Souvenirs of Starling Falls Read online

  Souvenirs of Starling Falls:

  Book One in the Starling Falls Series

  by Holly Tierney-Bedord

  Also by Holly Tierney-Bedord

  Sweet Hollow Women

  Coached

  Surviving Valencia

  Bellamy’s Redemption

  Run Away Baby

  The Port Elspeth Jewelry Making Club

  The Woman America Loves a Latte

  Little Miss Eyes of Blue

  Sunflowers and Second Chances

  Right Under Your Nose: A Christmas Story

  Ring in the New Year

  The Snowflake Valley Advice Fairy

  Murder at Mistletoe Manor

  Carnage at the Christmas Party

  Wrestling with Romance

  Dogged by Love

  The Worst Couple in the World

  The Miraculous Power of Butter Cookies

  Love, Pinky Bean

  I Will Follow Him

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be shared, stored, or reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Cover design by Holly Tierney-Bedord, featuring artwork licensed from Adobe Stock.

  Souvenirs of Starling Falls: Book One in the Starling Falls series, a novel by Holly Tierney-Bedord ©2019.

  All rights reserved.

  The Queen of Sweet Hollow, sample by Holly Tierney-Bedord ©2019. All Rights reserved.

  To sign up for Holly’s newsletter, click here.

  Prefer to just be notified when more books in this series come out? There’s a form for that at the back of this book.

  If you loved Sweet Hollow Women, don’t miss the sample of its new companion novel, The Queen of Sweet Hollow, at the back of this book.

  Courtney’s Story

  Starling Falls, Idaho

  2007

  Courtney Shaw

  Chapter 1

  Friday, July 13, 2007

  On our first night at 313 Hawthorne Avenue, a muggy, cricket song-filled evening in July, two strangers paid us a visit at nearly ten o’clock. We’d been talking quietly, our backs to the street, and we didn’t notice them until they were making their way up our porch steps.

  He wore knee-length jean shorts and a t-shirt displaying the Starling Falls High School beaver mascot. Beneath our dim, yellow porch light, the part of his narrow face not in shadow from the brim of his cap gleamed with the persistent waxy pockmarks left over from his youth. He had a perfectly oval-shaped goatee, the likes of which I hadn’t seen in years, and the teeth of an eager rodent.

  She was beautiful and elegant, and, as far as first impressions go, seemed not to be his fitting counterpart in any way. She wore a long kaftan and flat, barely-there sandals. Her straw-yellow hair was twisted back and fixed in place with a single chopstick. She was carrying a pie.

  Tom and I were taking a break from unpacking, having some beers, and my initial feeling upon seeing these poorly matched strangers approaching with that pie was that I wanted to slip inside the house and hide. Instead we stood up and met them, naturally, as civilized people do. Up until this moment, I’d only been a city girl. An anonymous face in the crowd that didn’t bother with niceties or masks. But I’m so adaptable, it turns out, that my face instinctively formed an appropriately benign small-town smile. The kind of smile I would come to constantly wear.

  “Hello, new neighbors,” said the man. “Barnaby McGhee. Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan, hence, the hat,” he added, tapping the red cap on his head. “Not that I’ve been to Florida more than three or four times in my life.” He laughed. His voice was nasally. I recognized it as originating from some vague, flat part of the Midwest. He held out his hand to Tom, and then gave him the heartiest, most vigorous handshake I’d ever seen.

  “I’m Tom Shaw,” said my husband, “and this is my wife Courtney.” I nodded and smiled some more. A headache had been coming on for hours and this unexpected visit was making it crest.

  After the handshake, Tom wiped at his dirty forehead, pushing his sweaty hair from his eyes, and then picked up his bottle of beer he’d set on the porch railing and took another drink from it. We’d been moving furniture and boxes all day. I knew he wasn’t in the mood for meetings and pleasantries either. “I’m afraid I’m not a huge sports fan,” he said.

  “I’m Priscilla,” said the woman, holding the pie out in front of her chest like a ballet dancer who’d been frozen mid-spin. Though she was simply standing before us, there was compressed excitement just about bursting from her. Her nostrils flared a bit, her eyes and breath both seemed to be quivering with an undercurrent of electricity.

  “Nice to meet you both,” I said. “And would you look at that pie.”

  “Oh, this?” Priscilla shrugged daintily, her shoulders rising and falling with a slight, flirtatious nudge. “We thought we’d bring you a little housewarming present.” She handed me the pie, and everything that came with it: four china plates and four linen napkins, all of which I hadn’t initially noticed since the pie had been resting on top of them.

  “How unbelievably kind of you,” I said, carefully setting the stack of steaming-hot hospitality on the wicker table on our porch. Wisps of sweet banana-scented heat wafted from its tiny puncture wounds. Hot banana pie. On the face of the pie, I now saw that in blocky letters made of more pie crust, fanning out like a rainbow, were the letters W E L C O M E F R I E N D S.

  “Amazing,” said Tom.

  Priscilla removed four forks from the pocket of her kaftan and set them on the dirty wicker table beside the pie and plates. Then she reached back into her pocket and produced a huge knife, wrapped in another linen napkin. Carefully, expertly, like a surgeon, but with the flair of someone who lived to be observed, she sliced the pie, avoiding every letter of her welcome message like a champ. Then she wiped off the blade with the napkin and tucked the knife and napkin back into her pocket. She sighed and smiled expectantly.

  The kaftan. It looked like it was homemade, but of designer fabric. Not like the homemade clothes I had to wear when I was growing up. It was the creation a bored person would make when she was out of normal things to do.

  “We thought you probably didn’t have any dishes or cutlery unpacked yet,” she explained, sighing and smiling expectantly again.

  “Thank you. Please sit down,” I added, since I had no other real option.

  “Thanks,” they said. They made themselves comfortable on the porch swing and we brought the wicker table and chairs over beside them. Priscilla began dishing up the pie. Tom took two more beers from the cooler, opened them, and set them on the table.

  “So, what brings the two of you to Starling Falls?” asked Barnaby. “You bought this place, right?” I guess he meant as opposed to renting it.

  “I’m a writer,” said Tom, “and Courtney likes old houses. We thought this looked like a good place to start our life.” I smiled and squeezed Tom’s hand, not at all ashamed of our romantic aspirations. I’d soon discover that everyone who moved to Starling Falls came with similarly simplistic yet lofty intentions. The locals, I’d learn, were a different story. They didn’t aspire to romanticisms and remarkability. Those who aspired, aspired to leave. Their stories were predictable and heavy. Unmentioned. Unmentionable.

  “What about you two? Are you from Starling Falls originally?” Tom asked them.

  “Oh, no! No, no,” laughed Barnaby.
“We just moved here ourselves in May.”

  “April thirtieth,” Priscilla corrected him, with tender breathiness.

  “We’re from Tulsa,” Barnaby continued. “For the past nine years, that is. I grew up in Springfield, Missouri. Priscilla’s from St. Louis. I’m the new director of the Wayward Academy. I just finished up my first week there.”

  “What’s the Wayward Academy?” I asked, feigning polite interest. In my peripheral vision, Tom was taking a bite of banana pie and trying not to gag.

  “Do you want a little cream on it?” Priscilla murmured to Tom. Though I hadn’t detected the slightest bulk to her, she pulled a can of Reddi-wip from yet another fold of her kaftan and splurted a raspy, hissing plume of it onto Tom’s pie.

  “Thanks,” he said, wiping some rogue splatters off his face.

  “Sorry about that. I got a little messy, I guess.” She smiled from under her long eyelashes at my husband. I felt my mouth twist in annoyance. “Anyone else want some cream?” she asked quietly to no one in particular, before tucking the can back into her pocket.

  “You mean to tell me you haven’t heard of the Wayward Academy?” Barnaby looked so puzzled by this. He tilted his head left and right, and shoved his cap back so he could scratch his head. His tall forehead was wrinkled in incredulous confusion. He looked from me to Tom and back to me, before finally resting his bug-eyed gaze just on Tom. “You haven’t heard of the Wayward Academy?” he repeated. Priscilla smiled benevolently.

  “Nope. We haven’t,” I said, since Tom’s mouth was full. I looked down at my pie for a moment then, at the warm yellow puddle leaking from the perfectly flakey crust. The sea of drowned raisins. What the hell kind of a pie was this? At the perfectly crimped edges and the W and E, because ladies first. The plates looked like family heirlooms and the napkins were monogrammed with artfully embroidered M’s for McGhee. The flatware appeared to be real silver. It was a mix of everything lovely and terrible a pie could be. I wondered if it had been some kind of an inside joke. Some kind of a dare.

  I looked up and said, “The Wayward Academy. It’s kind of a funny name.”

  “No, actually, it’s perfectly fitting. The Wayward Academy is an acclaimed, respected establishment,” said Barnaby. “It’s a year-round institution. You’ve probably already heard it mentioned, but you just didn’t pick up on it. It’s between here and Cotswold.”

  “Don’t know it,” said Tom.

  Barnaby’s voice took on a tone that bordered on whining: “That big yellow brick building out on the hill on Highway 29? It used to be a foundry? Now do you know what building I’m talking about?”

  “We haven’t gotten much of a chance to explore the area yet,” said Tom.

  “It’s just past the stables where we board our horses,” said Barnaby.

  “Chestnut, Delphi, and Parnassus are their names,” said Priscilla. “Courtney, do you ride?”

  “I don’t. And I’m afraid we don’t know much about this area yet. Like where the Wayward Academy is. In fact,” I added, “you’re the first people we’ve met.”

  “Well,” Barnaby continued, “the Wayward Academy is a school and boarding facility for troubled kids. One of the most renowned institutions of its kind in the whole country. Until four years ago, it was boys-only, but now it’s co-ed. It’s for ages nine through eighteen.”

  “Wow,” I said. “And you’re the director. That sounds like a challenging job.”

  “It’s a school and rehabilitation facility for troubled children,” Priscilla added, for further clarification. She was nodding, her eyes big and sad, emphasizing the seriousness and importance of her husband’s career.

  Along with the deed, house keys, and desire to shop for mulch, an unwavering Eisenhoweresque determination to support our husbands came quickly and naturally to all us transplanted wives. On this evening, though, I still had the antibodies I’d built up in my former life protecting me from the virus that would one day have me, too, baking odd pies from scratch.

  “The director. That’s cool,” said Tom.

  Barnaby scraped his fork against the plate, getting the last of the slimy banana sauce. “Mmm, nanners…” he said in a quiet, sing-songy baby voice, sneaking a quick smile at his wife. Then he turned to us, his brow forming a concerned crease and his voice lowering importantly once again. “Yeah, I’d say it can be challenging. It’s nothing I can’t handle, of course. Let me just tell you, we came here thinking I had a lot to teach these kids. You know, small town, small minds, troubled teens, all of that. But already, I’m the one who’s learning things. I mean, we just settled in here ourselves—it’s only been ten weeks or so since we moved in, and then the first three weeks we were down in Guatemala doing missionary work—but already I can tell that Starling Falls is going to educate me in ways OBU couldn’t. It’s like, I came here thinking I had so much to offer Starling Falls, but really Starling Falls has so much to offer me.”

  “It’s amazing that you could have that kind of epiphany after just a couple of weeks on the job,” said Tom.

  “It is, it sure is,” said Barnaby.

  “And it’s only been one week that he’s been on the job,” said Priscilla.

  “Then it’s even more incredible,” said Tom.

  “What about you two?” asked Barnaby. “Any kids?”

  “No,” we said in unison. “Not yet,” I added.

  “Look at you two,” Barnaby continued, shaking his head in an appreciative sweep. “You could go anywhere in the world. You said you’re a writer. Right, Tom?”

  “Yep,” said Tom, taking another sip of his beer.

  “A person can write anywhere, yet here you are,” Barnaby continued. “And Courtney—it’s Courtney, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You don’t work? I mean, outside the home?” Now Barnaby was nodding encouragingly at me.

  “Well,” I began, unsure what my new life would look like once we’d settled in.

  “You stay home and take care of things around here, right?” Barnaby continued, still nodding.

  “I guess so. I mean, that’s true for now,” I said. Until a month earlier, I’d been a manager at a pet store. One of those chain pet stores that’s part of a strip mall. But I didn’t mention this. Despite that I barely knew the ways of Starling Falls, I sensed that this unremarkable, unimpressive fact could serve no purpose. Not only was I too exhausted to talk about myself, but I couldn’t ignore my new neighbor’s eager, bobbing head, pointing me to the merits of being a stay-at-home wife. “Yeah, I don’t work,” I decided aloud, wanting to be agreeable and easy.

  “And why would you, when Tom’s a successful writer?” asked Barnaby.

  “Exactly,” I said. I glanced at Tom, who I usually knew so well, but I couldn’t decipher whether he was flattered by the conversation or thought it was stupid and annoying. Priscilla just kept smiling a very, very pleased smile.

  “The whole wide world is your oyster,” Barnaby continued, looking from Tom to me and back to Tom again. “But you’ve chosen to be here. Right here! In Starling Falls! How great is that? You’re taking part in the Starling Falls renaissance. That’s what I call it! Flipping the soil, planting the seeds! Folks are moving in, investing in the town. We’re going to turn this town around. Together!”

  “Yeah, we really like it here,” said Tom. “We were looking for a place to settle down, and Courtney loves these big, old houses, and this one was such a steal... We decided to go for it.”

  “It really is a mansion, isn’t it?” said Priscilla.

  “The houses on this whole street are,” I said. “Well, practically all the houses in the whole town are.” I suppose I didn’t want to seem gluttonous, so I was pointing out that lots of people had a bigger house than they needed.

  “Are you gonna fix it up yourself or hire someone?” Barnaby asked Tom.

  “A little of both,” said Tom. “Which one’s yours?”

  “That one.” Barnaby pointed across the street
and down a little to a huge pink house with an octagonal turret. “We’re getting it painted this fall. A nice slate gray is what we’re thinking. Bring a little Nantucket style to Idaho.”

  “Or yellow,” said Priscilla. “Butter yellow with slate gray shutters. Functional shutters, of course. The kind that actually open and close. Not that we would want them closed, but it’s nice to be historically accurate.”

  “It’s a beauty,” said Tom. “Edwardian?”

  “Queen Anne,” said Barnaby.

  “I love the fence,” I said, referring to an iron fence with ornate scrollwork that bordered the side of their lawn facing Virginia Street. “Is it original?”

  “Absolutely,” said Barnaby.

  “How do you like the pie?” asked Priscilla. Her posture was immaculate. Her head was tilted just so, revealing a simple pearl earring and a small mole on her neck. Her ankles were crossed with each long, white foot pointing primly off to the side like parallel hotdog buns.

  Hot dog buns? This is when it occurred to me just how exhausted I was. I had a fleeting thought that we’d been drugged, but then decided I was too tired to care if we had been.

  “The pie? It’s nice,” I said, smiling at the remaining half of my slice. It was a shell now. A golden shell in a puddle of sweet inedible doom.

  “Really?” she asked. Implored. Leaning in, waiting, inhaling, her eyes growing bigger and more pleading with each passing millisecond. She was energy restrained, yet in such a quiet, well-behaved way that no one else was penetrated by it. Barnaby cleaned his glasses with the corner of his shirt and Tom chugged his beer, neither of them seeming to feel or notice her quivering electrical essence.

  “Mmm hmm,” I said.

  She exhaled. “I’m glad to hear it. I’ll make it for you again.”

  “I’m having another beer. Anyone else need another?” asked Tom, reaching behind a pile of garden hoses and storage totes to where the cooler was sitting. The two he’d opened earlier for Priscilla and Barnaby were still sitting on the table. Barnaby’s was almost gone but Priscilla’s looked nearly untouched.