Laughing Not to Cry - Softcover

Figure, Mona

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1450224385 ISBN 13: 9781450224383

Verlag: iUniverse, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

Laughing Not to Cry uses humor to tell the story of a fifty-three-year-old teacher whose husband pillaged her family's flower business, vanished with their life savings, and did it all legally. She struggles to build a new life with her senile father, the Colonel. She prevails against enemies who try to push her out of her job and off her farm, while she rebuilds her family's flower business against all odds. In the process, Dorothy, the trusting wife and victim, becomes a stronger, sassier, wiser version of herself. Her husband returns and tries to ruin her again but this time he confronts a woman to be reckoned with who beats him at his own game.

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LAUGHING NOT TO CRY

By Mona Figure

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Mona Figure
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-2438-3

Chapter One

RIVERVIEW, CONNECTICUT

After her husband vanished with their life savings, Dorothy Brainerd Rutherford diddled away eight years trying to keep body and soul together. She thought that the bad times were behind her, but on the day of her mother's funeral fourteen months ago, Dorothy found that the bad times had just begun. Her house was not the haven she once knew. Its walls had grown closer since Carla died.

The sun was low in the sky when Dorothy set off on the dirt road toward the river. Her bulky, moth-eaten jacket had outlived her grandfather and still smelled faintly of his Prince Edward pipe tobacco. The wind swirled dead leaves around her, unraveled strands of her graying hair, and made her eyes water. Walking gave her the peace and solitude she no longer found at home. Her whole body rejoiced to be alone and out of doors. The tightness in her neck and shoulders loosened up somewhat.

She had last hiked to the river with Maggie over two years ago. It seemed much longer. Dorothy couldn't recall the details, only the feelings, all sensation and excitement, for it was Maggie's way to infuse vitality into everything she did and to make the most mundane occasion fun by being there. But she lived in France, out of reach, out of touch, a world away from Dorothy and her troubles. She took in a deep breath and told herself she could handle them; everything was going to be okay.

She paused for a moment to view the dilapidated tobacco sheds, the abandoned greenhouses, and the wide expanse of fields between them-all that remained of what her grandparents had left her. Dorothy seldom thought of them now or questioned why events had turned out the way they had, denying her the bright future her grandparents had planned for her. It seemed that a lifetime ago, she'd had pretty much everything-a new car every year, new outfits every season, money in the bank, a life populated with friends. She didn't miss the affluent life, but beneath the surface, she longed for an undefinable something. Not love. That was a distant, forgotten thing.

The road narrowed into a footpath overgrown with cockleburs that clawed at her ankles and stuck to her jeans. The path took her into a meadow, over a fallen stone fence, through a thin forest of new growth birch, across the Amtrak railroad tracks, and into a clearing under towering maples. The woods smelled of rotting leaves and dying autumn, like the musty smell of her house.

She heard the river before it came into view. On an outcropping of granite, she surveyed Riverview Falls, its roar a whimper now with the dam gone and the river running helter-skelter over broken concrete. This place was her childhood sanctuary. A lichen-covered oak lay twisted and rotting on the ground, its gnarled roots pointing to the river. She remembered it upright and leaning over the water, a long rope hanging from it. She could almost hear Maggie's wild laugh as she snatched the rope and bounded through the air, blonde hair wet and stringy, lunging as far as she could before letting go and plunging into the river. One day Dorothy cartwheeled off the rope and hit a log that had been floating by. The impact knocked her out. She came to half-drowned, with Maggie pulling her by her ponytail out of the river and dragging her to shore. Her scalp was sore for a week afterward.

Back at the clearing under the maples, Dorothy kicked at leaves and dirt, trying to find the pit where they had cooked shad over an open fire. Finally her foot found what she was looking for-stones the size of ostrich eggs, blackened on one side.

Dorothy was lost in reverie, when out of nowhere a tall, a white blur flashed across the woods in front of her. She knew instantly that it was her father running toward Earl Vining's farm in his baseball cap and nothing else. Carmella was in pursuit, big breasts flying and chin in the air. Dorothy rushed to intercept them in the meadow, but they ran past her, and her father disappeared in the thicket. Canada geese paddling in the rushes took flight, and mallards burst out of their early evening roosts, shrieking and flapping. Gasping, Carmella slowed to a walk.

Dorothy caught up with her. "What happened?"

Carmella replied between gasps. "He bolted out of the shower. I couldn't stop him. Old man Vining's going to be furious. It's the second time this month."

"Go back to the house and call Judd. Tell him the Colonel's loose again." With that Dorothy launched herself in his direction. Without missing a step, she yelled over her shoulder, "Call Earl Vining too and warn him."

Within minutes a shot rang out. Sparks flew from a power line near the railroad trestle and illuminated the late afternoon sky. Two more shots followed, and a flock of crows rose in jittery flight. Earl was a dairy farmer, not a hunter. He couldn't hit a cow with his shotgun pressed against its rump, but the shots gave Dorothy pause. One of these days Earl was going to hurt someone with that gun.

It was dark when Dorothy limped home. The damp air rising from the river went right through her grandfather's jacket and into her bones. She felt as though she had been hit by a train in Hartford and dragged all the way to Springfield. She trudged up the steps to the mudroom, kicked off her muddy shoes, and collapsed in a chair at the kitchen table.

Carmella appeared in a skimpy pink robe, her thick black hair twisted in a knot on top of her head. "You didn't find him?"

Dorothy shook her head and glanced at the clock over the kitchen sink. It was six thirty. Worries about her father were her constant companions. So far she had coped, but his frequent flights threatened to overwhelm her.

"No need to worry. He always shows up eventually." Carmella leaned across the table close to Dorothy and spoke in a confidential tone. "Don't mind my saying so, but you'd best put him away."

Though in no mood for Carmella's advice, Dorothy nodded politely. Live-in caregivers were more temperamental than movie stars and harder to find than honest politicians.

"Why don't you put him in the Veterans' Home? He's a war hero. They got to take him."

Dorothy slumped lower in her chair. "I'm beat. Let's talk tomorrow."

Carmella ignored the hint. "With the Colonel gone, you could find yourself a man and get married again. You got a few wrinkles, but you aren't that old. If you gained weight and dyed your hair, you wouldn't be bad-looking."

Dorothy closed her eyes and wished she were in a coma. "Did Judd call?

"No, but Earl Vining did. He says the Colonel's crazy and you got to put him away. He says if you don't, he will. He'll blow his ass off next time he's loose."

The words might have come from Vining, but Dorothy knew they expressed Carmella's sentiments. Dorothy thought of things she'd better not say. The phone rang and she hurried to answer. It was Judd.

"We found him in a culvert under the railroad tracks-cold, hungry, and dirty as a ditch digger. We showered and fed him and dressed him in jail fatigues."

Dorothy exhaled loudly, the great crush of worry lifted. "Thanks." She said it so often lately that she thought it sounded insincere. "I'll be right over to pick him up."

"No need to. I'll take him home at the end of my shift."

Carmella slipped out of the kitchen while Dorothy talked to Judd. She went back to the mudroom, hung her jacket on a peg, shook the twigs out of her hair, took the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: iUniverse
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1450224385
• ISBN 13: 9781450224383
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 244
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: KreGa Onlinehandel GmbH; 4950000000000; info@krega-onlinehandel.de; ; Birkenweg 31; Brakel; 33034; Deutschland