Lisa R. Howeler's Blog, page 110

Finding Zorro

I was talking to my son the other day about the Siamese cats in The Cat Who books who almost sound like they are talking to people. Our former vet (who has since passed on) told us one time that our cat, Zorro, was most likely part Siamese because of how he spoke to us as he walked down the driveway to our old house, as well as some other physical attributes. I mentioned this tidbit of information to The Boy who said, “Oh! That reminds me, Grandpa thinks we found Zorro in the barn the other day.”

My expression froze, and my mouth dropped open.

“Excuse me?”

You see, Zorro has been dead for anywhere from 12 to 15 years. That’s right. I don’t know how many years because I can’t remember when he died. Isn’t that awful?

The Boy’s eyes got big, and he literally gulped. “Um…I shouldn’t have said anything.”

My chest tightened and I felt tears pricking my eyes, though I don’t know why. I knew Zorro was gone, but it was still hard for me to imagine the cat I had from junior high until after I was married at 25, lying dead in the barn.

“Grandpa would have told me eventually,” I said.

“Probably not,” The Boy said with a shrug. “We found him last week. He was all curled up behind a dresser like he’d just gone to sleep.”

This revelation prompted me to call my mom because suddenly I couldn’t remember what happened to Zorro. In my head, he had been put to sleep after a kidney infection, but then I realized I must have been wrong. I felt awful that I didn’t remember how one of my favorite cats ever had died. Zorro had such an amazing personality. My mom is allergic to cats so she could never pet him or have him inside, but she talked to him in a sweet voice, and he talked back to her. He also rolled over as she was talking to him, just like she was petting him. It was as if he understood she wanted to pet him but would itch all over if she did.

When I called Mom, she realized she couldn’t remember what happened to Zorro either. After discussing it, with Dad offering his memories in the background, we concluded that Zorro had wandered off to pass away. He was quite old, over 15 years old, maybe close to 20, and had been having kidney issues for a long time. Dad blames himself for him wandering off, says he didn’t get him to the vet for his kidney issues, but I think Dad’s memory is off because thinking back, I do remember Dad taking him to the vet after I had moved out and was living with my husband. Zorro was on antibiotics and a special cat food for many years before he passed away.

After we brainstormed on what had happened to Zorro, we realized we couldn’t remember what had happened to our other cat, Leonardo, either. I named Leo after Leonardo DiCaprio. It was the around the same time the movie Romeo and Juliet with DiCaprio and Claire Danes came out. I was home from college one weekend when he arrived, if I remember right.

I picked out his name, despite the very vocal protest of my mom, who said she would never go out on that porch and call “Leonardo!” across the valley when it was time for him to be fed. The joke was on her. She totally did that, more than once, over the next decade, that cat was alive. She did it often the time he went missing for a week and we all figured he’d been hit by a car or chopped up in the hay baler when the neighbor cut down the hay in my grandma’s fields (we had moved in with my grandmother by that time). He hadn’t been killed, but instead had been trapped in the grain shed.

When my dad opened the door and he wandered out, he was about 10 pounds lighter (he was a fat cat before that) and my parents didn’t think it was him until he came to the patio door and stretched his full body up the door like he always did when he wanted to be fed.

My grandmother, who was in her late 80s at the time, was the only one who could pet Leo. Not only could she pet him but she could practically cuddle him while he laid across her lap. Mom said it was because the rest of us moved too much and Grandma simply sat still, which wasn’t usual for her either. My grandmother was on the move almost up until the day she died.

Leo did eventually wander off and pass away, as far as any of us know, much like Zorro had. The only cat we remembered being put to sleep after she became quite old (close to 20) and sick was Four, who I left with my parents after I got married. She was a rescue from my mother-in-law’s cat and flea infested home and had an orange four in her fur on her forehead.

Of course, I remember other cats we had in the past. We had a lot of cats over the years because there was a non-working chicken coup behind our house and I’m imagining people passing by thought it was a barn because they would often toss cats out near our property. There is a common misconception that cats can simply go live at a farm, but guess what? The farmer has to feed the cats along with every other animal, so it’s really not like the children’s books which suggest that barn cats are beneficial because they catch the mice in the barn.

A photo of my scrapbook of my grandmother with Leo.

The first cat I remember was a cat whose name I can’t remember. I was very young when we had him, but I remember he couldn’t meow. When he tried to meow, it came out as a whispered gasp. He got stuck in our burn barrel one day and I happened to hear his gasp and found a board to slide in so he could climb out. I’m guessing he fell in looking for old chicken bones. For the city-folk who read my blog, a burn barrel is a barrel where rural folk burn their trash (papers only please and thank you. Anything else and it starts to stink. We did burn chicken bones in there because otherwise we had to throw them out in with the food waste and cats or other animals would eat the chicken bones and possibly choke.)

The next pair of cats I remember is Morris and Marvin. They were brothers and I named Morris because he looked like the cat on the 9-Lives boxes. They were both orange cats and I have no idea how they ended up at our house. They used to sit on either side of our front door, like bookends, waiting for us when we came home.

Sadly, Morris was killed by a car and not long later, Marvin was hit by another one. We lived along a major highway so we lost a lot of cats this way. We really liked Marvin and wanted to save his life so my mom, who I mentioned is allergic to cats, rushed Marvin to our local vet. Our local vet said the cat needed surgery and suggested he either be put down or my mom drive him 30 miles to the animal hospital. Mom drove that cat 30 miles, crying most of the way while he cried in pain, scratching her face because he was itching.

Surgery was done, a $300 bill was wracked up (we were told never to tell my grandmother of this bill because in her day, which was during the Great Depression, they would never spend that kind of money on a cat. They drowned kittens in the creek to keep from having to feed them), and in the end Marvin passed away at our home anyhow. It was so heartbreaking, but Mom made a gallant effort for him, forever driving from our mind the idea that she wasn’t a fan of cats. She loves cats. She simply can’t be around them because of the allergy.

After Marvin and Morris, I remember Cleo, who I named because she looked like the cats in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Cleo came to us with another cat, who we didn’t name, and both of them were pregnant. They both also gave birth in our basement at the same time and we had 12-15 kittens then to give away. The kitten we didn’t give away, who we somehow fell in love with, was Zorro.

I should mention, as well, that Zorro was one of three black cats I have owned in my lifetime. The second black cat was my husband’s before I married him and we had her until she was 19-years-old. The third black cat is our current cat, Pixel. Have they brought us bad luck? I don’t believe so. We’ve had bad and good experiences throughout our lives, like anyone else.

I still hate the idea of Zorro cat dying alone in the barn, but it was one of his favorite places to hide out and it was probably how he wanted to go — alone and quiet, curling up and then drifting off to sleep.

Isn’t it weird that after all these years of him being gone, that I teared up when I wrote that previous sentence? Our pets stay with us for only a short time, but our memories of them last our lifetime.

Looking back at July in photos

Our July was a little exciting and a little boring. A pretty good mix. I don’t expect a lot boring until September when everyone returns to school. Well, actually, students around us will be returning August 23. Our homeschool doesn’t start until Sept. 1, however.

The most exciting part of July was visiting Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, N.Y. and seeing the giraffes, lions and other animals.

The rest of the month was filled with spending time with Little Miss’s friends, gathering with my parents on the weekends and some weekdays, and other, faily laid back activities.

Sunday Bookends: Time Travel Thrillers, wildlife abounds in our neighborhood, and lots of British shows this week

Welcome to my Sunday Bookends post where I talk about my previous week, including what I’m reading, watching, listening to, writing and doing.

What I’m Reading

I’m on to the fourth book, Set in Stone, in the Rembrandt Stone series by David James Warren after finishing book three, Sticks and Stone, last week. Book four will release on August 10. I am reading it for a book tour being held the week of its release.

Here is a description of the fourth book but be warned there are some spoilers for the first three books:

Trapped in time, he’ll have to use the past to fix the present.

Thirty-eight women. Dead. All the in the past. All because Detective Rembrandt Stone played with fate, and somewhere in time unleashed a serial killer. He can’t undo their deaths, not anymore, but the serial killer is still at large, twenty-four years later, and now it’s personal. Especially when the evidence points to the last person on anyone’s radar: Rembrandt himself.
Now he’ll have to use the clues from his pasts to track down the killer in the present.

But the killer is onto him and puts the one person Rembrandt loves in his cross hairs. Now, Rembrandt must outwit time to save the people he loves.

Because time is playing for keeps.

The fourth installment of the True Lies of Rembrandt Stone will have you holding your breath and leave you gasping for more.

I am also reading Rahab’s Courage by Naomi Craig, which releases August 17. It is a Biblical fiction book and quite good so far.

Here is a description:

A scarlet cord tethers one ruined woman to the salvation of mankind.

Harboring two fugitives in a city slated for destruction, Rahab has one small chance of escape. In exchange for their safety, she bargains for her own. Their agreement rewards her courage, and she flees Jericho and a life of prostitution for a new life among the people of Israel. Never again will she have to depend on anyone—especially men.

Except Salmah won’t take the hint.

High ranking soldier and leader of the tribe of Judah, Salmah is determined not to repeat his parents’ mistakes. He will keep the Lord’s commandments. Rahab’s growing faith fits right in with phase one of his plans: find a wife who loves the Lord and settle down in the new land.

Rahab finds shelter and meaning in the Lord’s ways until her past comes back to haunt her. As her new faith is put to test, she finds herself alone. Isn’t that what she’d always wanted?

With her courage waning, only the Lord can turn Rahab’s life around again, but will He do it before she loses everyone and everything that really matters to her—to her heart?

I will need to finish both books in the next couple of weeks, so wish this slower reader luck. It shouldn’t be too hard since I am taking a news and social media break this next month. I won’t be totally off social media since I administrate a couple of book groups and am releasing a book, but I am planning to be on very, very little, probably once a week.

What’s Been Occurring

This week was full of more time spent watching the little girls who stay with their great-grandmother, our neighbor down the street, during the week. She used to watch them at the same time, but now she only watches one at a time because they are quite active, and she gives out of energy fast. Much of my week was spent watching them play in the yard and ride their bikes in front of the house.

My husband took one of Little Miss’s training wheels off to get her used to balancing more and prepare her to ride her bike without the training wheels. She was so proud of herself she blazed up and down the street over and over again Friday and Saturday. Each of those nights she fell asleep super fast, of course.

This past week was apparently our week to interact with wildlife. Early in the week, my son saw a toad in the yard while he was mowing and caught it for Little Miss and her friend to see.

They put the toad in a bucket and took turns holding him, decided he was a girl and named him, er, her Violet, later released her, found her again when she didn’t moved from where they’d placed her.

Then Little Miss proceeded to fall in love with her and it took a little convincing for Little Miss to release Violet again 20 minutes later, even though Violet had been making terrified little squeals since they had caught her. I don’t know what Violet thought of me but she leaped toward the camera in a bid to escape at one point. It happened so fast, I didn’t have time to focus on her leaps toward me.

Little Miss’s friend told me Little Miss had decided the toad was a girl by “looking.” I have no idea where Little Miss looked to tell the frog was a girl, but I just let it go.

On Friday, Little Miss and her friend traveled with me when I took The Boy and his friend over to my parents so my dad could take the boys to our county fair. On our way back to the house we saw two racoon babies along the road near my parents’ house, but sadly I was too far away to get a good photo of them. About ten minutes later, near our house, we saw a young buck. I actually didn’t notice the deer was a buck. Little Miss’s little friend pointed out his antlers.

I tried to grab a photo of the buck, but my camera kept focusing the grass in front of him instead. He was probably only about five feet away from us at the time, on a small bank above us and near my neighbor’s house.

Little Miss’s friend said her and her Nana saw an adult buck in her backyard yesterday morning. I’m hoping to catch a glimpse of him in our backyard at some point. We haven’t seen as many deer in our yard this year as we did last year.

What We’ve Been Watching

Last week we watched Key Largo with Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson, which I had never seen before. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it.

For those who have never seen it, I pulled a description off Rotten Tomatoes.

This classic film noir by John Huston stars Humphrey Bogart as World War II vet Frank McCloud. Visiting Key Largo to pay his respects to the family of his late war buddy, McCloud attempts to comfort his comrade’s widow, Nora (Lauren Bacall), and father, James Temple (Lionel Barrymore), who operate a hotel. But McCloud realizes that mobsters, led by the infamous Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson), are staying in the hotel. When the criminals take over the establishment, conflict is inevitable.

I’ve also been watching a lot of To The Manor Born, a British sitcom from the 70s and Lovejoy to try to avoid news sites.

What I’ve Been Writing

On the blog this week, I wrote a blog post with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs about the schools in our different parts of the world (she lives in a more urban area, and I live in a rural area, so we’ve started a new feature where we compare “our worlds” so to speak).

I also shared some random thoughts/events on Friday to replace Fiction Friday for now, since I am working on completing corrections to the manuscript of Harvesting Hope (which comes out on Kindle August 12) and don’t have another story to share right now..

What I’m Listening To

I’ve still been listening to songs from Danny Gokey’s new album and I highly recommend Agradecido being turned up loudly and repeated at least twice.

So those are my random thoughts for the week. How about you? Share what you are doing, reading, listening to, watching and writing in the comments.

Randomly Thinking: My sleep sheep keep talking to me, creepy creatures, and lucid dreaming

I have had this Randomly Thinking file started for two weeks but have not had enough material or enough time to put it together. Since I don’t have anything for Fiction Friday today, I figured it would be a good day to post it, though I usually post it on Wednesday or Thursday. 

So, without further ado, my random thoughts from the last few weeks.

***

My husband posted on Facebook a couple of weeks ago that he had been having trouble sleeping so he had decided to count sheep. I told him I couldn’t count sheep because when I do they just repeat all my worries and problems back to me as they jump.

 “Did you look at your bank account today? baa…”

“What in the world is going on in Israel now? baaaa….”

“You don’t have an ending for your next book and that book on writing you read said you have to have a beginning and an ending planned before you even start writing. Baaaa…”

“What’s with Donald Trump’s hair anyhow? Baaaaa…”

So, I just don’t count sheep anymore. Noisy little things anyhow.

***

I make oatmeal every other morning and I always try to put only the smallest amount in, so I don’t end up with too much. I am very bad at this measuring by the eye thing, I guess because every single time I still end up with a huge bowl of it. No matter what. 

“It expands, Lisa!” I yell at myself every time.

I mix it with peanut butter and a few (hundred) drops of maple syrup so it is sort of like a no-bake cookie.

***

About two weeks ago small grasshoppers and katydids started showing up in our backyard and Little Miss decided she needed to capture them and keep them in small containers so she could look at them or something. I don’t really know why she wanted to keep them. All I know was that my living room soon had four plastic canisters full of little hopping insects and that those containers didn’t keep them contained very well. 

I had planned to release them after Little Miss went to bed or the next morning but before I got that far, I spotted the kitten in the kitchen with one cornered ready to eat it. Neither the kitten nor the child seemed able to catch it, until the next morning when the kitten ate it in front of The Boy while he was waiting for his grandpa to pick him up for work.

Luckily, the grasshoppers and katydids have hopped off to somewhere else for now. If they show back up, I’m letting Little Miss that if she wants to look at them outside, that’s fine, but no more bringing them into the house where they can escape and possibly crawl on me at night.

***

Speaking of creepy creatures in our home, one night last week I thought I saw something fly in front of me while I was sitting in our living room. I have eye floaters, so for a moment, I thought maybe it was something like that. Or I was having a stroke. Instead, the dark streak I saw in my vision was a bat.

Yep. A bat.

It had somehow got into our house and was flapping around the living room, trying to figure out how to get back out.

I wish I could say I was calm about it all, but I was not. Not at all. 

When that thing kept flapping toward me, where I was sitting on the couch, I kept picturing its little face and then imagining it gripping my hair in a panic, getting stuck there and flapping around like a crazy person.

Little Miss knows all about animals, of course, so she was delighted by it all and kept running around, giggling and telling us facts about bats and how they fly by sonar. I didn’t care what they fly by. I just didn’t want that thing in my hair. She was very excited when the bat landed at one point and she got to have a good look at him with “his cute little ears.”

I called my parents in the middle of it all to ask how Dad had gotten the one that had been in my room one time and my mom suggested I put a blanket over my head, so I did. I placed a pill and blanket over my head and screamed anytime it came near me while my dad scoffed on the other end of the phone.

I don’t think the fact we had watched The Birds, the Alfred Hitchcock horror movie, a couple of weeks before, had helped. 

I was legit terrified and finally ran to the downstairs bathroom while my husband and son opened the doors and eventually convinced it to fly out our back door.

I spent the next week thinking I could hear bats crawling in the wall or squeaking, but so far, no more have shown up.

***

My children aren’t excited by this next piece of news, but I am. I ordered a large chunk of their curriculum two weeks ago and it arrived last week. I was so excited to open the boxes and check it all out. I wanted everyone else in the house to be excited too, but they weren’t. The Boy rolled his eyes. Little Miss grunted and the husband said, “Cool. Have fun.”

Oh, I will. I will.

I honestly can’t wait for September 1 to get here.

*** 

I was chatting with someone online about the ability to imagine scenes, people, or events in vivid detail, which made me think about vivid and lucid dreaming.

Lucid dreaming is when you recognize that you are dreaming and then you change your dream while it is happening.

I have been able to do this a time or two. The one time it stands out the most for me is when I had a dream about an elderly friend and his wife who passed away 13 years ago.

My friend, Rev. Reynolds is in the dream with a dark background and a bench in front of him and he says “Oooh, Leeesa (as he always pronounced my name this way in his thick Northern Irish accent), I’m so happy to see you. Come and give me a hug.” He gestured with his arm toward the bench after I hugged him. “Let me get Maud for you. You’ll want to see Maud.” Then he turned slightly like he always did in life when summoning his wife, “Maaaaud! Maud! Come see, Lisa!”

Usually when he gestured, though, he was suggesting Maud make me some tea.

In the dream, I suddenly realized I didn’t want to see Maud. Maud was dead. Maud might look like a zombie. I didn’t want to remember Maud as a zombie. 

Then, before I could stop it, there was Maud on the bench and her face was normal at first, then it began to slowly deteriorate into blackness on one side, decomposing before my eyes. I held up my hand and turned away. “No! This dream is going where I don’t want to go.” 

In a room that was more like a cave in front of me were “people” or figures sort of golden on the edges, staggering against each other and moaning but I was already turning away and saying, “No. I don’t want this dream. I’m going to wake up because this is not how I want to remember my friends.”

And I woke up and ending the dream.

What about you? Are you able to change your dreams? 

***

Every once in a while, as we will be eating steak at my dad’s and he’ll say, “It’s not too bad. For being bought off the back of a truck.”

 Either that or “Grabbed this up on super sale. It was probably about to expire.”

We never know exactly what to say. 

***

Little Miss attended a church camp last week. She and her little friend were the only children at the camp but had a lot of fun.

Some of her comments during the Bible lessons were hilarious, but also a little nerve-wracking for me. At one point the young lady leading the group was talking about the story of Joseph and asked, “What would you think if you had eleven older brothers?” 

Little Miss responded, “Oh man. That would be so annoying.” She then proceeded to explain how annoying her older brother could be at times and how there are times she just has to punch or kick him. Sigh.

The young lady then told the story of Joseph being throw into the well and Little Miss said, “I might punch my brother or something, but I wouldn’t throw him in a well. That’s crazy.”

Later the young man told a story and he said something about a golden scarf. Little Miss, however, thought he said golden skull so when the young man asked what the girls thought of the story she said, “Well, I think that’s creepy.”

“What do you mean?” the young man said.

“That man pulled out a golden skull . . .” Little Miss said.

I laughed and let her know that he had said “golden scarf” not “skull.”

“Oh good,” Little Miss said. “That’s much better.”

***

Those are my random thoughts for this week. I actually had another random story/thought but I decided to break that one off for a separate, future blog post, so next week keep your eyes open for the blog post about my son and dad finding the cat I had as a child more than a decade after he died.

How about you? Any random thoughts? Let me know in the comments.

Hometown Views: Schools

Welcome to a new feature from me and Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs called Hometown Views, where we share views and stories from our respective hometowns (or the towns where we currently live anyhow).

Today, Erin and I are focusing on the schools in our areas. Because Erin lives in an urban area and I live in a rural area, our schools are obviously going to be much different. While the schools in her area are large, the schools in my area are small and many of them could probably fit twice over in the school buildings in her area.In the county I grew up in, and attended school in, there are seven school districts. The majority of those districts have two or more school buildings, one for elementary, one for middle (in a couple of cases) and one for high school. The rest of them only have a junior-senior high school building for grades 7-12. This was the case for the high school I attended, which is located about 10 miles from where I live now. When I was growing up, the school district I lived in, Wyalusing School District, consisted of an elementary school in all the little communities in the district that went from kindergarten to sixth grade. That was four elementary schools.

After sixth grade everyone went to the high school, which is about 20 minutes away from where I lived (15 if you floor it).

The school as it looks today. Photo by my husband.

Several years ago, after a lot of arguing, the district closed all the elementary schools and built a joint elementary school on the same campus as the high school so now there is one junior-senior high school and one elementary school for the entire district in one place.

We visited that campus with our children a couple of years ago and they enjoyed playing on the playground that did not exist when I attended school there. In fact, when I attended high school there, the space where the elementary school is now was swamp land and woods. It was located behind the high school track and football team.

The new elementary school. Photo by my husband. The playground that wasn’t there when I was a kid and teenager. Behind my son is the elementary school that did not exist when I was a kid.

This was hard for the communities where the schools were located because the schools were a central part of the community. Events were held there and the children who attended the schools became a close-knit group in many cases. I would not say that the children from my school became a close-knit group, necessarily, but that did happen in other schools. When I attended the elementary school, which was two to three miles from my house, our classes were very small. There was one classroom for each grade, and we had about 25 to 30 children, often less, in each classroom.

In the elementary school in the same town as our high school, Wyalusing, there were sometimes two or three classrooms for each grade with up to 30 children in each room. The other, outlying elementary schools, were similar to mine with only one classroom per grade.

My old elementary school as it looks today (despite that time stamp. I pulled this off a map site.) This is the back of the school and behind the photographer would be the playground. That slide was one of those metal slides that set your legs on fire in hot weather. Missing from this photo is the tether ball that used to be off to the right. This is also what the playground looked like after I left the school. Those monkeybars on the left aren’t the same monkey bars I fell off of and blacked out under when I was in second or third grade but they look very similar.

Thinking back, I can remember almost all of my elementary school teachers, except my Kindergarten one. I don’t think she was there very long, but I’m not sure why. Next up was my first-grade teacher who made you stand in front of the classroom on your birthday so she could pull your ear the number of years you were. She also had it in for one of our classmates and treated him pretty awful, despite him having a cruddy homelife.

My second-grade teacher was considered the nicest teacher in the school, and I believed this until she yelled at me one day for asking a question and tossed a workbook at my feet for answering a question wrong. Honestly, looking back, I have a feeling she was in the middle of menopause, and we had hit just one too many raw nerves that day. She was still one of the nicest teachers, but I regarded her with a healthy dose of suspicion from then on.

My third-grade teacher was said to ride a broom to school. She had a high-pitched voice that probably made the ears of dogs’ bleed. I honestly do not remember any horror stories about her but I don’t remember her being the nicest teacher.

My fourth-grade teacher was a man who owned and bred Huskies and used to bring the puppies to class on occasion where one promptly pooped the largest, slightly green pile of poop in the middle of the floor, leaving the class in stiches for the rest of the day.

I don’t have a ton of memories of my fifth-grade teacher, other than I think she was fairly nice. I also know that she passed away of a brain tumor several years ago, which is heartbreaking.

My sixth-grade teacher developed laryngitis frequently throughout the year, which the class eventually learned to use to their advantage. She would give assignments out for something, and we would pretend we couldn’t hear her. “What? I’m sorry, Mrs. Corson. I can’t hear you. Was that math you wanted us to do?”

She’d eventually scowl at us and write the assignment on the chalkboard. This was a big issue later when it was discovered that part of the reason she developed laryngitis several times throughout the year, was that she was allergic to chalk dust. Or at least that’s what I heard from a family member after I was an adult. I’m actually not sure if that story is true, but she did lose her voice often.

In sixth grade, every sixth-grade class from the district would pile on to busses and travel to Washington, D.C. for a three-day trip. The year I went, they made us wear the ugliest neon green hats with a W written on it, but there was a method to their madness. They wanted to be sure that if the groups were separated, they could find each other from a distance. It worked very well. Once, when we were separated from our group, we looked up across the Washington Mall and there were fifty-some neon green hats dotting the horizon, alerting us to the fact we were way off base from where we were supposed to be. Of course, we had chaperones. These were either a teacher or parent, and as far as I know, they did a wonderful job.

I don’t know if it is “politically correct” or “Christian” to mention this, but there was an Asian woman selling Bart Simpson T-shirts on the streets in Washington near Ford’s Theater during our trip and you could hear her up and down the street yelling, “Who da’ hell are you? Ten dolla!” over and over again. The shirts, of course, featured one of Bart’s famous sayings. His famous sayings are some of the main reasons I was not allowed to watch the show as a child, by the way. And yes, since you asked, several children came home with Bart Simpson T-shirts with Washington, D.C. emblazoned under an image of Bart and “Who the hell are you?!” emblazoned on the top of the image.

We also enjoyed listening to people try to pronounce the name Wyalusing. I’m sure I’ll mention this in future editions of Hometown Views, but Wyalusing is actually shortened from the Native American name M’chwihilusing. There is another Wyalusing in Wisconsin and I know the two towns are connected, but I can’t remember how. I believe settlers from this Wyalusing traveled to Wisconsin and weren’t very original, so they reused the name of the town they came from. I’ll have to touch on that in a future blog post.

Anyhow, I have digressed greatly from providing information about the school district I was educated in.  The Wyalusing School District educates approximately 1,350 students from K-12. Graduating classes are around 80-130 children, but usually closer to that lower number. My class of 130 was said to be among the largest when we graduated mumble, mumble years ago.

The school mascot is a ram. The school colors are green and gold and, yes, I can still sing the alma mater.

In the Wyalusing Valley, on the Susquehanna shore, stands our noble alma mater . . . okay, I won’t bore you with the whole thing.

The high school offers a variety of sports and extracurricular activities, including football, wrestling, golf, baseball, softball, cross country, track and field, volleyball, and basketball. I did not play any of these sports. I did participate in Orchestra, where I played the bells (xylophone) and chimes (oh, I could tell you some stories from that experience, but I won’t. Not today anyhow.). I also wrote the high school information column for the local weekly newspaper, where I later worked (after college) and where my husband is now the editor.

The high school was very well known for an extremely strong drama department when I was a student. I don’t know if this is the case now, but when I attended high school there, the popular kids were on the sports teams, yes (the most popular being on the wrestling and football teams. Quite a few state champions came out of the wrestling program over the years), but almost as popular, if not sometimes more popular, were the singers and actors who performed in the annual musicals. Many of those students thought their poop didn’t stink, as the saying goes, and I think a couple of them might still feel that way, even though only one of the students I knew from the program at the time, went on to have a nationally recognized career.

If you weren’t an athlete or a member of the drama department, you were pretty much a ghost at my high school and, for me, that wasn’t a bad thing. I liked being left alone to read a book, sketch, and write in my journal. I never had any interest in being popular. Let a friend of mine sing her heart out on the stage and date the star, then receive a bunch of attention for her beautiful voice (much deserved, I might add) because all I wanted to do was hide in my room and be left alone to the characters in my mind and in my books.

I’m sure the school district can boast many successful students who have graduated from its ranks, but one student who stands out to me and other alumni is Lucas Steele, who was nominated for a Tony in 2017 for his role as Anatole in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812. Other students (even the ones I joked about above) did well for themselves in their own right, however, and I truly hope they have all had happy lives, no matter where their career paths have led.

In the county where I live now, there is one school district – the Sullivan County School District – and one high school and elementary building for the entire county.

You read that right.

The schools are the only schools for the entire county. Well, two if you count that the elementary school building is right next to the junior-senior high school but not connected. I did not drive the 12 minutes from my house to photograph the school buildings because I had too much going on this week and last. I searched for photographs online and there were zero. I mean zero photographs of the school buildings, other than a few I found on Facebook of the building after firefighters had to respond to a fire there in 2019. The building was damaged, but luckily renovated and repaired. I also found another one of the building on the first day of school, though most of it is blocked by the busses. The photograph does, however, show part of the lovely campus the school is located on.

The district educates approximately 600 children.

Yep. That’s it. Six hundred children from K-12. People who live in larger cities are reading this right now and saying, “Six hundred children?! In two schools? For the entire county?! One class in our school had 600 students!”

It should be noted, however, that there are only about 6,000 full-time residents in this county. A large part of the county is made up of state gameland and there are also a large amount of cabins that are used throughout the year, but mainly during the summer, by people who live out of the area (usually in Philadelphia and New Jersey).

Because of its small size, the Sullivan County High School does not offer football. It does offer basketball, baseball, volleyball, wrestling, track and field, cross country, and soccer It also has a band, but not usually a marching band since there are no halftime shows in soccer or the other sports. The only time the district’s band performs a halftime show is at the two-county band exposition held each year in the neighboring county.  Like the school I attended, they offer chorus and various music programs.

The school mascot is a griffin.

I had to research was a griffin is because I always forget. According to Wikipedia, it is “a legendary creature with the body, tail, and back legs of a lion; the head and wings of an eagle; and sometimes an eagle’s talons as its front feet.”

You may be wondering, if you are new to this blog, if either of my children have ever attended any of the schools I have mentioned. The answer is no. My son attended a small, private Christian school until sixth grade and my daughter has been homeschooled for her entire school career so far. My son is now also homeschooled.

When I was mentioning the schools in our area, I did forget to mention the three private, Christian/ Catholic schools. The protestant school educates up to twelfth grade and the two Catholic schools educate up to eighth grade, after which students can either attend the high schools in the district they live in or they can go the Catholic high school in New York state, which is about a half an hour drive from the one private school and an hour from the other.

Now that my rambling about local schools is over, you can hop over to Erin’s blog and read about the “big city schools” outside of Detroit.

Sunday Bookends: I finished three books? Who am I?! And other non-important information

Welcome to my Sunday Bookends post where I talk about my previous week, including what I’m reading, watching, listening to, writing and doing.

What I’m Reading

I had to document this for prosperity’s sake, I finished three books last week: The Cat Who Knew A Cardinal, Journey to ChiYah, and the second book in the Rembrandt Stone series, No Unturned Stone by David James Warren. Three books? I can usually barely finish one! It’s a miracle! Anyhow . . .

I am trying to read the first three books in the Rembrandt Stone series because I am participating in a blog tour for the fourth book in August. I received an advanced reader’s copy of book four this past week and am excited to jump into it. First, though, I have to finish book three, Sticks and Stone, which I started Friday and am already halfway through. The books are written serially, coming out every three months or so, and are only about 50,000 words.

The series is written by two well-known Christian fiction writers, James L. Rubart and Susan May Warren, and Warren’s sons, David Warren, but it is not a Christian fiction book. This is a time-travel thriller series. The books are fairly clean but do have some language and descriptions that some more sensitive readers of CF would not be very happy with. I mean, one of my characters not my book said “hell” and two women almost fainted when they let me know they were offended. In these books there is talk of drinking, drug use, premarital sex, murder, sexual assault, alcoholism, and various other topics without anyone getting a good tongue lashing or the main character dropping to his knees in repentance. While there is “talk”, though, there are no graphic descriptions, so the books are still quite clean.

I reviewed Journey to ChiYah by Kimberly Russell earlier this week.

I have not reviewed any of the Rembrandt Stone books yet but will in August.

I never review The Cat Who books, since they are comfort reading to me, but this one was one of the better ones I have read over the years. There are 29 books in the series (people with OCD are tweaking right now, but the author died before the 30th book could be finished and bring the total of books to a more unified number) and I have read probably about 10 of them over the years. I have a long way to go to read them all, in other words.

With those books behind me, I am on to book three in the Rembrandt Stones series, as I mentioned above, and will probably start book four, Set in Stone later in the week.

Also, this week I have started The Rhise of Light by Max Sternberg, which is a fantasy novel, something I don’t normally read. Max is in a writing group I am in, however, and I’ve heard good things about it. I’ve started it and so far, I am hooked.

Little Miss and I are still on The Little House in the Big Woods.

The Boy is not reading a boon because, “it’s summer, Mom. Come on.”

What’s Been Occurring

Last week every day was filled with two little girls as I helped my neighbor watch her great-granddaughter who is a year older than Little Miss. In the afternoons I took the girls to a two-hour Bible camp called The Good News Camp at a local church. On the first day, my daughter was almost the only child, but I called my neighbor to see if her great-granddaughter had arrived yet. She had so I asked her little friend if she would like to attend as well.

For the rest of the week, two teenagers played with and taught the girls Bible lessons, driving a half an hour each way. They had another camp near us in the morning and I felt bad they had to spend their afternoon with only two children, but the girl told me that they hold a camp even if they only have one child. I tried to drum up more interest in the camp via my dad’s Facebook (he has more friends than me on there. Mainly because he used to be addicted to Facebook and sometimes still is but usually only in the winter) but no one took us up on it and the girls were the only two for the entire week.

They didn’t mind because the teenagers played games with them and were essentially their daily playmates each day.

Before and after camp, Little Miss’s little friend would come to the house and play. Neither of the girls are “bad.” They are simply very energetic and always coming up with new ideas of what to do. I love that they are coming up with new ideas of what to do but I would prefer that they ask me before they initiate activities that will result in paint being spread all over our hardwood floors or them possibly being bit by a snake. Yes, they are still looking for the many garter snakes living on our street and in our yard.

This week we have a break from camp, but not from little girls as the other little friend’s sister comes to stay and will probably be visiting throughout the week. She’s a little less adventurous than her older sister. She and Little Miss sit and play Barbies for hours. I might actually get some writing done. We will see. The week after this week, there is another Vacation Bible School event being held by four local churches in our community. I am going to try to take Little Miss to that as well so she has more interaction with children her own age.

What I’m Writing (Blog and Otherwise)

I’m finishing edits of Harvesting Hope this week. The book goes live on Amazon on August 12 and is available for preorder for blog readers for 99 cents. While I’m editing, I’m also working on book three. I’m not doing a lot of writing at this point, just brainstorming. I’m still trying to decide if the book will be only about Ginny Jefferies, the 53-year-old librarian, or also about Liz, Molly’s best friend. My mom and a friend of ours are helping me hammer out the plot and I was quite shocked how quickly they suggested I kill a character off. That probably won’t happen, but I appreciate their suggestions (or not).

This week on the blog I shared:

Hometown Views: Libraries (a new feature with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs). Next week we are focusing on schools.

A little fiction on Thursday: Harvesting Hope Chapter 25

Fiction Friday: Harvesting Hope Chapter (I don’t know. I’ve lost count. Oh wait…I remember now) 26

Saturday Fiction: Harvesting Hope Chapter 27 and 28 (final chapters)

What I’m Watching

This week I continued watching Jonathan Creek, a British crime show,but wondered why. The show completely went off the rails in the fourth season. Not only was one of the main characters replaced, but the plot of the shows went downhill big time. Apparently, they hired new writers who had no idea what they were doing. It was also odd to hear an f-bomb being dropped in a show which had minimal swearing previously. That was a bit jarring. I will probably keep watching just to see how far in the gutter the show goesZ

The husband and I continued to watch Lovejoy, a British show about an antique dealer who always seems to get himself into trouble.

Later this week, we are planning to go see the 1951 movie The Maltese Falcon in a theater about an hour from us. The theater is showing old movies for a reduced ticket price as a promotion.

Last night my husband picked an episode of Miami Vice for us to watch, which was different for me since when I was a kid and it was actually on TV, I was not allowed to watch it. “All those half naked women!” my mom would say. Not only that but it came on very late on Fridays and I was supposed to be in bed.

My husband wanted to show me what I had been missing and let’s just say by my repeated utterances of “this is ridiculousness”, I don’t think I missed much. Not even the repeated scenes of Don Johnson with his shirt off did anything for me.

Favorite Blog Posts from the Week

I probably won’t remember to do this every week, but I do save my favorite blog posts on my phone app so I can share them later, in case I do remember to add this in my weekly round-up posts.

A Major Fault – Fuel for the Race

A Short Story on Perseverance For His Purpose

Flash Fiction – Micro 60 Prompts by PenWending

For the Love of Words on Hope, Hearts, and Heroes

What I’m Listening To

This song has been on repeat most of the week:

That’s my week in review. Let me know what you’re reading, watching, or doing in the comments.

Saturday Fiction: Harvesting Hope Chapter 27 and 28 (final chapters)

Just a reminder to blog readers who either didn’t follow along or missed some chapters, you can either go back and read them here for the next two weeks or you can preorder an ebook copy for $.99 HERE. The price will go up the week after the release date of August 12.

This is the final two chapters of the story. Both have been rewritten a couple of times but are still in the editing process.

Chapter 27

Ellie rolled on to her side and winced. She’d been in bed all day, had taken the painkillers for her ankle, and yet her muscles still ached. It was ridiculous to imagine they wouldn’t hurt, of course. What did she expect after a car accident, a two-mile hike in the dark woods, and a fall into a mineshaft? That she would feel like dancing?

She reached for her phone on the bedside table and scrolled through the text messages.

Lucy. Molly. A couple of ladies from church. Emily, the pastor’s wife. Even Brad. She’d ignored Brad’s, of course. She didn’t have the energy to deal with what had happened the night of the accident. He was apologetic, asking how she was, but she wasn’t sure she could let him off the hook so easily. It was clear he needed help and she wasn’t going to be that source of help. Maybe she should give him Pastor Joe’s number.

Another one from Molly. Sent an hour ago.

Liz was on her way to the hospital with Matt McGee. Huh. What was Liz doing with Matt McGee? She’d have to question Molly about that later.

At the top of her messages was one from Jason.

Thinking of you. Your mom updated me earlier. Hope to see you soon when you’ve rested. I love you.

She smiled as she read it again. I love you.

She hoped he’d feel the same when she told him she was even more of a hypocrite than he thought. She’d spent the last seven, almost eight months, angry at him for not telling her what had happened in college. All the while, she’d also had secrets, something about her he didn’t know.

Really, though, she didn’t even know if it was true.

She only knew what the doctor had said at her appointment almost two years ago. How it would be harder for her to have children and maybe even impossible. Her symptoms had been worse the last several months. To her that wasn’t a good sign. Not at all.

A soft knock on her old bedroom door drew her from her thoughts.

Judi looked around the door. “Can I come in?”

Ellie shifted to a sitting position, making room for her sister on the bed. Circles darkened the skin under Judi’s eyes. “Dinner was great. Where did you learn to cook like that?”

Judi laughed, shrugging a shoulder. “My roommate in the city is in culinary school. She gave me some tips. I overcooked the fish a little, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.”

Ellie rubbed her eyes and yawned. “I didn’t notice it was overcooked at all. It was seasoned perfectly too. If you stick around, I’ll have to have you make some dinners from now on.”

Judi visibly stiffened but still leaned back against the pillow beside Ellie. She’d pulled her hair into a pony tail and was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, far removed from the flashier and more revealing outfits she’d been wearing since she arrived.

“Remember when we used to do this during thunderstorms?” she asked. “I’d crawl into bed with you, and you’d tell me everything was going to be okay and sing me that song —”

“I Will Cast All My Cares Upon Him. I remember.”

Judi leaned her head against Ellie’s shoulder. It had been a long time since she’d shown anything close to affection to her family, especially Ellie.

Her voice broke when she spoke again. “I thought you were dead, Ellie.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I never should have left the scene. It was so stupid.”

 “I shouldn’t have said all those horrible things to you. I know you don’t mean to be so perfect all the time.”

Ellie laughed softly. “Judi, I’m not perfect. You know that. I screw up all the time. I just don’t talk about it because — I guess because I don’t want anyone to know.”

Judi nodded against her shoulder, and they fell into a comfortable silence. The clinking of dishes downstairs from her parents washing and putting away dishes filled the break in their conversation. Soon her Dad would fall asleep in his recliner in front of whatever movie he’d picked out for them to watch.

A small sob came from Judi and Ellie looked down, not sure if she was still upset about the accident or something else.

“I can’t go back to the city.” Judi’s voice was barely above a whisper.

Ellie leaned back, slid an arm around Judi. “Why? Jude, what happened? Please tell me. What’s going on?”

She wanted to ask what was going on with Jeff, but she wasn’t sure how Judi would take it that she’d seen the message.

“I was so stupid, El.” Judi choked back another sob. “I knew eventually it would all get out of control but if I stopped then I’d remember I wasn’t special like you. I’d remember I don’t have any talents or brains, so I just kept being the life of the party.”

“That’s not tr —”

“It is. I’ve always been the dumb one. The dumb blond who just likes to have fun because she can’t do anything else. You’ve always been the smart, good girl who Mom and Dad can brag about.”

Tears stung Ellie’s eyes. “I never meant to make you feel that way.”

Judi sat up and twisted herself to face Ellie, brushing the edge of her hand against her cheek. “It wasn’t you. It was me. It was how I saw it. I was so jealous of you. I felt like I could never measure up. That’s why I moved to the city. Well, that and I really have always thought Spencer is a boring little town.”

Ellie laughed softly.

Judi rolled her eyes. “I wanted to find adventure and excitement and that’s what I did.” More tears came and Ellie reached out and took Judi’s hands in hers.

“Judi, tell me what’s going on. I’m listening this time, okay?”

Judi nodded, pulling one hand away to snatch a tissue from the bedside stand. She wiped the corner of her eyes as she spoke. “I went out with the hot guy from work. The one I told you about that one time we were on the phone.”

Ellie remembered. The phone call where Judi hadn’t pointed out Jason’s proposal hadn’t really been a proposal.

“He was drop dead gorgeous and interested in me.” She rolled her eyes again. “I should have known then something was up. He wanted me to go back to his place after dinner so,” she shrugged and shook her head, looking at the ceiling. “I did. His hands were on me after the first drink. I tried to enjoy it at first, thought maybe we’d just end up making out, but he was pretty rough and getting rougher. I tried to push him away, but he didn’t like that. So . . .”

She started to cry harder, hugging her arms around her middle, looking at the wall.

Ellie’s heart raced, her skin chilled. “Judi.” She placed her hands on her sister’s slim shoulder, afraid to ask the next question. “Did he – did this man assault you? Please. Tell me the truth.”

Judi shook her head. “No. Almost, but no. He pulled my shirt up and my pants down, but I kicked him pretty hard in the nads. He fell off me and hit his head on the coffee table. He was furious and told me to get out, so I ran to the door and left. My shirt was torn, I had a bloody lip. My roommate knew something had happened. She wanted me to call the police, but I just wanted to forget about it. Forget about how stupid I’d been to go back to his place. Forget that I was such a failure and that I deserved it because I flirted crazy with him and gave him all these signs and —

“Judi, did you tell him you wanted to sleep with him?”

Judi shook her head, sobbing against her hand.

“Then you didn’t do anything wrong other than maybe going back with him to his place. Even if he assumed you wanted to sleep with him once you said ‘no’ then he needed to stop. What he did was wrong. You get that, right?”

Judi shrugged a shoulder as she wiped a tissue across her cheek. “Yes and no. I mean, he was wrong, but I never should have gone there and —”

“That doesn’t mean you deserved it. Do you understand?”

Judi nodded slowly, pressing her hand to her mouth.

Ellie shifted closer to her and pulled her against her with one arm. “So, what are you going to do? What about your job?”

“They fired me last week for not showing up. My roommate wants me to come back, but she understands if I don’t. She said Jeff keeps showing up and asking where I am.”

Time to be honest and confess to Judi about the message. “He’s been texting you too, hasn’t he?”

Judi nodded and pulled back. “How do you know?”

“I saw a message. By accident. I wanted to talk to you about it, but you were drunk and then, well, you know. ”

“I blocked his number last night. He’s afraid I’m going to the police because Selina told him I was.”

“Selina’s the roommate?”

Judi nodded. “She hates Jeff and wants him to be charged, but I can’t report him for something he never got the chance to do.”

“But he would have if you hadn’t kicked him, right? What if there are other girls who didn’t get away?”

Judi looked at Ellie with red and swollen eyes. “I don’t know. What if no one believes me?”

“It’s up to you, but even if they don’t, at least you tried.” Ellie hugged her again. “You don’t have to decide now. You don’t have to decide anything now.”

Judi sniffed. “I do soon. The rent is due in two weeks, and I only have so much in my savings. It’s either stay here or go back to New York and try to get another job and chance running into Jeff again.”

Ellie stroked her sister’s hair. “Whatever you decide, I’ll support you.”

They stayed that way for a few minutes, Judi with her head against Ellie’s shoulder, Ellie stroking her hair, before Judi spoke again.

“Dad said he saw Jason sleeping in his truck in the hospital parking lot this morning.”

Ellie looked out the window at the sun pushing through the thin laced curtains, casting patterns on the floor. She thought about all the afternoons she’d sat in this room, watching those same patterns, daydreaming or reading instead of doing her homework. Part of that time she’d daydreamed about Jason, about living on a farm with him and growing old together.

Judi sighed. “He was probably afraid to leave you alone again.” She tilted her head up to look at Ellie. “You’re going to marry him, right?”

Ellie played with the fringe on the bedspread, a small smile tilting one corner of her mouth upward. “I put him through a lot. Maybe he doesn’t even want to marry me anymore.”

Judi snorted a small laugh. “Yeah, right. That man is completely enamored by you. He worships the ground you walk on. There is no way he doesn’t want to marry you. Plus, I’m guessing he put you through some stuff too. It takes a lot to send you over the edge. I’d say he’s not innocent by any means.”

Innocent, no. Apologetic and contrite, yes.

“We’re both pretty messed up to be honest.”

“Yeah, but you’re messed up together. It’s kind of romantic.”

“It’s romantic to be messed up?”

“No. It’s romantic to be messed up with someone else so you can help each other not be messed up.”

Ellie lifted an eyebrow and frowned at her sister. “Who told you that?

Judi smiled. “I’m really not sure. I might have heard it on a CW show.”

Ellie snorted out a laugh. “I guess it’s an interesting thought. In theory at least.”

She listened to Judi breathing and for a minute she thought she’d fallen asleep. “Don’t tell Mom and Dad what I told you, okay?” Judi whispered. “Not yet. If we tell them then I have to tell them how messed up I’ve been and I’m not ready for that.”

Ellie smoothed her sister’s hair back from her face. “Okay. For now, but I want you to talk to them at some point. They love you. They’re going to want to help you however they can. But be warned, Dad may want to enact some redneck justice on this Jeff guy.”

Judi tipped her head back and laughed. “Redneck justice? Oh man! I can just see him up there in the city with a shotgun. Getting tackled in the subway by the NYPD.”

Ellie laughed at the visual. “I can see the NY Post headline now. ‘Farmer Father Brings Justice To Big Apple.”

The sisters giggled until their sides hurt. Ellie gasped in air in between laughter. “Judi, do you realize you said ‘nads’ when you were telling me what you did do that guy?”

Judi snorted. “I know. I’ve been in the city too long. A couple of my friends are from Brooklyn, and they use that term all the time.”

They caught their breath, wiping their eyes, and Ellie was glad that this time the tears were from laughter. She and Judi hadn’t laughed like this in years.

Judi curled up against her again and yawned. “We should take a nap before Jason gets here.”

“Before Jason gets here?”

Judi pulled the cover up over her shoulder. “Yeah. You know he won’t be able to stay away for long. He’ll be here shortly. Definitely before dark.”

Ellie looked out the window at the dirt road in the distance that cut a parallel path to their cornfield. If Jason really did come, what would she say to him? She wasn’t sure, but she knew she needed to tell him the truth, even though she wasn’t exactly sure what the truth was.

Her phone dinged. Another text message. She smiled as she read it.

Molly: It’s a girl. I didn’t even make it to the hospital before she was born. I’ll let you know the name when I know.

Chapter 28

Hope to see you soon. When you’ve rested.

That’s what he’d texted to her.

It was true, but not the full truth.

He had wanted her to rest, recover from all she’d been through.

But he also wanted to see her immediately. It had taken everything he had not to turn into her parents’ drive on the way back from the hospital, pull in front of the house, scoop her up and hold him in his arms; to prove to himself that she was alive and safe.

By evening he couldn’t wait any longer.

Alex laughed as Jason walked from the barn to his truck. “I can’t believe you’ve waited this long.”

“Who says I’m going to see Ellie?”

Molly stood in the barn doorway, arms folded across her chest. “Your face is flushed, you’ve been distracted all day, and a half an hour ago we saw you looking like a lovesick puppy while you stared at your phone. You’re going to see Ellie and it’s about time.”

Jason grinned, sliding behind the steering wheel. “You two are the new Sherlock and Watson. Congrats.”

“Don’t forget to bend the knee when you ask her,” Alex called after him.

This was one time Jason wished Alex and Molly were distracted by each other instead of his love life. “Don’t forget to take photos of Liz’s baby and send them to me.”

He jumped into the truck, slammed the door shut, and shifted it into gear.

Looking in his rearview mirror he saw a car pulling in behind him. He slid the gear shift back into park. Climbing out, he watched Alan Weatherly slide out of the driver’s seat of the small gray Lexus.

The small woman who exited the car on the passenger side, reached out to Jason immediately. “Jason, I was hoping to catch you before the funeral tomorrow. I’ve been trying to get here to see you for a week now , but everyone wanted me to rest.”

He took Ann’s hands, guilt clutching at his chest. Tears glistened in her eyes as she spoke. “I wanted to see you in person to thank you for saving me from the fire. I’m sorry it took me so long. They made me stay in the hospital for a few days after the fire and then Alan and the girls have been helping me get settled in at Twin Oaks. I’m a few doors down from your grandparents.”

“Ann, I —”

“Now, Jason.” She tipped her head and raised her eyebrows to silence him. “I’ve talked to Cody, and I know what you’ve been thinking. John’s death wasn’t your fault. He was gone before you ever got there. I was saying my goodbyes when the smoke overtook me. I should have gotten out before the smoke got so bad, but the idea of leaving him there even though I knew he was gone — well, it was too hard for me to bear, I suppose.”

Jason nodded, his throat thick with emotion. “I wish I’d been able to bring him out for you.”

Ann smiled and clutched his hands tighter. “He was already home, Jason. All that was left was a shell.” She took a step toward him, leaned up on her tip toes and kissed his cheek. When she stepped back her eyes were bright. “Because of you, I’m going to be able to see my grandchildren grow up. My oldest graduates next year and my youngest starts Kindergarten in another month. I would have missed all that if it wasn’t for you.”

She let go of his hands and touched his shoulder gently. “Now, I don’t want to keep you. You were on your way somewhere.” She winked. “I hope you were on your way to see that lovely Ellie Lambert. Cody told me about her ordeal when I stopped at the fire hall to see if you might be there. I wanted to thank all of them too. Brought them a pie. Of course.”

Jason laughed. Of course she’d brought them pie. “Yeah. I actually am on my way over there.”

“Good. But before I go . . . Al, grab Jason’s pie.”

The small white box had Jason’s name on it.

 “Ann, you didn’t have to do this.”

Alan handed Jason the box and grinned. “She made ten of them and we’ve been dropping them off all over.”

Ann smiled and laid a hand against Jason’s arm. “Baking helps me to keep my mind off things. My daughter-in-law helped me make a few more for the dinner tomorrow as well. You’ll be sure to come say ‘hello’ to me when you visit your grandparents, won’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And I know Tanner’s Country Store delivers to Twin Oaks so I’m sure I’ll be putting in at least a few small orders.

“Anytime.”

“And!” She held up a finger, her eyes sparkling. “You be sure to come visit me with those beautiful babies you and Ellie have.”

His face flushed warm, and he tipped his head toward the ground, clearing his throat. “Yes, ma’am. We will be sure to do that.”

Ann craned her neck to look around his shoulder and waved toward Alex and Molly who had stepped up to the barn doorway. “Hello, kids. Alex, I hope you take Molly off the market officially soon. Neither of you are getting any younger.”

After the way Alex had harassed him earlier, Jason enjoyed the flush of pink that spread across his friends cheeks and ears.

“That’s right, Alex,” Jason called as he closed Ann’s door behind her. “You aren’t getting any younger. Better get a move on with all that proposal stuff.”

Alex waved at him dismissively. “You just worry about you, big boy.”

When Jason pulled into the Lambert drive ten minutes later, his chest was tight, and his palms were damp on the steering wheel. He pushed the truck into park and took a deep breath. Maybe he was having a heart attack. If he was, then he wouldn’t have to work up the nerve to talk to Ellie and find out how she really felt about him. Yes, she’d let him hold her and kiss her in that mine shaft, but that was a stressful situation. Maybe her mind had cleared, and she’d remembered how upset she’d been with him.

Tom met him on the front porch. “What took you so long?”

“You too?” Jason looked at him with an amused smile.  “That’s pretty much what Molly just said to me.”

Tom leaned against the porch railing, sipping from a mug. “I saw you in the hospital parking lot this morning. Sleep in your truck all night?”

Jason tipped his head toward the ground, hands at his waist. “Yeah.” He didn’t want to explain why he hadn’t come in, though he was sure Tom could figure it out. At least he was somewhat cleaner than he had been this morning, even if he had been working all day.

Tom tilted his head to the side, toward the front door. “You want to come in?”

Jason looked up, meeting the gaze of the man he hoped would be his future father-in-law. “Yes, sir.”

“She’s upstairs in her old room. Sore and tired still but doing okay.”

The creak of the front door brought Jason’s eyes up and he and Tom turned toward the front door.

“Actually, she’s down here. But still sore and tired.” She looked at Jason and he couldn’t look away. Her dark brown eyes captivated him, made him forget her dad was even there. She was wearing a pair of blue denim shorts and a white tank top covered by a patterned shirt tied at the waist. He rarely saw her so dressed down. It was breathtaking.

 “I needed some fresh air.” Her words reminded him he should take a breath of air before he passed out.

Tom held the door open for his daughter and walked inside after she stepped outside. He pushed the inside door closed firmly, which Jason took as a sign that he was giving them privacy.

She sat on the front porch swing. “I was going to sit on that top step, but I’m not sure I can get back up again with this ankle.”

He stepped up on the porch and leaned one side against the support beam, sliding his hands in his jean pockets. “How you feeling tonight?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Sore. And pretty stupid. Walking away from that accident scene wasn’t very bright. Have you heard how Brad is?”

He shook his head. He hadn’t and he didn’t care how Brad was. “Probably sleeping it off somewhere. He’ll bounce back. Always does. How’s Judi?”

“She’s doing okay actually. She’s asleep upstairs in my old room.”

“Where you should be.”

Ellie leaned back and stretched her arms out in front of her. “I slept a lot earlier this afternoon. Too restless to sleep. Brain won’t shut down.” She leaned back against the porch swing. “How are you doing?”

“Fine. Hurts a little where the stitches are, but I’m starting to get used to stitches.”

She tilted her head, and a small smile tipped a corner of her mouth up. Seeing the compassion in her eyes verses the anger he’d been used to seeing in the last several months was soothing. “I don’t just mean physically. How is your heart?”

She always did have a way of getting to the point. “Still hurting. Ann stopped by just before I came here. She hugged me. Told me it wasn’t my fault. Clint told me the same thing. Said John had a heart attack and was dead before the flames hit him. I still feel guilty, though. Still feel like if I had pulled him out, maybe something could have been done.”

“You don’t know that though.”

“Yeah. I think the not knowing is the hardest. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die that way.”

“No, he didn’t, but we know where he is now, who is holding him.”

Jason nodded looking down. “Yeah. We do. It does provide some comfort.”

A few seconds of silence stretched between them. Chirping birds and the meow of a cat filled the silence before she spoke again. “So, Liz’s baby is a girl, huh?”

He grinned. “Molly messaged you too, huh? I think she’s texted the whole county. Yeah. She hasn’t picked a name yet. Molly and Alex are headed over in a few to see them.”

“Molly said Matt took her to the hospital. What was that about?”

Jason laughed softly. “I’m not totally sure, honestly. Something I plan to ask Matt about as soon as I get a chance.”

He kicked at the porch floor with the tip of his boot, watched the dirt from the barn fall off and join dirt that was probably from Tom’s barn. He knew they were dancing around why he was really here, like they’d been dancing around other issues for far too long now.

“El, listen I —”

“I’m a hypocrite, Jason.”

He jerked his head up, eyebrows knitted together. “What are you —”

“I was mad at you for hiding your past from me, but I’ve been lying to you for two years,.”

Her hands gripped the edge of the seat of the swing, her legs pushed out, feet against the porch floor, keeping it from swinging. She kept her gaze lowered, focused on her feet.

“You haven’t been lying. You’ve been scared.”

She looked up quickly, met his gaze.

He sat next to her on the swing. “I heard you tell that doctor what medicine you were on and about your procedure. I shouldn’t have been listening, but I was outside the door. I didn’t want to leave you. Finding you felt like a dream, and I was afraid if I left, I’d wake up and you’d actually be dead. I should have realized all these years how bad things were. I should have known how much pain you were in each month. I looked it up online as soon as I left the hospital. Why didn’t you ever tell me how bad it had gotten?”

Ellie looked at the floor again and tears dripped off her cheek and down her chin. She shook her head and looked out over the corn field next to the house. “I was in denial. If I told you what was really happening, then I’d have to admit what that doctor told me might be true.”

At the touch of his hand against her cheek she turned to look at him. “If we can’t have children, it will be hard on both of us, but all I’ve really ever wanted was you, Ellie. Just you. Children or not. Farming or not. None of it matters if I don’t have you.”

He kept his gaze on hers. He wanted her to know he was all in. All in on the conversation and on her. “I know you think I might be holding more back from you, but I’m not. I promise you. I want to be completely open from now on. My life is an open book and on the first page you’ll find a declaration of my love for you.”

He slid a hand to the back of her neck, watching her expression transform from worried, to relaxed. He’d dreaded the possibility of still seeing anger or hurt in her eyes, but he didn’t see either of those emotions. He saw tenderness that flowed across her entire face, that opened her mouth slightly as if she was about to say something. Instead, she leaned forward and touched her mouth softly to his. She moved her arms around his neck and slid her body against his side. He turned so he could pull her into the curve of his body, deepen the kiss.

He smiled as he pulled his mouth away a few moments later. “Was that a kiss goodbye or a kiss hello?”

She laughed. “Definitely a kiss hello.”

He stood, slid his hand in his front jean pocket and felt a tremble rush through his fingers as he pulled out the box. “I still want to marry you, Ellie. I don’t know if you want to marry me, but I want you to know that you’re the only woman for me. That’s always been true. This ring is yours, if you want it and if you don’t, I can understand that too.”

A wry smile pulled her mouth upward. “You just carry rings around in your pockets?”

He laughed. “Only when I know I want to ask my best friend to be my wife.”

The tears didn’t hide her smile, but they came, renewed and flowing freely as she looked at him. She laughed through the tears, holding a trembling hand toward him. He held her hand but looked into her eyes before he slid the ring on.

“Wait. I’m doing it wrong again.” He lowered himself to one knee, still holding her hand. “I’m supposed to be down here, and I’m supposed to say Elizabeth Alexandra Lambert, will you spend the rest of your life with me?”

She shook her head, choked out a sob and pressed a hand under his elbow. “No. Get up. The way you were doing it was fine.”

Sitting next to her he slid the ring on her finger, but it stopped part way, just above her knuckle. They both began to laugh.

“This is Grandma’s ring. She wanted you to have it so I —”

Ellie wiped tears along the corner of her eyes with the edge of her hand. “It’s perfect.”

“I have another ring. One I bought in high school. One I wished I’d given you back then. It’s at the house. I can go get it.”

“No.” She shook her head, smiling.  “We’ll resize Franny’s. This is the ring I want. I can wear the other one too, but this is the ring that will remind me that we can get through anything, as long as we’re together.”

He nodded as she curved her fingers around the ring, clutching it hard.

He pulled her against his side with one arm, leaning back on the swing. In front of them, the sun had dipped below the horizon. A soft orange and golden glow spread along the edges of the silhouetted hills. A cow mooed in the barn and one of the barn cats slipped up on the porch and rubbed against Jason’s leg.

“We still have a lot to talk about,” he said.

“Yeah. We do.”

He looked out toward the corn field, ready to be harvested in the next week for silage. Sunlight glinted off the silk peering out from some of the husks.

“Being the wife of a farmer isn’t easy.”

 “Being the daughter of one isn’t easy either.” She intertwined her fingers with his. “Plus, a very wise woman, one who gave birth to the man I’m going to marry, once told me that the wife of a farmer is a farmer as much as her husband is.”

“You think Pastor Joe will marry us? Even after our craziness in his office?”

She laughed. It was a beautiful sound. “Yeah. I think he will. He’s called me twice to check on me and ask about you.”

He looked at her mouth as he spoke, thinking about how he should have kissed her that day at the church instead of arguing with her. “Think he’ll marry us this weekend? Behind our house?”

She tilted her head back, narrowing her eyes. “Our house? What are you going to do with Alex?”

“Kick him out, of course.”

Her laughter continued to be a balm to his soul. “Shouldn’t we tell him that first?”

He shrugged, a small tugging at one side of his mouth. “He’ll adapt. He can sleep in the hayloft at mom and dad’s.”

She sighed, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. “Five days isn’t very long.”

He curled his fingers in the hair at the base of her neck as she looked up at him. “No. It’s not.”

“I won’t have enough time to buy a dress or prepare food and no time to send out invitations.”

“No. You won’t.”

She smiled, her gaze still locked on his.  “It sounds perfect.”

He kissed her mouth softly again, losing himself in the feel of her mouth under his, her body curved against his, the way she was exactly where he belonged — in his arms. When he pulled his mouth away a few minutes later, she curled her legs up next to her on the seat of the swing and pressed her cheek against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and looked out over the cornfield again.

Tomorrow he had fields of alfalfa to plant, an architect to meet with about the construction of the new milking parlor for the A2 cows, a tractor to fix and a goat barn to finish. Tonight, though, he had a front porch swing to sit on, a sunset to watch, and the woman he loved to get to know again.

Her voice faded to a whisper. “We’re watching an old movie tonight.”

“Oh yeah? Which one?”

“Shall We Dance, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Want to stay?”

He leaned down, kissed the top of her head, and breathed in deep the smell of her shampoo. “Yeah. I want to stay.”

Fiction Friday: Harvesting Hope Chapter (I don’t know. I’ve lost count. Oh wait…I remember now) 26

I only have two chapters left to complete the story after this one so I will be posting the final two chapters tomorrow morning. Also, I just wanted to let my blog readers know that I will not be posting a lot of advertisements for purchasing my books anymore.

I have found I enjoy sharing on here and then giving you a link to the book on Amazon, if you so desire it, in full more than trying to become a “successful indie author”. I would actually offer it for free but some of my friends and family aren’t technically inclined (much like me at times!) so it’s easier for them to simply order it from a site and have it go to their Kindle and I can’t figure out how to offer it for free on there. I am sure there is a way and I’ll keep studying it.

I do want to remind blog readers again that you want a paperback, please let me know and I will order one for you at a better cost. I will eventually set up a way to do that on here.

Anyhow, enough of all the rambling (which probably isn’t making sense anyhow).

If you are a new reader here, I share a chapter from my WIP each Friday, and sometimes Saturday, on my blog. There are typos, grammatical issues and even plot holes at times because this is a first, second, or third draft that hasn’t gone to final editing yet. If you see a typo, feel free to kindly let me know in the comments. Sometimes the error has already been fixed on my copy, sometimes not.

Catch up with the rest of the story HERE. Don’t feel like reading the book in a series of chapters each Friday? Preorder the book HERE. Do you want to read the first book in the series? Download it HERE. 

Chapter 26

 Jason had called Alex and told him he wouldn’t be home. The last time he’d left Ellie she’d been hurt in an accident and lost overnight and half of a day.

Rena had told him to go home and get some rest.

He’d told her he would do that.

He hadn’t lied.

He was going to get some rest.

Just not at home. He’d made sure not to say he was going home for the rest, so he didn’t lie.

He curled a jacket he’d found in the back seat under his head and stretched out across the front seat of his truck, propping his legs against the driver side door.

He winced, the muscles in his back screaming in pain. Sitting back up he fumbled with the glove compartment door, pulling out a bottle of ibuprofen. The doctor had offered him something harder, but he hadn’t wanted to be knocked out, in case Ellie need him.

A knock on the driver side window startled him and when he turned his head he met the gaze of Clint O’Malley.

He opened the door, grimacing as he stepped out. Every movement seemed to send pain shooting through him, even in places he didn’t think should be hurting. “Clint. Hey.”

“You okay?” Clint asked, his brow dipped in concern.

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t recommend falling down a mineshaft anytime soon.”

Clint chuckled. “I’ll take that recommendation to heart.” He pushed his hands into his front pants pocket. “So, listen, I don’t mean to bother you, but I got some news today I wanted to pass on. John Weatherly didn’t die in that fire. He was dead before the flames ever hit him. Heart attack. We got the toxicology report today. The fire marshal’s interview with Ann corroborates what the report says. John dropped a pan of hot oil on the stove, probably when his heart seized up. The oil hit the gas flames and spread. Ann was in the living room watching Jeopardy and only noticed something was wrong when the fire alarm went off and the house started filling with smoke. By then the fire was spreading up the kitchen wall. She was trying to drag John out when you got there.”

Jason leaned back against the closed door of his truck and pushed his hand through his hair, holding it there for a few moments. “Wow. Okay. Thanks for letting me know, Clint.”

Clint patted his shoulder briefly. “You’re welcome. Now you can stop blaming yourself.”

Jason opened his mouth to answer, but Clint spoke over him. “You Tanners are good people. When Cody told me what happened, I knew it would weigh heavy on you.”

Jason let out a breath. “Yeah. Thank you again, Clint.”

Clint nodded. “I’m glad I didn’t have to declare Ellie dead today. I worried about that all day, dreading the possibility of the phone ringing and Cody telling me they’d found her body.”

“I’m glad you didn’t either. It all seems like a dream at this point.”

Clint laughed, slapped his hand against Jason’s shoulder. “It is a dream, kid. A very wonderful, real dream.”

Stretching back in the truck a few minutes later, Jason closed his eyes, his muscles relaxing fully for the first time in months. Sleep was dragging at him, trying to pull him under, but he needed to make a call first.

Lucy answered on the second ring. “Jason, hey. How are you?”

“Sore, but okay.”

“Rena said you were pretty beat up. I still can’t believe all this craziness. I went from planning Ellie’s funeral to bawling from sheer shock and joy that she’d been found alive. It’s like some crazy made-for-TV movie.”

Jason laughed in the middle of a yawn, not an easy feat. “It was surreal, that’s for sure. So, uh, listen, I wanted to ask you something. When they brought Ellie in, the doctor asked her if she was on any medications. They didn’t want anything she was taking to interact with whatever they gave her for the pain. She told them she was on something called Orilissa. I know she and I have barely talked in eight months so I figured this must be something new. I looked it up online and it says it’s to treat endometriosis. Has her condition gotten worse? Because the only thing I knew she took for that was over the counter painkillers.”

Lucy didn’t answer for a few minutes. He heard a sharp intake of air and then it being let out again, slowly. “I think this is something you should talk to Ellie about.”

Jason rubbed the stubble on his chin. “I guess that means you’re not going to tell me about the procedure she said she’d had either. She told the nurse about that too. Some kind of laparoscopic thing. My phone rang and I wasn’t able to hear what else she said.”

“Yeah. That’s what that means. I’m still telling you to talk to Ellie. I hope you’re not mad at me, it’s just —” Lucy sighed. “Things have been weird with you two and I don’t want to get in the middle of anything. Make it worse, you know?”

Jason laughed. “I’m not mad. Don’t worry.”

And he wasn’t mad.

He was worried.

Very worried that what Ellie had wanted to talk to him about in that mineshaft could mean his relief that she was healthy and whole would be short lived.

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“I can’t talk to him.”

Rena looked over the outfits she’d laid out for Ellie to choose from. “Ellie, you have to. He deserves to know the truth. Especially if you two are getting back together.” Rena looked up, holding a red shirt with frills around the collar. She raised an eyebrow, a small smile pulling her mouth upward. “You two are getting back together again, right?”

Ellie touched her fingertips to her lips, remembering how Jason had kissed her after he’d found her and how she had kissed him back. “Yes.”

“Then you don’t have a choice. You need to be honest with him.” Rena handed Ellie a skirt and a shirt. “Now go get dressed so we can get you home. I think it’s best if you stay with us a couple of days. You can’t be climbing stairs with the way your ankle is.”

Taking the shirt, Ellie slid off the bed slowly, wincing. “I’ll be fine. I can —”

“You’re coming home with us, El, don’t argue.” Her dad’s voice brought her gaze up.

He was smiling, but she could tell he meant business. He leaned his side against the door frame. “We thought we’d lost you, kid. Give us some time to remind ourselves we didn’t. I’ve already planned a movie night for us tonight at home. Your mom will make brownies and I’ll make the popcorn.”

Ellie laughed. “I think maybe I should make the popcorn. You burned it last time.”

Rena smirked. “Even though the bag clearly said only a minute and a half in the microwave.”

Tom shot a mocking hurt expression at his wife and daughter. “Me? Burn popcorn? No. I’m a popcorn master.”

Ellie walked toward the bathroom to change. “Where’s Judi?”

“At the house, waiting for you,” Tom said. “I know you girls have had a rough time of it lately, but she was really shook up yesterday. She’s cooking you some lunch.”

As she pulled a skirt up over her legs, careful to keep the weight off her ankle, Ellie thought about how upset Judi had been at the hospital the night before. She’d hugged Ellie repeatedly, tears streaming down her face, telling her she was sorry about how she’d acted. How long would that contrition last? Ellie wasn’t sure, but for now she’d accept it. If Judi did slip back into her old ways at least Ellie knew her sister loved her, enough to be glad she wasn’t dead anyhow.

Slipping her shirt over her head, she winced at the stiffness in her muscles. She needed to talk to Judi about that message on her phone. Now wasn’t the time to bring it up, though. She hoped she could find the time before Judi went back to the city. If Judi went back to the city at this point. To Ellie it seemed like her sister had no intention of going back to her life in New York and maybe this Jeff guy was the reason.

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Jason groaned as he sat up in the front seat and squinted in the sunlight streaming through the windshield.

Sleeping in his truck had been a bad idea. A very bad idea. He gritted his teeth in pain, lifted his arm, and sniffed. He made a face and shook his head.

 Sure, he could easily walk into the hospital and check on Ellie, but he felt awful and smelled worse. At this point it would have been better if he’d gone home last night and taken a shower and then come back to the hospital this morning. He hadn’t wanted to risk it, though. The idea of going home while Ellie was in a hospital bed, even if it was only for observation, hadn’t been remotely appealing to him.

He pushed his hands back through his hair, tried to smooth it down and squinted at himself in the rearview mirror. It wasn’t working. He looked like he’d been on an all-night binger. He looked like Brad. Until the night before last, he’d had no idea how far Brad had fallen. Watching him drunk in the bar, staggering around like an alcoholic had been eye-opening to say the least. His behavior had to have been breaking his parents’ hearts. They hadn’t raised him that way and the way he was acting was a slap in their face.

After a quick check in with Alex, he searched his truck for breath mints, still trying to decide if he should go see Ellie. Maybe he could wash up in the hospital bathroom.

Looking up, he realized the decision had been made for him. Ellie was being wheeled to Tom’s waiting car at the curb. She was on her way home. Her ankle was in a soft cast that stretched part way up her calf, but otherwise she looked fine.

More than fine.

It was a miracle.

From here he couldn’t see the mark he knew was on her head from where she’d hit the windshield when the car had flipped over, but he was sure it was taking on a purplish hue.

He wanted to kiss that bruise and any other part of her that she’d let him kiss. He wanted to dart from the truck, run to her and tell her again how sorry he was, how he’d wished he’d never met Lauren Phillips, but more importantly, how he wished he’d been honest with her right after he came back from college. He never should have withheld his past from her. He never would again.

Ellie looked up and smiled at her dad as he slid his hand under her arm and helped her to her feet. Rena moved to the other side of Ellie, and Ellie laughed. He knew she was probably telling her parents what she’d told him as they loaded her into the ambulance the day before. “I’m fine. Really. It could have been so much worse.”

He’d leave the Lambert family to their reunion for now.

There would be plenty of time for him to talk to her later.

About them, but also about any of her past she hadn’t shared with him.

A little fiction on Thursday: Harvesting Hope Chapter 25

To relieve the stress of a couple of my readers, I am posting Chapter 25 early this week.

To catch up on the rest of the story, click HERE.

Chapter 25

Jason’s breath caught, and he braced himself for the worst.

“She’s in a hole or a shaft or something,” Alex said. “I can see the top of her head and her shirt.”

They ran together, but Alex grabbed the back of his shirt before he reached a dip in the ground. “Wait! The wood’s rotted out. I don’t know what this is, but it was covered by boards. I almost fell in with her.”

Jason stood back, frantically scanning the boards for the weak spots, his eyes moving to the hole in the middle of them. “Did she answer you?” He tossed his backpack to the side.

“No.”

“Ellie?!” He dropped to his knees next to the boards and started lifting them, tossing them to the side. Alex joined him until a wider gap was open, revealing a large swatch of darkness.

“Is this an old well?” Alex asked.

Jason shook his head, stepping gingerly toward another row of boards. “Old mine shaft.”

“Why is it still here? I thought they filled all those in.”

“They should have but a lot of companies abandoned them when the coal rush was over.”  He tossed another board behind him and inched forward. “Ellie?!” He didn’t hear a response. “This is Old Man Barkley’s land. He died two years ago, and his kids sold off the farmland in sections. I don’t know who owns this land now, but they probably have no idea the shaft is even here. Ellie?!”

Why wasn’t she answering? Had she hit her head on the way down? Was she —

“Jason?”

His heart rate increased, and he jumped across two boards to the other side of the hole, flopping into the dirt next to the entrance. He flicked the flashlight feature of his cellphone on and pointed it into the darkness. The light barely reached four feet down.

“Alex, there’s a flashlight in my backpack.”

Alex tossed the light to him, and he caught it, though he wasn’t sure how with the way his hands were shaking. He flicked the light on and tilted it into the darkness, terrified at what he might find.

A sob choked out of him when he saw Ellie’s dirt-streaked face looking up at him from maybe 20 feet down, her eyes blinking in the light’s brightness. A faint smile pulled at her mouth, her eyelids drifting closed.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” He laughed through the tears. “You’re alive.”

He couldn’t even believe it. He’d been planning her funeral an hour ago while they hiked up a hill, and now he was hearing her voice.

Her laughter was the most amazing sound he’d ever heard, even if it was barely audible. “Yeah. I am. How did you even find me? I didn’t think anyone would ever find me.”

He looked over his shoulder. “Alex, call Cody. Tell him where we are and how to get here. We’re going to need more rope and a backboard. I’m going in.”

“We should wait for the first responders,” Alex said, lifting his phone to his ear. “What if the shaft caves in?”

Jason hesitated, pushing himself back from the edge. He hadn’t waited at the Weatherlys. If he had, they would have been digging two bodies out of the rubble. Ellie wasn’t in as desperate of a situation, though. What if he made the situation worse? He sat up and kicked another board back, then laid back on his stomach and felt the side of the shaft. The dirt and rock seemed solid enough. He was going to risk it, just like he’d risked carrying Ann out of the burning house. He only hoped that this time his choice wouldn’t result in the loss of another life.

“Cody, can you hear me?” Alex practically shouted into the phone as Jason turned himself to move backward into the shaft. He grabbed Jason’s flashlight and directed the beam of light into the shaft. “You’re breaking up. Yeah. We found her.”

Jason gripped the dirt next to the shaft entrance, swung his legs in, and lowered himself by bracing his boots against the side. Hard rock pulled up his shirt, ripped at his stomach, but he barely noticed. He lowered himself until he was gripping the grass and dirt without only the tips of his fingers, moving his feet, trying to find a place to grip with his feet.

The dirt broke under his hands at the same moment it broke under his boots, and he felt himself sliding down the shaft wall, dirt falling down as he moved toward the bottom. Darkness enveloped him. A searing pain shot up through his lower back to the space between his shoulder blades as he slammed against solid rock. He gasped in a breath, but nothing came. No air. Nothing but sheer panic surging through his body as his chest tightened even more.

When his breath finally came, it came with a sound that reminded him of the bray of the donkey his uncle Walt had owned years ago.

His shirt was sticking to his back, and he had a feeling the warmth wasn’t caused by sweat.

“Jason?!” The panic in her voice sliced through his heart, making him more desperate to get to her, touch her and make sure she was real.

He felt along the wall with his hands, on his knees, the light from the flashlight suddenly gone. “Alex? Where’s the light?”

Alex didn’t answer, so he kept feeling the wall until he felt skin soft against his fingertips. He stood slowly and in the next second, a hand clutched the front of his shirt, and he felt a body warm against his. He slid his arms around the body, the smell of Ellie’s shampoo pushing through the smell of dirt and mold and possibly something dead a few feet away. Leaning back against the rock behind him, he held her against him, afraid he was trapped in a dream, and someone would wake him up soon and tell him Ellie really wasn’t alive, but dead under her car in the creek.

Daylight was bright above them, but the shaft seemed to suck the light away so he could only see the light above, not around.

“Alex!”

The light from the flashlight illuminated the section of the shaft where they were sitting. Jason glanced down at Ellie and saw tears streaking through the dirt on her cheeks.

“I was afraid to get too close to the edge,” Alex called down. “The ground was giving away, and I didn’t want more dirt coming down on you guys. I’m leaving the flashlight here while I give Cody directions. I have to move down the hill. I keep losing the signal.”

Jason gently cupped his hand behind Ellie’s head, feeling along the back of her neck. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head slowly. “No. Just my ankle and my pride. I’m sorry I left the scene. I know I —”

His mouth smothered her words as he kissed her hard, trying to convince himself she was real. He dragged his mouth away a few moments later, and she gasped for breath and clutched at the front of his shirt again.

“You’re alive,” he repeated, his throat thick with emotion.

“Very much,” she whispered. “Alive and feeling very stupid for thinking I could take a shortcut to get help. I ignored all those driver’s ed videos that told me never to leave the scene of an accident. I was a total idiot.”

He kissed her again, softer this time. “You’re alive. That’s all I care about.”

The small smile pulling the corners of her mouth upward let him know she hadn’t minded the kisses and maybe even welcomed them.

He could hear Alex on the phone above them. The beam of light tilted toward the opposite wall. Jason titled his face upward and felt her arms slid around his neck and her palm against his cheek. When he looked down, she curled her fingers in his hair at the top of his head and pressed her mouth to his. The kiss was soft, slow, and spine tingling, making him forget about the pain he was in. He could only imagine the pain she must be in, and he hoped the kiss was helping her forget it, too.

“Cody said they’re going to use your phone’s location signal to find us,” Alex called down, causing Ellie to draw back and tilt her head back to look upward. “They’re heading up with four wheelers the Bradley family is loaning them.” He pointed the light down more directly. “I’ll hold this until they get here. Is she injured?”

Jason focused his gaze on her, smiling. “Just her ankle and her pride.”

She smiled and pressed her cheek against his shoulder, closing her eyes.

He pressed one hand against the small of her back, the other behind her head, sinking his fingers in her dirt-peppered hair. “How did you even get here?”

Her head remained against his shoulder as she spoke. “I was so stupid. Once I got out of the car and dragged Brad to the bank, I looked for my phone but couldn’t find it under the water. It was too dark. I knew where the road was but thought I could get to the Bradley’s faster over the hill and call for help. The moon went behind the clouds, though, and I got turned around and then I got more than turned around. I got completely and utterly lost. I thought I could see lights in the valley, so I started walking that way and that’s when I must have hit the rotten boards and fallen through. I don’t remember much other than coming to with pain in my ankle and the moon shining above me through a small hole in the wood.”

He kissed the top of her head and leaned back against the wall, marveling at the fact he was holding her, that God has answered his prayer and she was still alive.

“Alex, call Judi,” he shouted.  “Her number is in my recent calls. She called me about 20 minutes ago.”

Ellie lifted her head and he looked down at her. “Judi called you?”

“Yeah. Right before we found you. She was practically hysterical. She wants you to know she’s sorry and loves you.”

“Oh.” Her eyes swam with tears, and he used the palm of his thumb to wipe them as they spilled from the corners. She drew in a shaky breath and let it out again. “Jason, I need to talk to you about  something. I need to —”

Jason shook his head. “I should have told you long ago about what happened in college. I should have let you deal with it in your own way, not pressured you to forgive me.”

Ellie laid her hand on the back of his neck. “I know, Jason, but I need to talk to you about something el—”

“Cody’s coming up with hill with the rest of the guys.” Alex’s voice spoke over hers. “Tom too. He’s on one of the ATVs”

Jason looked down at Ellie as the rumble of engines drew closer and smiled. “Time to get you out of here.” He tilted his head, so he was looking at Alex again. “Tell Cody that there is dirt around this section, but there might be soft spots over the tunnel farther back. He’d better keep the four wheelers back some.”

“Will do.” Alex disappeared from the opening.

“Jason, please, before they get here, I need to talk to —”

“There will be plenty of time to talk when we get out of here.”

He kissed her softly again.

“I know we can talk then, but Jason —”

Shouting voices and the roar of engines drowned out her voice and Jason felt rather than heard her sigh as she leaned against him.

She tightened her arms around his neck. He saw the pain in her face, the exhaustion in her eyes, and he knew there was something she wanted to tell him. Right now, though, all he cared about was bringing her to safety. Now that he knew she was alive, everything else could wait.

***

Everything had happened so fast after Jason and Alex found her. Once the fire fighters had figured out a way to safely lift her, after determining her only injury was to her ankle, they’d helped her on to an ATV with Jason behind her. Riding down the hill her back against his front, her dad on an ATV behind them, she felt secure, calm, somehow at home.

All her concerns about who he’d once been had disappeared in the mine shaft when she’s thought she’d never see him again. Sitting in a small hole underground for ten hours had given her a lot of time to think.

To think. To talk to God.

And to listen to her heart, which ached at the thought she might die without telling Jason how much she loved him; how much it meant to her he’d been nothing but wonderful since they had met. Yes, he’d kept part of his past from her, but he could have easily told her without the apology..

“Sometimes it takes almost losing it all to realize what we have,” she whispered to her mom later that night as she drifted off to sleep in the hospital.

Rena smiled through the tears at her daughter, kissed her forehead and sat back in a chair next to the bed. “I’m still afraid if I fall asleep, I’ll wake back up in the nightmare I was living all day when I thought you were dead.”

Ellie’s eyes fluttered closed, but she forced them open again. Her Dad and Judi had gone home an hour ago.

“I want to go home,” Ellie whispered.

Rena pushed the hair off her forehead. “Sleep. The doctor said you can go home tomorrow. He wants to be sure you ‘re fully rehydrated and that there are no complications from that bump you took on your head. I still can’t believe you only managed to fracture your ankle when you fell in that old mine. It could have been a lot worse.”

Ellie’s eyes were closed. She had curled up on her side, hand under her chin, as if she were thinking. She could barely think, though. Sleep pressed down on her. “Jason . . .”

An amused smile tugged at the corners of Rena’s mouth. “He’s fine, honey. I already told you. Some stitches in his back and a muscle or two pulled, but they released him and he’s coming back in the morning to see you.” She laughed gently. “Of course, he wanted to stay, but I made him go home. He was a mess. Exhausted, blood-shot eyes, covered in dirt, arms and face all scratched up.” Rena rubbed Ellie’s hand. “You both need rest. There’ll be plenty of time for you to talk to each other later.”

Ellie managed a nod and then she was quiet, her breathing slow and even.

Hometown Views: Libraries

Today Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are debuting a feature we are calling Hometown Views. Every other week we will focus on a different aspects, locations, or landmarks of our differing towns (or city in Erin’s case).

This week we are sharing photos and thoughts about our local libraries. Erin lives in a more urban area, and I live in a smaller, more rural area. We both have a few different libraries we can choose from that we have visited, but we both have one library that means more to us than others.

The library building in the town we lived in prior to moving to our current home, was a beautiful facility and like most of the seven libraries in the county I grew up in, was built in the late 1800s, specifically to be a library.

Spalding Memorial Library, Athens, Pa.

It has three stories filled with books and a fourth story which houses the local museum. The museum features artifacts from Native Americans who originally settled the area, various historical objects from the area, uniforms and weapons from a variety of wars, and old photographs. It’s a small space but packed full of fascinating items.

I didn’t take a lot of books out there over the years, but we did attend various events there and I was at the library a lot covering events when I worked at the newspaper. I also let my children jump in mud puddles outside of that library one rainy day while patrons gawked at me like I had three heads. Good times.

Another library in a beautiful building sits next to the newspaper building (now abandoned, sadly) where I used to work. The library features two or three levels of bookshelves, accessible by metal stairs and ladders. There used to be a children’s section in the back. A few years ago, the library purchased an old carriage house behind the library building, and converted it into children’s wing, opening up the rest of the library for computers and more rows of adult or reference books.

While there is a good selection of libraries in our little rural area, for me, the library that means the most to me is in the town I now live in.

This library is actually in the county next to the county where I grew up, however, I lived only about five miles outside of this town up until I was about 25. I then married and moved 45 minutes north, where I lived for 18 years.

I remember coming home from the library with plastic library bags full of books. Mom would have one or two bags and I had one. We’d walk into the house and Dad would say, “More books? How will you even have time to read all of those?”

Well, Dad, not having a ton of friends helps with that. My friends were inside the books. Okay, not totally. I did have friends, but my friends liked to read too so there were times we didn’t hang out and during those times we read.

The library was and is small. There are three or four aisles with books on either side and then a small children’s room.

A recent program in the children’s room of the Sullivan County Library, Dushore, Pa.

All on one floor. Yes, that’s it, but when I was a kid, it was enough for me. I actually don’t remember ever picking books out of the children’s room. I read books that were probably too old for me, in some ways, but not inappropriate in any way, so I chose from the main shelves.

The rows of books are off to the right and back.

I was in love with The Cat Who books, which I, of course, still talk about on here (I finished reading one just this past weekend and have a blog post in the works about my love for the series). I also signed out quite a few Beverly Cleary books. Christian Fiction was another genre that caught my attention there.

I loved walking the aisles, running my fingertips over the spines of the books, picking them up and opening them, breathing in deep the smell of ink and paper, knowing that soon I’d be transported away from my sometimes boring life and into a world fresh and new to me.

My kid at the library in the town we currently live in. Excuse the cellphone quality.

I was so excited to move to this town and be able to go to the library again. But then I remembered my recent phobia of signing out library books and worrying about damaging them, which makes me take them back before I’ve even finished them. The phobia started in our previous hometown, because if I forgot to return a book that library would call, then text, then call, then text and so on until I returned it. I felt like a criminal. It was just easier to order books on Kindle or buy them at library sales.

The last straw was when I ran into a member of the library staff and mentioned to her I was bringing a replacement for a book I’d lost to the library. She told me not to worry but then let me know that if people don’t return books, the library has been known to send a report to the local district magistrate’s office. Gulp. That return book was in their hands the very next day after that and I never signed out another book from them. (But, no, I do not really believe she was threatening me. She was just sharing the libary’s new policies.)

You Know What didn’t help with my excitement about the little library here last year since I couldn’t peruse the shelves for almost a year. Then I became annoyed at our local library a few weeks ago because they continued to advertise their summer reading program, as if new people could join, but it was full. I had missed the deadline by a few days, but I called the library and asked if I could slide my daughter in. They never returned my call, so I called again. Still no call. When I finally was able to catch up to someone, they told me the program was full and my daughter could not attend.

It was fine that they had capped the program because they don’t have a lot of space but what was annoying was that they would advertise the program in the local newspaper as if children could attend, even though they couldn’t. So, I was a bit snitty with the lovely ladies who volunteer there and even though I apologized profusely for being jerky, I still feel super shy about going back in again. That’s why some of the photos I will share here are from my cellphone a couple years ago and from their website. That’s right, I’m a big scaredy cat to go there right now, even though they forgave me and said it was totally understandable that I had been annoyed. When I do go in, I will take them a big box of baked goods from the local bakery. A bakery called — I love this — The Mad Bakers.

I do love the library and I do love what they do for the community so I feel super, super guilty about being a jerk. I make sure to donate them or promote them whenever I can.

For a tiny library, they really do have a lot of variety of books. They have a great deal of Christian Fiction, which is popular in our area, but they also have a great deal of mysteries, popular books, and this month they added 65 new titles of tons of genres to their shelves. They hold a variety of programs throughout the year for all ages, but especially children and families.

We loved this magic show we attended there at the beginning of June.

In many ways, they are the center of the tiny community here (of 600 people in the entire town).

Another library I want to mention is one I visited once or twice as a child and teenager. That library, located in the little town of New Albany, Pa. was completely destroyed in 2018 when it was knocked of it’s foundation by rising flood waters. Quite a few people in our state have heard about the library because it was washed off it’s foundation and came to rest in the middle of a major highway. Or at least part of it came to rest there.

The New Albany Library before a flash flood knocked it off it’s foundation and into the middle of a highway. It was a surreal scene!

It was hit by flooding the week before it was knocked off it’s foundation, but I don’t think anyone thought that whole building, with a concrete foundation, would go down.

There was an apartment upstairs and the people who lived there were rescued by a member of the fire department who lived next door and whose home also was damaged. His home was again damaged last week in flooding.

Some of the damage from the library’s Facebook page in August 2018. The library after it was pushed back off the highway so traffic could go through town. The highway is a major highway for truck traffic, etc.

The rest of the library, including books and documents, were scattered across the street, down the street, and downstream.

The library is still gone. The funding the governor (who came to inspect the site) and the state promised would come to replace it was never provided. The funding the county mentioned they might be able to obtain to rebuild it, also never came. Land has been donated to build a new library building, but so far there are no funds to complete the project. The state will also not allow the borough to go into the creek behind the space to clean it out and keep flooding from happening again so the residents of the borough again suffered damage last week when they, again, had flash flooding.

Following the Pennsylvania governor when he toured the site. I took photographs for the paper my husband was working for at the time.

There is a small little library-like set up in town, in front of the church, far away from where it normally floods. Books are placed in a structure that resembles an old British phone booth and patrons can take a book and replace it with another book.

Growing up I only visited the library a few times, but it was cozy and housed a great deal of local history. Its loss was a huge hit to a small town that has already taken many hits over the years.

Thanks for joining me for a tour of the libraries in my area. Now I hope you will hop over to Erin’s blog and check out her post about the libraries she attends and enjoys.