Find Me in Manhattan (Finding #3)

Finding Me in Manhattan

By:
Shealy James

Copyright © 2015 by Shealy James

All Rights Reserved

No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

Edited by Jenny Sims Editing 4 Indies

Cover art purchased from 123rf.com by Shealy James.

Images by Songquan Deng, sborisov, Andrei Aleshyn

Prologue

Sarah

Even though I loved living in the big city, I left Atlanta the day after my college graduation. Everything had been within reach, including the possibility of a future that didn’t include dirt under my fingernails, manure, sweat, and tractors. I could have had it all: a career, killer high heels that didn’t sink in the mud, and a good-lookin’ man who had never worn a belt buckle the size of a dinner plate. Then Mama called, and everyone knew you went running when Mama called.

My phone rang at an ungodly hour for a Saturday, especially after a night of drinking and dancing. I groaned and grabbed the awful piece of technology off my mirrored bedside table. “Mama” flashed on the screen and concern had me shooting up in bed as I quickly pounded my thumb on the touchscreen. “Mama? What’s wrong?”

“Hey, honey. How are you?” Her voice was a little shaky, which only made me worry more.

“Mama, you did not call me at seven on a Saturday to ask me how I am. What’s going on?”

“You’re right, sweetheart. I have some bad news that I wanted to warn you about before you talk to your daddy. The farm is in trouble.”

My heart dropped. “What kind of trouble?”

“The kind of trouble where we had to let some of our workers go. Daddy told them yesterday. Seth is already on his way home, but I wanted to call you before Daddy even had to ask.”

“You need me to come home.” I spoke the words she was trying to avoid.

“As much as I hate to even ask, I’m not sure we can afford for you to live anywhere else. We need help, and even if you found a job, we still couldn’t afford the labor we need here.”

My heart broke. Not only were my parents in trouble, but my dreams were going to have to wait as well. I understood what she was trying to say loud and clear. No New York and no graduate school, not yet anyway. It didn’t matter. In my world, family came first. “I’ll be there, Mama.”

“Thank you, sweetheart. We will get you to Manhattan somehow, but now isn’t the time.”

My head was nodding my agreement before I could speak. “I understand,” I said, surprisingly without breaking down. There was no sense in crying over something unavoidable. No money meant no school; it was that simple.

Mama and I spoke for a moment more before I let her go. I continued to hold the tears in as I crawled back in bed with Billy, my bit of fun turned not-so-serious boyfriend.

“You’re leaving,” he grunted.

“This isn’t news, Billy,” I said as gently as I could while I cuddled into his big body. He was a teddy bear if a teddy bear had arm muscles as big as my waist. Billy could probably lift a car if he set his mind to it, but he put those muscles to use beating on the drums for a southern rock band. I liked how small I felt when wrapped in him. It made me feel dainty and ladylike, something I never felt on the farm.

“I thought we had summer,” he frowned.

“We’ll just have to make our last days ones we won’t ever forget.”

“Then it’s over, right? You’re never coming back.”

“I’ll visit. Maggie and Parker will still be here as well.”

“And I don’t matter?”

I sat up pulling the sheet with me to cover my body. I needed to have this conversation face-to-face to see what he felt before I spoke again. All I saw was disappointment. “Billy, you always knew I was leaving, and that this was temporary. You can’t be angry because the end is arriving sooner than we expected. Maybe it will be easier to say goodbye.”

“If you believe that then I should leave now.” He climbed out of bed and quickly pulled his jeans on.

“What? No.”

“What’s the point, Sarah? I’m not going anywhere, and you are running away the first chance you get.”

“I’m not running! I’m being dragged.” I couldn’t hold the tears any longer. “My family can’t afford for me to go to New York. I have to go home if I ever have any hope of going to Colombia,” I sobbed.

Billy’s shoulders sank down with a sigh. “Please don’t cry, Sarah. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” His big paws pulled me against his solid chest and wrapped me in the comfort of the strongest teddy bear arms. “One week, huh?”

He made me forget all my troubles that week and let me go without fanfare at the end of it all. The day of graduation, I said an unwelcome, “See you later,” to Billy, my friends, and my dreams with a smile on my face.

Seth, my twin and partner in crime in the plan to escape a future on the farm, was driving my car as we followed my parents back to our hometown of Elmore, Alabama.
Never heard of it? That isn’t surprising
. That little town that no one had heard of was exactly where I was trying to avoid, back to the farm…the dreaded farm.

Heading out of the city toward I-85 South, I saw a man standing on the side of the road holding a big blue sign with white letters that read, “Jesus is Coming.” The sign holder and I made eye contact as my car passed by him. According to him, I was on borrowed time, and here I was wasting my life away on my father’s dream instead of my own. I sighed sadly and turned away from the sign guy to look at my brother. He didn’t seem much happier than I was. His blond hair was a little long and a lot messy for him. He and I were always put together. I liked the color pink, preferred high heels, and curled my hair like a beauty queen every morning. I didn’t have time to sweat—or glisten, as my Aunt Linda would say.

Seth was just as bad—no boots and jeans for him if he had a choice. He usually looked more like an executive than a farm boy. No doubt, it was a sign of the second coming that we were both in lounge pants and t-shirts. I had my hair in a messy ponytail that looked more like my best friend Maggie’s style than my own. Seth was unshaven, and he hadn’t even bothered to shower this morning. Things weren’t looking good from the inside of my car.

Life at home wasn’t easy. There was little downtime on the Grant Farm except on Sundays. Sundays were reserved for church. No one in our town missed church. Until I lived in Atlanta, I didn’t know that anyone below the Mason-Dixon Line missed church on Sundays. Culture shock, right?

Fortunately, free labor, as well as a great year for hay and cotton, helped Daddy get his finances closer to the black. Both my parents were happy with the progress I relayed after finalizing their books on the computer my daddy despised. They were so pleased that they gave Seth permission to go back to school to finish his degree.

I, on the other hand, had to tell Colombia University that my deferment would be for another year. We couldn’t afford for me to move to Manhattan, even with the help of scholarships and student loans. Nancy, the admissions counselor for the graduate school, apologized when she explained that they couldn’t hold my position any longer, and I would have to reapply. I spent the next two days on a tractor with music in my ears to distract me from my disappointment. Daddy knew I wasn’t happy, so he took me to the shooting range where I proceeded to demolish more than one paper man.

Mama tried to get me to talk to her about it a hundred times, but I didn’t want to make her feel guilty. It wasn’t her fault that the rain didn’t cooperate or the crops were diseased. Hell, it wasn’t her fault that Daddy insisted on keeping the darn farm when he could have done anything else with his life.

Daddy recruited Bobby Rae Flowers to replace Seth. Bobby Rae worked hard and flirted harder. For months, I was more exhausted every night from trying to ignore him than from working.

“Lookin’ good today, Sarah,” he greeted me every morning. At lunchtime, he would climb the steps to the porch where I would be setting the table for lunch with a smile plastered on his dirty face. Each day I had to avert my eyes in time for him to lift his shirt to show me his rippling abs. If I made the mistake and glanced up at the wrong time, he would catch me. He was always watching me. “Like what you see?” he would ask. “Feel free to touch. In fact, you just say the word, and I’ll let you touch anything you want.”

And that was just the beginning. Daddy liked Bobby Rae, so he didn’t understand why I wasn’t interested. Mama never saw the bad in anyone, either. So, I was dealing with the annoying innuendos and unwanted passes on my own.

Truthfully, I knew he was harmless. If he was going to make a move, surely he would have made it years ago, but I knew he was making his interest clear and leaving it up to me. Bobby Rae and I both knew if we chose to date, we would end up married like everyone else in my town. My dreams of city life would be squashed, but that wouldn’t be all bad. I would have a husband who loved our family like he should. He would think he was the luckiest man on the planet because his mama raised him right. He knew how to treat a lady, but my heart wasn’t in farming, and it certainly wasn’t into Bobby Rae.

I wanted to enjoy helping my parents. I wanted to be the girl who was happy where she landed, but I was a girl with dreams, ambitions, and desires. None of my dreams included a guy who always smelled like sweat even at six o’clock in the morning. I didn’t remember ever wishing for a forty-five minute commute to the nearest hair salon, and I definitely never wanted to have to forget about my dreams to shovel manure, but that was my life for the time being.

These were the thoughts I was battling in my head when Mama came home from the grocery store late one afternoon. She caught me staring off into space and frowned. “Hey, hun. How’s the books comin’?”

“Almost done for the day.” I turned my eyes back to the computer screen of my parents’ ancient PC. “I was just balancing the accounts.”
And wishing I were about a thousand miles away.

“That’s nice.” She smiles. “You know, I’m gonna miss you when you’re gone. I hate trying to do the books on top of everything else, and your father can barely turn the computer on.”

“Yeah, Daddy needs-” I froze as her other words registered. “What did you mean ‘you’re gonna miss me?’ Where am I goin’?”

“When you leave for school,” she said as she took a seat in the chair across from Daddy’s desk where I was working.

“Oh.” I frowned. She meant when I left in a couple of years.

“Your daddy and I were talking. Billy Rae is a huge help. He’s doing a lot more than we bargained for. Not to mention, the yield this year has been better than the last three combined. We’re doing fine, Sarah.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me, Mama? Because I have nowhere to go. Colombia told me that I’d have to reapply. I haven’t had time to get all of my application stuff together again, and I’d have to email Professor Wright to see if he’d be willing to work with me.”

She smiled. “Open the top drawer, sweetheart.”

I furrowed my brows and pulled the desk drawer open only to find a white envelope with blue writing. I had seen this envelope before, but this couldn’t be it. This one was unopened. “Mama?”

“Open it.”

I ripped the envelope open slowly and pulled out the letter along with an information packet.

Dear Miss Sarah Elizabeth Grant,

              Congratulations…

I didn’t even bother to read the rest. Instead, I looked at my mom who was watching me carefully. “You reapplied for me.”

“Daddy and I never wanted you to lose your dream. I called the school. After some deliberation, they agreed to file your original application since none of the information had changed and it’s been less than five years since you took your graduate exams.”

“Mama!” I had tears in my eyes as I jumped up and hugged her. She held me close and brushed her fingers through my hair.

“You got some of that for me, princess?” Daddy asked. I looked up to see him leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. Mama released me, and I ran over to him. He wrapped his big arms around me and lifted me off the floor.

“Steve! Your back!” Mama scolded.

“I’ll be dead before I can’t pick up my little girl anymore. Leave me alone, Sharon.”

Mama rolled her eyes and walked out of the room. As she passed by us, she mumbled loud enough for us to hear, “Don’t come cryin’ to me when you can’t bend over and pull your boots on anymore.” He gave me a playful smile and followed her into the kitchen.

I stood in the doorway listening to Mama and Daddy bicker some more before Daddy planted a big kiss on Mama’s lips. That was when I excused myself to go call Maggie and Seth to tell them the good news. This Southern girl was heading to the big city.

Dear Life,

You can find me in Manhattan.

Love,

Sarah