The Secrets of Rosa Lee. Jodi Thomas
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Her sister elbowed her gently, signaling her to turn down the volume.
Billy leaned farther back in his chair and looked as if he were staring at Lora Whitman’s legs under the table. Considering the short length of her skirt, Sidney could only guess at the view.
She lifted her briefcase onto the wobbly card table. Sidney had to do something before someone interrupted her and asked for a final vote. They all looked as if they wanted to move on with their lives. She needed to act fast. “Before we talk about what needs to be done, I want to show you all something I’ve found. It may be a factor we need to consider.”
Pulling a worn book from her notes, Sidney’s hand shook. “This book was donated to the library when Rosa Lee died.” She beamed. “Though the book is valuable as a first edition, its true value may lie in the inscription. Which, after reading it, I think you all will agree dictates further research on our part.
“It says simply, ‘To my Rosa Lee, who promises to love no other in this lifetime. Leave with me tonight. Wait for me in the garden. I promise I’ll come before midnight. Fuller, July 4, 1933.’”
Ada May stopped writing. Billy glanced out the window. Beth Ann whispered, “darn,” as she lost a stitch. The preacher leaned forward, his smile melted as his body stiffened as if preparing for a blow.
“If this was given to Rosa Lee, then maybe all the stories about her being an old maid who never had a gentleman caller aren’t true.” Sidney moved around the table, as if circling a classroom. “Maybe there are secrets here to uncover. Secrets the town should know before we sell the land.”
“Who cares?” Billy questioned, slouching in his chair. “Secrets about folks long dead are of no interest to anyone.”
Lora looked as if she agreed.
Micah Parker stretched his hand toward the book. “May I see that, Dr. Dickerson?”
Sidney smiled, knowing she’d hooked one. “If birth records are right, Rosa Lee would have been twenty-three when she was given that book. My guess is Mr. Fuller would have been from around here, but why didn’t he meet her at midnight like he planned?”
“Maybe he did,” Billy answered.
Sidney turned to him. “Then why didn’t she leave with him if she’d promised to love no other in this lifetime?”
“Maybe her father stopped him,” Ada May chimed in. “She was his only child. Fuller might have been a no-good drifter. If she’d left with him, she’d have been poorly married.”
Sidney raised an eyebrow. “A drifter who bought a leather-bound first edition that must have cost a month’s wages during the Depression?”
No one seemed to have an answer.
Micah opened the book and ran his fingers over the words. The others in the room didn’t have to ask. They all knew the reverend thought of his wife.
“Maybe Fuller didn’t show up,” Sidney added. “And we have no idea if Fuller was his last name or first, since it was a relatively popular given name a hundred years ago.”
The minister studied the writing inside the book. “Why would a man who used such an expensive way to send a note, not show up as planned?”
Lora frowned. “She waited seventy years for a love who never returned?”
“What a martyr,” Ada May whispered.
“What a fool,” Lora mumbled. “No man’s worth more than fifteen minutes, tops.”
Reverend Parker stood slowly. He gently pushed the book across the table and took a step toward the door.
Sidney knew the words in the book had touched him. She saw it in his eyes. The preacher wore sorrow on his sleeve. But would words written seventy years ago pull him into the mystery, or push him away?
She followed Micah to the door, having no idea how she might comfort him or if he even wanted solace. It occurred to her that she’d suffered the greater loss, for she’d never, not in forty years of life, experienced such heartache. At least he’d once had someone promise to love him for a lifetime.
Her fingers brushed his sleeve a second before she heard the sound of a car braking.
She glanced outside. Sunbeams reflected off the bay window. Sidney blinked through crystal-white light a moment before the sun shattered.
An explosion of crashing glass echoed off the walls and bounced back on itself. Sunbeams splintered.
Sidney stepped back, bumping into the preacher. Chaos ricocheted into tiny slivers bouncing and sliding across the floor. She screamed.
Billy Hatcher threw his body into Lora’s as the glass blew around them like a rushing tidal wave. They hit the floor hard, sending folding chairs rattling. Ada May lifted her notebook and huddled near her sister. Glass rained across Sidney’s notes, reaching the edge of the crochet square Beth Ann had been working on. Rust-covered metal, the size of a man’s fist, tumbled to a stop at Lora’s broken chair.
Micah rushed forward. His shoes crackled on a carpet of slivers. “Is everyone all right!”
A chorus of groans and cries answered.
“What happened?” Beth Ann said in a shaky teacher’s voice. “Who threw that thing!”
Ada May’s sobs grew from tiny hiccups to full volume.
“I don’t know.” Micah placed a hand on Ada May’s shoulder. “All I got a look at was the back of a pickup.” He turned to the others. “Is anyone hurt?”
Billy lay curled over Lora. Neither answered Micah’s call.
Sydney shook as if someone had hold of every inch of her body and planned to rattle her very bones. “I’m not hurt!” she whispered. “I’m not hurt.” She tried to reach for Billy and Lora, but her legs began to give way.
She looked down at trembling hands and decided they couldn’t be hers. “I’m not hurt,” she whimpered.
The room faded. She fell into a warm, calm darkness.
Five
Lora Whitman huddled in a corner of the old dining room, her forehead resting on her knees as she tried to calm her breathing. It had all happened so fast. The sound of a car on the street. A rusty oil-field drill bit flying through the window. Glass following the missile like the tail of a comet. Billy’s body slamming into hers, knocking her to the floor. Crushing her. Protecting her.
She glanced over at the drill bit still resting on her crumpled folding chair. She’d seen ones like it all her life. The oil rigs changed bits when drilling and the used ones were often thrown in the dirt around the site, or pitched in the back of pickup trucks. This one, all rusty and dirty, seemed harmless now.
“Lora? Miss Whitman?” Sheriff Farrington knelt before her. “You calm enough to give me a statement?”
Lora shoved her mass of blond hair away from her face. “There’s not much I can add to what the others have said.” Scraped knees poked through the holes in her stockings. “Except I thought it was a rock or a football or something. I didn’t know it was a drill bit until later.” She stretched out her leg. “I guess it couldn’t have been an accident. No one tosses around something so ugly for fun.”
The sheriff glanced over at the rusty metal with teeth on one end used to dig into the rock-hard earth in these parts. “It wasn’t an accident,” he echoed. “There was a note pushed inside the bit.”
Lora stretched the other leg. “What did it say?” she asked. She wouldn’t have been surprised if it read, Kill Lora because the drill point had been aimed right at her.
The sheriff offered his hand to help her stand. “It said, Let the house fall.”
Lora managed a laugh. “I guess someone not on the committee