Lily of the Springs

LILY OF THE SPRINGS

Lily of the Springs

Carole Bellacera

Copyright 2012 Carole Bellacera

Kindle
Edition

Also by Carole Bellacera

Border Crossings

Spotlight

East of the Sun, West of the Moon

Understudy

Chocolate on a Stick

Tango’s Edge

LILY OF THE SPRINGS

Carole Bellacera

Praise
for LILY OF THE SPRINGS

LILY OF THE SPRINGS is like a slow dance to a Patsy Cline song in the arms of your one true love. From the very first page, it draws you back to another time and place and makes you want to stay there forever. Carole Bellacera is a master storyteller."
...Teresa Medeiros, New York Times bestselling author of GOODNIGHT TWEETHEART

A poignant and epic romance novel that's hard to put down. Erotic, explosive, shattering, realistic--Carole Bellacera's new romance novel has them all and a whole lot more.--
Rose Campion, author of NO TIME TO CRY and the forthcoming SINNERS CAN'T BE CHOOSERS.

To my loving mother, Lillian Owens Foley Wynia,

my inspiration for Lily.

Table of Contents

November 1954

New Boston, Texas

I
knew my marriage was in trouble the night my husband brought home a streetwalker to teach me how to satisfy him.

It was after midnight, and I was still waiting for Jake to come home. His Army buddies had taken him out for a going-away party–because soon we'd be heading back to a rinky-dink town in central Kentucky called Russell Springs…my hometown, too, but boring as all heck, especially now that I was a woman of the world, having traveled all the way to Texas.

I sighed and dragged a brush through my dark brown curls. Lord, I just didn’t know if I could stand it. Once Jake got back with all his tobacco-chewin’, moonshine-drinkin’, good-for-nothin’ friends, he’d return to his old hell-raisin’ ways, and these past two years of Army life—where he’d actually started acting like a grown-up—would be as if they’d never happened.

A noise from the living room drew my attention – the
jangle of keys followed by the sound of the front door opening. Relief flooded through me. I really hadn’t expected him to be home before the wee hours.

I jumped up from the stool. “Oh, honey, I’m glad you weren’t out too late,” I called out, hurrying into the hallway to meet him. “I really think we need to take Debby Ann to the doctor tomorrow. She’s just not…” Stepping into the living room, my voice died away.

Jake stood swaying just inside the front door, a drunken grin on his face, a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon in one hand−and a harlot in the other.

The tight, red silk dress with the plunging neckline, the high spiked heels and the blood-red smear of lipstick on her wide, vulgar mouth practically shouted out the word. My throat went dry and my stomach took a sickening dive as I realized the red marks on Jake’s jaw and neck perfectly matched the shade of the streetwalker’s kiss-swollen lips.

“Well,
there’s
my purty little wife,” Jake said, his grin widening.

I tried to speak, but the words just wouldn’t come. I felt as if an invisible hand had got hold of my throat and was squeezing off the air to my windpipe.

“Lily Rae, this here’s Lou Ellen.” Jake nudged his bottle at the harlot. “I figgered she could give you a love lesson on how to please your man.” He fastened his bleary eyes on the woman and drew her closer to him. “Ain’t that right, Lou Ellen?”

The woman, apparently as drunk as Jake, swayed against him, clutching at his shirt with long, spiked red nails. She focused her blood-shot eyes on me. Her lipstick-smeared mouth opened, and in an obscene gesture, she slid her tongue along her bottom lip in a way that made my skin crawl.

“Hi, there, hon. Handsome, here, tells me you need a lesson in giving a good blow-job.”

I gasped, not absolutely certain I’d heard right. But before I could decide, Jake released the woman and began to unzip his pants. “That’s right, Lily Rae,” he slurred. “And all
you
gotta do is watch and take notes.” He whipped out his penis and gestured to the harlot. “On your knees, gal. Show her how it’s done.”

I whirled around and ran out of the room. The blood rushed through my head, roaring like a waterfall. My heart burned like a lump of smoldering coal. I ran into the kitchen, yanked open the drawer near the sink and grabbed the biggest butcher knife I could find.

I knew exactly what I was doing.
Pullin’ a Gladys
.

Two years ago, I’d sat at the kitchen table and watched my mother-in-law go after Jake’s father with a butcher knife. This time, it was
me
with the knife—and Jake was about to become acquainted with the business end of it.

May 1952

Opal Springs, Kentucky

A
song played in my head as I trudged down the dusty path toward the highway to catch the school bus—Kay Starr’s “Wheel of Fortune.” You couldn’t turn on the radio these days without hearing it at least once or twice an hour on any halfway decent Top 40 station. It always made me think of Chad, and the sweet kisses we exchanged just about every Friday or Saturday night parked down at Rock House Bottom. Lord, if Mother and Daddy knew about that, they’d set my pants on fire. Good thing they believed I was spending the night with Daisy.

A muted roar broke through my thoughts, and with a start, I realized a car was coming from up the ridge. My heart started pounding–because I knew who it was. I stopped in the middle of the road and began digging in my pocketbook for my compact and lipstick. My hand trembling, I applied a fresh layer of Revlon’s “Fire and Ice” to my lips and smiled into the mirror to make sure I hadn’t got any on my teeth.

The roar of the approaching car grew louder. I hurriedly ran my fingers through my hair and tweaked the spit-curl in the middle of my forehead with a moistened finger.

Gears shifted into low as the car approached from behind. I knew that meant Jake had seen me. I kept walking, swinging my pocketbook as if I hadn’t a care in the world, and gazing off into the brambles at the roadside like it was the most fascinating sight I’d ever seen.

The car pulled up next to me and stopped, a powder-blue Plymouth with suicide doors and fancy chrome hubcaps on white-walled tires. A stranger seeing Jake Tatlow’s car would think he had money to burn, but that was far from the truth. Jake had worked full-time at the Gulf station in Russell Springs since he’d dropped out of school at 16, and that Plymouth was the only thing he owned worth a plugged nickel. Rumor had it that the only reason he had
that
much was because his older brother, Tully, had returned from the Korean War, flush with discharge pay from the army, and had helped Jake buy it second-hand. But nice car or not, Jake Tatlow was still trash. No getting around that.

I kept walking, pretending not to notice him, even though his radio was turned up loud enough to wake the dead with Hank Williams singing “Honky Tonk Blues.” The music cut off abruptly.

“Hey,” he said.

Impossible to ignore that. He’d think I wasn’t right in the head or something. I turned and met his gaze, raising my chin a notch to let him know I wasn’t at all impressed by him and his fancy car. But beneath my blouse, my heart was racing, and I sensed he knew it.

“Mornin’, Jake,” I said stiffly, and kept walking. My quick glance at him confirmed it. Jake Tatlow was simply the best looking boy I’d ever seen in all my born days. Yes, even better looking than Chad.

He stared at me now, one brawny, suntanned arm draped over the steering wheel, his cornflower blue eyes scanning me from top to bottom, lips quirked in a way that resembled a smirk more than a smile. It was the only thing about him that reminded me of the boy he used to be, back years ago when the two of us played in a swimming hole on Tucker Creek one summer.

I was a few yards away from the front of his car when he let out the clutch and pulled up next to me again. “Want a ride to the bus stop?” he asked in his slow drawl.

“No, thanks.” I kept walking, eyes straight ahead. I could feel his gaze on me as I went on down the road. One more little hill, and the highway would be in sight. I put a little sway into my walk, just the way Marilyn had in “Niagara.”

He pulled up next to me again. “Hey, Lily Rae, what time does the bus come?”

“7:40. What’s it to you?”

He gave a shrug. “Nothing to me, I reckon.” He grinned in a way that never failed to make me weak in the knees. “But you might be interested to know it’s…” He turned his wrist so he could glance at his watch. “…seven forty-
five
right now.”

“What?” I stopped in my tracks and stared at him. “It
can’t
be!”

“Well, it is. And you know as well as I do that old man Thornton ain’t never been late a day in his life, so you’ve done missed that bus.”