Stef Ann Holm Read online

  Stef Ann Holm

  Lucy gets Her Life Back

  I am blessed to have two ladies in my life who have made my world all the better for their existence. I’m proud to have their friendship and support, feel the grace they bring into everyday things that surround us, their respect and unconditional love. They are my wonderful daughters.

  This book is for Whitney and Kayla, who have been by my side the past three years with smiles, kindness, late-night conversations, laughter, tears and hugs. You have both been incredibly strong and loving in the challenges we have faced, and you make my days bright. God gave me an incredible gift when He gave both of you to me.

  I love you,

  Mom.

  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

  Epilogue

  Coming Next Month

  Prologue

  The Mountain Gazette would later report that virtually the entire population of Red Duck, Idaho had gathered in the Mule Shoe Bar to witness history in the making.

  With heightened anticipation, gazes fastened on the big screen television during the world news broadcast. The aroma of coffee mingled with remnant tobacco smoke from the night before. Steady conversation filled the barroom as the sun began to rise.

  A handful of those in attendance had barely let their bar stools cool down for four hours before returning at this early hour to support something really big.

  There hadn’t been this much excitement in town since Bruce Willis premiered his latest movie at the Mint Theater in Hailey. Second to that was when John Kerry ran for president and the majority of Democrats in Red Duck had to go over to the dark side and turn Republican. But that was a heated story, one that was often rehashed over shots of Jack Daniels.

  “It’s coming on in a just a few minutes!” P. J. Guffy said, aiming the clicker at the television to turn up the sound. “Quiet, everyone!”

  The noise in the crowded room hushed to a soft murmur as the morning broadcast changed gears and moved on to the weather.

  Red Duck had its own radio station and a newspaper that came out once a week. To tide everyone over until each Wednesday when the Gazette was published, gossip was exchanged over at the High Country Motel’s lounge. The closest thing to local news in between was the TV stations airing from Boise.

  The toupee-wearing anchor in a double-breasted suit filled the screen, animated hand signs indicating it was going to be another record-breaking day in the area.

  But nobody in Red Duck cared about the barometer.

  Sitting dead center in the room for the best view of the television was the soon-to-be local celebrity.

  Fern “Spin” Goodey-Leonard had both hearing aids ramped up to full power so she wouldn’t miss a thing.

  One of her liver-spotted hands clamped down on the chair’s wooden arm while the other held on to a coffee sweetened with brandy. She smiled broadly, but at no one in particular—just a double check to make sure her dentures were still firmly in place. She inhaled, sucked in her gut, the latex of her girdle constricting her effort. When she’d been a spry young woman, and tall as a barn post, she’d been nicknamed “Spin”—short for “Spindly” because she’d always been so thin. Now she relied on Playtex to keep everything in place. It was amazing how one could pour one’s skin and flab into a girdle, and in a matter of seconds, elastic smoothed out all the wrinkles.

  She’d been the seventh woman admitted to the Idaho Bar in 1924, quite a feat back then. Judges had been discriminatory in the courtroom, her cases having been especially trying when she was defending other women. It was amazing she’d lasted in a male-dominated business, her career spanning three decades. She gave up her practice in 1953 and moved to Red Duck with her husband, Wally. God bless him, Wally had died in 1956 in a bear-hunting accident. Having lived with the love of her life for the better part of thirty-two years, Spin had never remarried.

  P. J. Guffy flapped his arms, cranking the volume higher.

  A stillness fell over the room as Willard Scott’s face filled the screen.

  Applause rose and Spin wasn’t even on yet. Willard was one of Spin’s favorites. She’d tried for a few years to get his recognition and, finally, this was her year. She was glad she’d held on this long, because she didn’t think she’d be around for next year’s birthday. Her bladder was failing and her kidneys gave her trouble. Cataracts had messed with her vision and her oil painting skills had suffered in recent years. But her mind was still relatively sound, so thank God for that.

  As Willard addressed the camera, photos of centenarians across the country flashed on the screen, each one bordered by the well-known checkerboard frame.

  “And from Red Duck, Idaho, Fern Goodey-Leonard, who turns one hundred and three this week.”

  Cheers rose in the barroom as soon as Spin’s name was called, and gooseflesh prickled her loose skin. She hoped her red lipstick was still on straight. Seeing her picture on the television made her so happy. She had lived a long time for this.

  Holiday poppers exploded in the bar, with tails of streamers falling over her shoulders and catching on her rhinestone-rimmed eyeglasses.

  And it wasn’t even over yet.

  The screen went from Willard Scott to blackness as Guffy turned off the set, and all of a sudden the bar was filled with big lights from the local news media. Channel 7 had been sent to Red Duck to do a follow-up on Spin’s birthday bash.

  The reporter, perhaps twenty-two if she was a day, shoved a microphone in her face.

  “So, Ms. Goodey-Leonard,” she stated, “how does it feel to see yourself on national television?”

  Spin spoke loudly. “Good.”

  “You’re almost an icon in Idaho. The seventh woman to be admitted into the Idaho Bar. How have things changed since you practiced law in the early years? There used to be some dissension between you and a Judge—” the reporter referred to her notes “—Judge Harrison.”

  Spin went into a bit of history of the Idaho judicial system, careful not to call Harrison an asshole, but she thought it just the same.

  Big-ass asshole, male-chauvinist pig…asshole.

  Asshole.

  That last asshole thought made her brows pucker. She should have stopped while she was ahead.

  The reporter asked, “Are you in good health?”

  “As good as I can be for one hundred and three.”

  “You look wonderful.”

  “I feel so-so,” she quipped. “But I can die fulfilled now that Mr. Scott has recognized me on his weather segment.”

  “The whole of Boise would like to recognize you, Ms. Goodey-Leonard.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, because I’m having my ashes returned to Boise when I’m gone.”

  This piece of bold news caused the woman to falter somewhat. She probably hadn’t dealt with death very much at her young age. “Oh, I’m sure that will be nice for you,” she managed to murmur.

&
nbsp; “It’ll be more than nice. It’s my way of saying a final goodbye to Judge Harrison for all those years in the courtroom when he looked at me like a tomato rather than a lawyer.” Before the anchor could cut her short, Spin grabbed hold of the microphone and continued, “I’m having my ashes baked into bread, then fed to the courthouse pigeons.”

  The anchor attempted to pull away the mike, but Spin held fast, her red lipstick grazing it as she looked directly into the camera. “Then when the pigeons shit on Harrison’s statue in the court gardens, it’ll be my way of saying goodbye to the asshole.”

  Stunned but good-natured laughter erupted in the Mule Shoe as the camera crew cut the film.

  Spin didn’t care if her segment aired or not.

  She was one hundred and three tomorrow and she didn’t give a good damn what anyone thought. She’d been on NBC. Coast to coast. And with the checkered Smucker border setting off the lace collar of her blouse, she’d looked peachy on TV.

  She hoped her great-nephew, Morris Leonard, wouldn’t give her too much crap about the interview. He was a prominent Boise attorney and a fine catch for the right woman.

  By lunchtime, life in Red Duck had settled back to normal: the sheriff cited two speeders; Jacquie Santini from Realty Professionals sold a 4.6 million dollar home to an “unnamed” movie actor from Holly-weird; Sutter’s Gourmet Grocery put buffalo meat on sale; and a benefit to improve the Little League field was announced.

  That night, Spin’s interview was edited and cut to suit prime-time television. No surprise there. But the residents didn’t seem to mind.

  There was other news already brewing in Red Duck.

  One

  “That stretch of Timberline Highway by the golf course looks like a slaughterhouse floor.” The blue Idaho sky with its popcorn-shaped clouds reflected in the sheriff’s sunglasses. “I don’t recall such a massacre so close to town before.”

  Lucy Carpenter grabbed her two sons by their shoulders and drew them in close. Her lanky sixteen-year-old, Jason, shrugged out of her protective embrace, while her twelve-year-old, Matt, stuck next to her as his mouth dropped open.

  The deputy, a whipcord thin man wearing a cowboy hat and sporting a red Fu Manchu mustache, remarked, “It’ll be one hell of a job scraping off the pavement.”

  The lump forming in Lucy’s throat ached, making it more difficult to swallow. Her skin grew clammy. The band of her bra seemed to constrict and cause a thin line of perspiration to roll between her breasts. With one hand, she flipped open the top two buttons on her wool jacket, welcoming the chill air through her knit shirt.

  Suddenly, moving to Red Duck seemed like a horribly ill conceived idea. How could these two men talk so casually about a dead body on the road?

  Jason’s voice regressed to a prepuberty squeak. “Mom, I told you Boise wasn’t that bad!”

  “I never said it was a crime capital.” Lucy’s response was a little too abrupt, and perhaps on the defensive side, when she didn’t intend for it to be. “I simply said the city was a bad influence on you.”

  “I only smoked some pot. They kill people up here!”

  That last part, or rather that first part, had both law officials looking at her son as if he were a notorious drug dealer.

  “We don’t tolerate any mary-wanna-go-to-jail in this town,” Sheriff Roger Lewis cautioned, his small eyes narrowing to slits. He had a dark tropical tan that George Hamilton would envy. Silver hair framed his long face, and his teeth were a blinding white. He sported a felt-brimmed cowboy hat in the same silver color that accessorized both law-enforcement uniforms. And each officer had a very large revolver in a holster.

  Lucy’s eyes felt dry. She blinked and tried to focus.

  The deputy ran his forefinger under his nose, scratched it, then shifted his weight to an exaggerated stance. “Back in the late nineties, a few bad apples from Boise brought some cocaine with them, and several fledgling businesses went up some noses.” He traded glances with the sheriff, the pair obviously recollecting the damage. “The Iron Mountain Paragliding School was one of them.”

  “What Deputy Cooper’s saying—” the sheriff hitched his pants to high-water level while looking directly at her son “—is we won’t tolerate any big-city trouble.”

  The crispness in the late May day seemed to evaporate, Lucy’s cheeks growing warm. Indignance threaded through her. She laid a hand on Jason’s shoulder, drew him close. This time he didn’t resist. “We don’t smoke marijuana and I wouldn’t dream of bringing any drugs into town.”

  But as she spoke, she recalled her firsthand encounter with drugs and her son.

  Jason had been caught with a marijuana cigarette in his hall locker. He’d been put on suspension, but it wasn’t his first violation in the nearly two years since her divorce. There had been the day he’d cut class to go fishing with his buddies, and received his second speeding ticket on the way home. He’d had his driver’s license taken away for thirty days. His rebellious behavior after her ex-husband left them was why she’d made the decision to move her two boys to the small town of Red Duck.

  The glossy travel brochures touted that tourists might flock to Timberline, but they played in Red Duck. Golf, biking, skiing. Red Duck had a year-round population of three thousand that swelled to six thousand depending on the season.

  Nestled in a flat valley at the base of the Wood Ridge Mountains, Red Duck only had two traffic signals on Main Street. All the buildings had the same false-fronted design—from the old Mule Shoe Bar to the new Blockbuster on Honeysuckle Road.

  “Mom, can we go now?” Matt asked, the freckles on his face prominent from being in the high altitude sun.

  They’d arrived in town a good hour ago and, for the life of her, she hadn’t been able to find their rental. She’d gone several miles beyond Main Street, even into the Timberline Resort, but the road she was supposed to turn on seemed to have vanished.

  She drove the do-it-yourself moving truck with all their possessions packed inside, navigating the best she could, with her sixteen-year-old, at the helm of her beloved car, following behind. Each time she’d stopped to turn around, Jason had raised his hands in exasperation as if to say, “Where are you going?” Then he’d clamped hard on the steering wheel and accelerated far too fast for her comfort.

  Against her better judgment, and for lack of an alternative driver, she’d let her son make the two hundred mile trip from Boise to Red Duck in the Passat. She’d insisted Matt ride with her so he couldn’t distract Jason—who’d totaled his small pickup almost two months ago and was without a car.

  In defeat and puzzlement, Lucy had brought the boys to the sheriff’s department, hoping the law officials would know how to direct her. Now she regretted that decision. Being put under a microscope before she’d even unpacked a single dish wasn’t how she had envisioned their arrival.

  Lucy squared her shoulders. “I’m renting a house on Lost River Road and I can’t seem to find the turnoff. I’ve been up before. I thought I knew how to get there, but for some reason, the street’s missing.”

  Matter-of-factly, Sheriff Lewis said, “It happens in the spring. Snowmelt. You get some flash floods out that way from the Lost River.”

  The deputy added his two cents. “It’s a river that comes and goes depending on the rainy season.”

  “The street was washed out last week. Nobody’s gotten around to putting up a new sign yet.”

  “Aw jeez,” Jason whined. “We live on a street that disappears, and they’ve got dead bodies here, too.”

  “Dead bodies?” Sheriff Lewis echoed, his hand falling too close to his holster. “Where’s a dead body?”

  Matt’s voice came out in a quiver. “Timberline Highway. The big massacre.”

  The sheriff had the nerve to laugh. Lucy was about to tell him that it wasn’t funny in the slightest.

  “That’s no dead body. It’s a road-kill elk,” Deputy Cooper supplied, his facial expression trying to remain neutral, but a grin c
ut across his mouth. “And a damn big ’un. What’s left of the carcass and guts is spread out on both lanes, blood splattered from here to kingdom come. My guess it was a three-quarter-ton diesel that got it.”