Lily of the Springs (47 page)

An hour later, the three of us were packed up and ready to go—Kathy Kay, confused, asking one question after another, and Debby Ann, morose and silent. I tried to placate Kathy with the promise of a stop at White Castle on our way out of town. I couldn’t tell her the truth now. Time enough for that, later.

The last thing I did before hustling the girls into the car was to go into the armoire in our bedroom and draw out the old cedar jewelry box from my childhood. I opened it and gently took out the bit of cloth that held the ring of blackberry twig Jake had first given me when we were children. I’d kept it safe all these years. Taking it out of its protective wrap, I gazed at it until the tears in my eyes made it impossible to see. I left it on my dressing table on top of the cloth—along with the gold band he’d bought me in Korea.

It was just starting to get dark after we pulled out of White Castle onto Highway 31 heading toward Russell Springs. That’s when I saw it—the quarter moon shimmering above the trees to my right. It wasn’t a Shepherd Moon. Not at all like the one me and Mother had gazed at that night on the wharf so many years ago.

All the same, it was calling me home.

Mother’s Orange Slice Cake

3 ½ cup sifted flour

½ teaspoon salt

A pound of orange slices candy, cut up

An 8-ounce pack pitted dates, chopped

A cup of margarine or butter

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 teaspoon soda

½ cup buttermilk

1 3 ¼ ounce can flaked coconut

2 cups chopped walnuts or pecans

Sift together flour & salt. Combine orange slice candy, dates, walnuts, coconut and add the ½ cup flour. Cream butter or margarine until light; gradually add the sugar while beating. Beat well. Add eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition. Combine soda & buttermilk. Add alternately with the flour mixture. Blend well after each addition. Add candy mixture, mixing well. Turn into large tube pan which has been greased & floured. Bake in 300 degree oven for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Combine a cup orange juice and 2 cups sifted confectioner’s sugar, pour over hot cake. Cool, then let stand in refrigerator overnight before removing from pan.

May 1972

Plainfield, Indiana

“
B
ut
Mommy, y
ou absolutely
have
to go to this! You’re the local celebrity. How can you
not
go?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Debby Ann at my side, hands on her slim, boyish hips. Her long hair was pulled back into a single braid, and she wore white hip-hugger shorts with a midriff-baring ruffled top of blue and white-checked gingham.

I ignored my daughter’s glare and continued typing on my new electric Smith-Corona. From the girls’ rooms down the hallway, Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” competed with Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again, Naturally.” At the moment, Pink Floyd was winning because Debby Ann had left her door open when she came out to check the mail. Instead of whatever she’d been looking for, she’d found the letter from Russell County High School announcing the 20
^th
Reunion for the Class of 1952—and the box I’d checked on the RSVP card—“Unable to Attend.”

“
Mother
!” She gave an exasperated stamp of her foot. “You’re ignoring me!”

With a sigh, I stopped typing and looked up at her. Nineteen years old, and she was still stamping her foot like a two-year-old. It was clear that graduation from nursing school at Ball State University hadn’t done a thing to improve her maturity level.

Always the brilliant student, she’d graduated early from Plainfield High School, and without taking a break, entered the two-year nursing program on a full scholarship. Just last week, I’d attended her capping ceremony in Muncie.

I looked at her clenched jaw, and groaned, “I’m on a deadline here, Debby. This manuscript has to be delivered by mid-June, and I’m barely past the first third of it.”

Debby rolled her eyes. It was a habit that growing up hadn’t broken her of.

“Oh, come
on
! You can’t take one measly weekend off to go back to your hometown for your class reunion? Mommy! You haven’t seen any of your old friends since we moved here.”

And I don’t need to, I thought.
Life is just fine and dandy without faces from the past to show up and remind me of what I’ve left behind
.

It hadn’t been easy, those first months on my own. Thank God for Norry. She’d built a house in Plainfield, about ten miles from Speedway—a three bedroom, two bath home—more than enough room for me and the girls to move in with her, and on her insistence, that’s what we’d done. We’d lived there until I saved enough money from my job at the local newspaper—and the advance for my first book with Harlequin—to get our own apartment. Now, six books later—and working on the 7
^th
—I’d put a down payment on a small three bedroom ranch house on the outskirts of town, and along with Kathy Kay, a freshman in high school, we’d moved in March. There were still boxes to be unpacked, but I was under the gun with this latest book. And that was why the class reunion was out of the question.

“Mommy!” Debby Ann dropped her hands from her hips and approached, her expression changing from exasperated to concerned. “Seriously, I’m worried about you. You’ve been working non-stop since I got home from Muncie. You need a break. And besides, I haven’t seen Mother and Pa Pa in ages. Let’s just go down to Opal Springs for the weekend, and you can go to the reunion and Kathy can visit Daddy. God knows why she wants to, but that’s
her
problem, not mine.”

I eyed her. “You should visit him, too. He always asks about you when I talk to him on the phone.”

Her brows lowered in a scowl. “Big deal! If he really cared about me, he would’ve made it to my graduation, don’t you think?”

“Come on, Debby. He barely leaves that shack he lives in, much less the state.” I pushed away from my desk in the corner of the kitchen and stood. “You want a Coke?” I headed for the refrigerator. “Besides, he sent you that card.”

“Big
whoop
! I’ll bet Grandma Gladys made him send it.”

She was probably right, I thought. Thank God for Gladys. If it weren’t for my ex-mother-in-law, I doubted we would’ve ever seen the monthly child support payment Jake managed to scrap together. After the divorce, he’d quit his job at the iron factory (to avoid alimony payments, I suspected) and moved back to Opal Springs where he’d taken up residence in an old ramshackle log cabin once owned by Gladys’s hermit uncle, and was living off welfare and, apparently, drinking himself to death.

“So, come on, Mommy. Will you at least
think
about it? The reunion? I’ll bet it’ll be a groove. You’re a celebrity down there, you know.”

“Stop saying that! I’m not a celebrity!” I handed Debby a can of Coke and popped the tab of my own. It opened with a soft hiss.

Debby Ann opened her soda, took a sip and grinned. “You just signed a new three-book deal. Your books are in every drugstore I walk into. Have you already forgotten about that big poster of you and your book cover Grider’s Drugs had up last winter? I wouldn’t be surprised if they name a street after you in Russell Springs one of these days.”

“Oh, hush.” Trying to suppress a grin, I moved back toward my desk. “A street named after a romance writer? I doubt it!”

“So, will you think about it, Mommy?
Please
?”

Suddenly the Gilbert O’Sullivan song grew louder as from down the hall, Kathy Kay’s door opened. A moment later, she plodded into the kitchen.

The gangly 15-year-old glanced at us from beneath her straight blonde bangs. “What’s going on?” She reached for an apple from a bowl on the counter and sunk her perfect white teeth into its tender flesh.

Kathy Kay had turned into a real beauty, a younger version of Cheryl Tiegs, some folks said. People were always telling her she should be a model, but Kathy didn’t have the slightest interest in that. Unlike Debby Ann, she’d never owned a copy of
Teen Magazine
, and from the time she’d turned nine, she’d talked about becoming an oceanographer, and as far as I knew, that was still her intention.

Despite all that had happened, she and Paul John had kept in close contact with each other, writing letters back and forth and visiting whenever we made it down to Kentucky. The discovery that they were half-siblings had been a shock that had taken some adjustment, but once they’d come to terms with it, they’d grown closer than ever. I was glad about that. Paul John was a sweet boy, and even though his existence had been the final straw that ended my marriage, I couldn’t hold it against him—an innocent child.

“Oh, nothing,” I said, fingers poised on my typewriter keys. “Your sister is just trying to bully me into something.”

Kathy Kay rolled her eyes and ambled back toward the hallway. “So what
else
is new?”

***

I took a deep breath, smoothed my hands down the creamy white crocheted A-line dress I’d ordered from the Montgomery Wards catalog. My fingers nervously toyed with the strand of pearls I wore around my neck, imitation but good-quality fakes I’d bought at the costume jewelry counter at Blocks department store. I saw my reflection in the glass double doors of the hotel in Somerset, and smoothed an errant strand of hair that had come loose from my top-knot.

Well, here goes, I thought, and pushed the door open. A sign in the lobby directed the Russell Springs High School Alumni to Ballroom A. Why am I doing this, I asked myself as I walked down the richly carpeted corridor.
This is silly. I should never have let Debby Ann talk me into this
.

The last person in the world I wanted to run into was Jinx, and surely, she’d be here. She never missed a party. Rumor had it that she’d married again. A Southern Baptist preacher, of all things. It was a good thing he was a praying man, I thought. He’d be needing a lot of prayers.

Katydid wouldn’t be here. She’d up and moved to San Diego after meeting a marine biologist while on vacation out there. They were on their honeymoon right now in Hawaii.

Daisy would probably be here, though, and I was prepared to get my ear talked off, even though she lived close enough to me for us to get together for lunch once or twice a month in Speedway.

Chad? My heart gave a lurch. I was trying not to get my hopes up. He probably wouldn’t come. After all, it was the height of the golf season down in South Carolina, and he was probably way too busy to take time out for a stupid class reunion.

Music from the 50’s filtered from up ahead―Debbie Reynolds singing “Tammy.” I stepped into the ballroom and looked around. Heads turned at my entrance, and I could feel their curious gazes. Was it my imagination, or could I hear muted whispers? Not one face looked familiar. Had they all aged so much in 20 years? Or had I wandered into the wrong room by mistake?

Their stares felt hostile, unwelcoming. Uncertainly, I turned back to the door.

“Lily?” His voice came from behind me in the brief silence between songs. My heart jolted. Slowly, I turned.

Chad stood there, staring at me with his soulful brown eyes, looking a little older and more world-weary than when I’d last seen him 10 years before. But even with his graying temples and the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, I could still see the high school basketball player I’d dated so many years ago.

“Hello, Chad.”

His hand closed around mine. “I was hoping you’d be here,” he said with a warm smile.

“I almost didn’t come,” I said softly. “My daughter made me.”

His eyes crinkled, his hand squeezing mine. “Your daughter sounds like a force to be reckoned with…just like another girl I used to know.”

As he slipped his arm around my shoulders and maneuvered me through the crowd, a memory drifted through my mind—one of a hot summer’s night, the sound of bullfrogs croaking…my feet dangling in the cool pond water of Opal Springs...and the sound of Mother’s soft, sweet voice in my ear.

Trust in the Shepherd Moon, Lily Rae. It’ll always lead you home
.

The End

Carole Bellacera wrote her first novel, “The Vaughn’s Daughters,” in a loose-leaf notebook, drawing her own illustrations for it at the age of 12. Summers were really boring in a rural area of Indiana in the days before driver’s licenses. With both parents working, Carole and her younger sisters, Kathy, and Sharon, had to drum up their own entertainment to while away the hours of the long, hot summers. Kathy and Sharon liked the outdoors, but Carole preferred making up stories in her cozy little bedroom. One summer she wrote a play, and forced her sisters and several neighborhood kids to perform it. (Some probably would remember her as a “control freak.”)

In her teens, Carole continued writing novels in notebooks, and some were passed around her high school. Even then, she was eager to read the “reviews” on the blank pages left for that purpose—and luckily, most of them, if not all, were glowing. One of her favorite teachers, Mrs. Regina Scott, wrote a review that encouraged Carole to pursue writing as a career—something she wouldn’t do for another couple of decades.

At 16, Carole wrote her best work yet—THE SWEDE, a romance inspired by growing up near the famous Indianapolis 500 race track. (At the time, she was madly in love with race car driver, Peter Revson.) Confident that it would be the next big best-seller, she packed it up and sent it off to
Doubleday.
It was promptly rejected with a form letter–and Carole officially became a professional writer—although she didn’t know it yet. At the time, she was too naïve to realize that being rejected was a necessary, though unpleasant, aspect of a writer’s life; she just assumed that New York knew what they were talking about, and apparently, she had no writing talent at all, so she gave up her dream. (And discovered boys, and ultimately, a husband.)