. The stubborn set of her chin faded to a mellow smile. She headed into the kitchen.

  Granny stood next to a low kitchen counter and scraped a large wooden board, flour sprinkled across the top of the blond wood. Years ago, Grandpa had built the extension onto the back of the stone house to make a kitchen large enough for his mother and wife to share. Both women barely topped five feet and the kitchen counters were built to accommodate those short, sturdy legs. While Grace could kneel to wash dishes at Granny Stillwell’s sink, it was the perfect height for the small round woman.

  Grace walked to the sink and peered out the window, inhaling the smell of Granny’s breakfast. Sweet peas, wilted from frost, still climbed the trellis that William Stillwell had lovingly built for his wife and carefully placed outside the kitchen window so many years ago.
r />   “How many eggs, Gracie?”

  “One, please.” It was a conversation repeated routinely from the time she was six when Grace and her sisters had come to live with their grandparents. Her slim-hipped sisters would eat two or three eggs every morning, fried in butter or the lard from Uncle John’s farm, but Grace stuck with one. Country fried eggs with their lacy crispness, hot from a cast iron skillet were a delicacy she learned to live without.

  Grace pulled a stoneware mug from the cabinet, filled it from the percolator and started the search for sugar and half-and-half.

  “Under the cloth, child.” Granny patted her shoulder as she passed, carrying biscuits to the oven. A hand-stitched tea towel draped a glass butter dish, small pitcher of cream and matching sugar bowl gathered in the middle of the worn breakfast table.

  “Of course. Where’s Ellie?” Grace fumbled for a spoon, yawning and looked at her grandmother who was fiercely awake. Grace didn’t believe she’d ever seen Granny look weary. Emma Stillwell was a cherubic, round woman with steel grey eyes, silvered hair in waves, and neat as a pin. No matter how early.

  “Home to feed children and beasts, I reckon.” Granny turned to set another place at the table. “She’ll be here shortly. They’ll all be off to school and work.”

  Grace murmured a noise of understanding around a mouthful of the strongest coffee she’d had in two days.

  Granny continued, “Well, Timothy takes the children bowling one night a week and on Saturday they scatter as soon as chores are done.” She gently pushed Grace toward a chair at the head of the table as she spoke. “But now, Ellie, she takes care of herself, don’t you know. She doesn’t think I’ve seen that her toes are always polished these days. She’s been up to that newfangled nail salon in town over by the Chinese restaurant.” Granny put the accent on the SAL in salon and restaurant came out a clipped resturn’t, her natural country dialect leaking into her speech.