Almost Home Read online

  “This is the kind of book you can’t wait to get home and read every night—to meet up with characters you genuinely like in a feels-so-real place you want to be. Almost Home is wholeheartedly engaging and uplifting, sweet and sentimental, but also smart, witty, and brilliantly down-to-earth. Finishing this book is like hugging a good friend goodbye—you don’t want to let her go.”

  Sara Peterson, editor in chief, HGTV Magazine

  “A story of kindness, friendship, and healing, Almost Home shines. At an Alabama boardinghouse in the 1940s, characters going through troubled times find hope and help through each other.”

  Nancy Dorman-Hickson, coauthor of the award-winning Diplomacy and Diamonds and a former editor for Progressive Farmer and Southern Living magazines

  “Valerie Fraser Luesse’s Almost Home beautifully depicts that uncertain time in post–World War II America when people from all walks of life were trying to find their way in a world where nothing was the same. Each character contends with their own struggle but learns that when love, compassion, and support are offered, even strangers can turn into family.”

  Stephanie Patton, publisher/editor, The Leland Progress

  “A ragtag group of strangers finds commonality and strength under one roof (literally) in Valerie Fraser Luesse’s witty, wise, and moving second novel. Almost Home abundantly reveals how friendship and faith endure in spite of—and sometimes because of—trying times, and how the things that tear us apart can also bring us together.”

  Jim Baker, journalist and author of The Empty Glass

  Books by Valerie Fraser Luesse

  Missing Isaac

  Almost Home

  © 2019 by Valerie F. Luesse

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4934-1660-8

  Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

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

  For Missey

  Contents

  Cover

  Endorsements

  Books by Valerie Fraser Luesse

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Part 1: The Arrival

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  Part 2: The Return

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  Part 3: The Goodbyes

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  Epilogue

  A Look at another Valerie Fraser Luesse Story

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  April 3, 1944

  Dear Violet,

  How’s everything over in Georgia? I bet you thought you’d never hear from your big sister again! What with getting the lake ready to open and looking after all my boarders, I’m about half crazy. I told Si that if I don’t soon get a minute to prop my feet up and catch my breath, he might as well run on down to Trimble’s and pick me out a casket.

  Did I tell you they’ve gone to selling caskets upstairs at the mercantile? They’ve got big yellow name tags you can tie on the handle once you make your selection. Then you just pay at the register, and that sweet little Gilbert boy that stocks the shelves will haul your purchase to the funeral parlor on a flatbed truck. It’s so much more convenient than driving all the way to Childersburg when a loved one passes, but it’s a little spooky to shop for your dry goods, knowing what’s overhead. And anytime you cross the river bridge, you’re likely to meet a casket bound for the funeral home. How about that? Before we can cross Jordan, we’ve got to cross the Coosa.

  I have to tell you, sister, I’ve been sorely missing somebody to talk to since you and Wiley moved away to Georgia. I’ve got people all around me from morning till night, but now and again you just want to have a conversation with somebody that doesn’t need you to fry something, iron something, or mop something up. You got anybody to talk to over in Georgia?

  Back to my boarders. Granddaddy Talmadge must be rolling over in his grave. I can hear him now: “Yankee carpetbaggers!” I’m a little ashamed of myself for renting to them, what with his Confederate uniform still hanging in the attic, but we sorely need the money. They say this Depression’s near about over, but I reckon somebody forgot to tell Alabama.

  My boarders seem to come and go in cycles. The ones that rented from me at the beginning of the war have all left, and I just filled up with new people. We rented the last of the upstairs rooms a couple of weeks ago, one to a perfectly horrible couple—the Clanahans from Reno, Nevada—and one to a young husband and wife from Illinois, name of Williams. I did NOT show those Reno people our old room—just put them in that drafty back bedroom and saved ours for Mr. and Mrs. Williams when they get here, which ought to be any day now. Something tells me they need it. (Little Mama’s house is talking to me again!)

  I’m babbling on and on about nothing, but I sat down here with a purpose, Violet. What with all the comings and goings at home, I’ve decided a thing or two. I think God gives us soul mates—not many but enough to get us through. And I’m not just talking about husbands and wives. I’m talking about those one or two people we meet on life’s journey who see straight through all our nonsense and love us one hundred percent, no matter what. You’re my soul mate, sweet sister. And I never fully appreciated that till now.

  Well, I’d best go before I have to reach for that pretty handkerchief you embroidered for me. Some days I hold to it like a lifeline. Hope y’all are still coming for the Fourth. It wouldn’t be a fish fry without my Violet.

  Kiss the young’uns for me and give Wiley a hug.

  Your loving sister,

  Dolly

  CHAPTER

  one

  Anna Williams leaned out the truck window and let the wind blow her damp auburn hair away from her face. She remembered her grandmother’s parting words: I fear Alabama will suffocate you. With each warm gust of wind, Anna felt a fresh wave of loneliness. The family she had left behind in Illinois seemed a million miles away right now. She had yet to see her new home but already missed the old one so much she could hardly bear it.

  “Need to stop?” her husband asked without taking his eyes off the road.

  “I’m
alright.” She took a sip of the soda he had bought her at a Texaco station just outside of Birmingham. It wasn’t ice-cold anymore, but it was better than nothing. A quick glance in Jesse’s direction told her nothing had changed—not yet, anyway—but she was hoping and praying.

  Jesse had what radio newsmen at the front called “the thirty-yard stare”—a vacant, somber gaze. It had settled onto his face like a heavy fog and hovered there for the past year. Even though her husband wasn’t a soldier—flatfeet and hardship had kept him out of the service—he was fighting a battle just the same.

  Some men collapse under the weight of a failing farm, but Jesse had stood firm—sadly, for both of them, by turning to stone. Now he had decided that the only way to revive their farm was to leave it behind, at least for a while. He was driving them away from everything and everybody they loved, but Anna was determined not to cry in front of her husband. She had to believe that somewhere deep down, he still had a heart, and she didn’t want to break it by letting him know just how desolate she felt.

  She looked out her window and took in the countryside. Alabama was so green—a thousand shades of it. Everywhere you looked were towering pines, their branches thick with needles that faded from deep olive to sage to pale chartreuse at the very tips. With the truck windows down, Anna could occasionally catch the heady fragrance of honeysuckle, which draped the fence lines and mounded so heavily in spots that it threatened to take down the barbed wire and liberate the cows. The lush pastures made a thick carpet of grass that looked like emerald velvet. You couldn’t look at grass like that and smell its perfume without wondering what it would be like to stop the truck, strip off your sweaty clothes, and lie down in a bed of cool, green sweetness. That had to be a sin. And it would likely stampede the livestock.

  Anna thought to herself that this Southern landscape didn’t so much roll as billow, like a bedsheet fluttering on a clothesline, as the mountains and foothills of Tennessee sank into flatlands around Huntsville, only to soar up again just above Birmingham. The pickup was headed down a two-lane highway that had carried the couple straight through the Magic City—that’s what the radio announcers called Birmingham, though Anna had no idea why—and now she and Jesse were getting their first glimpse of rural Shelby County, where they would be living for the next couple of years.

  “Help me watch for a dirt road off to the right.” Jesse was turning off the Birmingham highway and onto a county blacktop. “It’s supposed to have a sign by it that says ‘Talmadge Loop’ or something like that.”

  They drove past several white clapboard churches and what Anna guessed were cotton fields. She spotted a soybean field or two—at least that much was familiar.

  “There it is,” she said, pointing to a crooked wooden sign nailed to a fence post.

  Jesse followed what did indeed appear to be a big loop—more a half-moon of a road, really, connected to the county highway at each end. It was sprinkled with houses, some noticeably nicer than others. Anna saw a yard full of children—colored and white—playing around a tire swing in front of a rickety little house. The walls looked as if they would collapse like a line of dominoes if you so much as leaned against them.

  “I thought they didn’t believe in mixing down here,” she said absently, though she knew Jesse wouldn’t answer. Sometimes she felt as if her husband had an overwhelming need to pretend she wasn’t there.

  Jesse pulled into a narrow driveway that led to a stately white two-story house surrounded by oaks and pecan trees so imposing that they had to be a hundred years old. As she stepped out of the truck and felt a breeze, Anna did her best to fluff out her skirt and loosen her sweaty blouse, which was sticking to her like wet tissue paper.

  She took in her surroundings. Weathered and in need of fresh paint, the old house still had an air of grandeur about it. Both stories had deep, L-shaped porches with scrolled bannisters wrapping around the front and southern side of the house. The windows were at least six feet tall and flanked by dark green shutters.

  Across the road was a long, narrow building that looked a lot like a barn, except for a gigantic side porch big enough to hold a row of Adirondack chairs. Steps led from the porch into a hole almost as big as a football field. Nailed to one of the few pines left standing was a plywood sign that read, “Future Home, Lake Chandler.”

  “What do you make of that?” Anna asked, pointing to the sign. “How do you build a lake?”

  Jesse just shrugged and motioned for her to follow him to the house. He pulled the cord on a small iron bell mounted beside the front door and waited.

  Standing on the porch, Anna realized that the only thing separating inside from outside was screen wire. The front door and all the windows of the house were wide open, but there were screens nailed over all the windows and a screen door at the main entrance. Anna had heard horror stories about the mosquitoes down South and prayed she could get back home without catching yellow fever.

  She could hear a distant female voice singing “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.” Jesse looked agitated, shifting his weight and running his fingers through his hair again and again. He gave the cord another yank. The singing abruptly stopped, and a woman who looked to be about fifty came hurrying through the house in a fusillade of footsteps.

  “Can I help you?” she said with a smile as she reached the screen door.

  “Name’s Williams,” Jesse said. “Here for our room.”

  Anna knew he had never rented a room from anybody in his whole life. When they married, they were so excited about the farmhouse he had inherited from his grandparents that they spent their honeymoon there. Last night she had slept in the cab while he slept on a quilt in the truck bed. They just pulled off the road and parked till they were rested enough to keep moving.

  “My land!” the woman exclaimed, opening the door and ushering them inside. “I bet y’all are burnin’ up. Come on in here and cool off.” She led them to a worn but elegant Victorian settee in front of tall windows in an octagonal parlor, where two rotary fans aimed manufactured breezes all over the room. “Now you two just sit there and collect yourself while I go get you some tea.”

  “There’s no need—” Jesse tried to stop her, but she was long gone.

  Soon their host returned, carrying a tarnished silver tray with two goblets made of fine etched glass. They were filled with iced tea, each with a big wedge of lemon on top. “Here you go,” she said. “Are y’all hungry? Supper’s not till six, but I can get you a slice o’ pound cake or make you some sandwiches with the roast beef I had left over from supper last night. Would you like just a little bite o’ somethin’ to tide you over?”

  “No,” Jesse said.

  “Are you sure? Because it wouldn’t be a bit of trouble. I could just—”

  “Ma’am, we really just want—”

  “We appreciate it, we really do.” Anna interrupted her husband for fear he might be outright rude. “But we had lunch on the way down.”

  “Well, alright then. You just let me know if you change your mind.”

  “We will—and thank you, really. I’m Anna. This is my husband, Jesse. Could you tell us how we might meet the owner of the house and get settled?” Anna thought it best to relieve Jesse of any need for conversation. He sat slumped on the settee, cupping the tea goblet as if he needed an anchor to cling to.

  The woman, who had taken a seat opposite the two of them, looked startled. “You want to meet the—oh, honey, you just did! I mean, I’m her. You’ll have to forgive my bad manners. I’ve been runnin’ around here like a chicken with its head cut off, tryin’ to get my latest boarders situated, and when y’all went to ringin’ that bell, I got so flustered I plain forgot myself. I’m Mrs. Josiah Chandler, but you can call me Dolly, and you can call my husband Si—if you ever see him, that is. He’s so busy workin’ on the lake, I’ve about forgot what he looks like.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Anna said. She smiled at her host and took a sip of tea.

&nb
sp; Dolly was petite, with what Anna’s grandmother would call a “feminine frame.” Her chestnut bob was slightly curly, with just a few streaks of gray, and that dark hair made her periwinkle eyes look all the bluer. She wore a cotton shirtwaist dress in a yellow floral print.

  “I like your tea,” Anna said. “I’ve never had any quite this sweet.”

  “All my boarders comment on my tea,” Dolly said with a smile. “The secret is lettin’ the sugar melt while it’s hot and then quick-chillin’ it with ice. I just hope we can keep it sweet with all this rationin’. Oh, well, that’s why Si keeps bees. If we run outta sugar, we’ll just switch to honey. How long have y’all been on the road?”

  “Two days,” Anna said.

  “Mercy!” Dolly shook her head. “My back hurts just thinkin’ about it.”

  “Is it always this hot in April?”

  “Oh, no,” Dolly said. “In fact, it can get downright chilly. I thought we were just havin’ a little heat wave, but Farmer’s Almanac is predictin’ an early summer—it mighta done started. Believe you me, it’s gonna get a lot worse before it gets any better. July and August are always scorchers. That’s how come we’re hurryin’ to get the lake done. Si didn’t come up with the idea till February, so that put us in a bind to get it done by summer. We always have a big fish fry on the Fourth o’ July, and since ever’body on the loop and quite a few folks from church will come, Si figured that was as good a time as any to promote our new business. He says we’re entrepreneurs. I say we’re poor as Job’s turkey and sellin’ everything but the family silver to stay afloat!”

  Anna and Dolly laughed together while Jesse stared into his tea.

  “What will you charge to swim?” Anna asked.

  “Fifty cents, but you only have to pay once a day, and we’re plannin’ to stay open till five o’clock in the evenin’, so you can swim till you prune up if you want to. We’ll be closed on Sunday, o’ course. As long as I’ve got my right mind, there will be no money changin’ on the Sabbath Day.”

  “What’s that building next to the hole—next to the lake, I mean?”