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First Edition Design Publishing - Herschel Waller

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107 pages

English

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When Teresa Walker reluctantly visits an old cemetery in the small East Texas town of Balfour with her husband Granger, she suddenly has a vision about a young girl, Sarah Bollinger, who was buried there 150 years ago. Granger is skeptical about Teresa's experience at first. However, after she tells him that she feels compelled to determine what happened to Sarah, he agrees to go along. As they investigate the mystery, they form an uneasy alliance with Jack McAlester, an engineer from San Francisco who has been summoned to Balfour by a series of curious letters. Teresa is immediately unnaturally attracted to this handsome but devious stranger. Together, they seek the assistance of Phyllis Runyon, the sophisticated current resident of the plantation house where Sarah lived. Their unraveling of the dark family secret concerning the true identity of Sarah's murderer leads to the discovery of a hidden treasure, forces Teresa and Granger to confront unresolved issues in their personal lives, and leads to a shocking, deadly climax at the scene of the original crime. A Peace in Time is an intimate tale of love and hate across a century and a half and of the meting out of justice for a vicious murder.

Informations

Publié par	First Edition Design Publishing
Date de parution	10 juin 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781622876334
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0360€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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A Peace In Time
Herschel Waller

First Edition Design Publishing
A Peace In Time

First Edition Design Publishing
A Peace In Time
Copyright ©2014 Herschel Waller

ISBN 978-1622-876-32-7 PRINT
ISBN 978-1622-876-33-4 EBOOK

May 2014

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com

ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .
To
Nancy,
the love of my life,
and
to
the long-forgotten Sarah
To every thing there is a season, and
a time to every purpose under heaven…

Ecclesiastes 3:1
A Peace In Time

by
Herschel Waller
Chapter One

Sarah Bollinger, dead at only eighteen years of age, was laid to rest in the cold mud. A chilling light rain fell through the longleaf pine branches as the pallbearers removed the unadorned wooden casket from an ebony-colored wagon. The weeping women in dark gowns and bonnets and the stern men in ashen cloaks staring across the cemetery toward the plantation house created a tableau in black and gray. Normally filled with laughter, the house sat silent now, its eaves dripping with tears from heaven, its vitality sapped by the tragedy of Sarah’s death.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” the minister recited monotonically as the coffin was lowered into the blackness of the deep, loamy hole.
The slaves watched in a small group from afar, some of them wiping their eyes with worn, leathery hands. Finally, the plaintive strains of an old prayer rose through the drooping tree branches toward the leaden sky, and it was over.

*****

Overheated by the blazing East Texas sun, Granger Walker used the sleeve of his shirt to wipe the sweat pouring off his freckled forehead. Though he and his wife Teresa were accustomed to the heat, this summer of 2005 had been particularly brutal. The broken cement sidewalks around them generated waves of blasting heat like steaming griddles on a hot stove, and even the tall pines seemed to shrivel in the swelter.
“Over here. I think it’s this way, but it’s been a while since I was here last,” he called to Teresa as he squinted in search of his great-grandfather’s grave. Using his height to advantage, he peered over the tops of a row of cedar bushes in the direction of a distant magnolia tree.
Granger had visited Balfour Cemetery many times during his youth. The neat rectangular plots were almost all occupied now, most having been filled during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The tilted and fractured monuments reflected an earlier time, when miniature Parthenons and oversized lamenting angels embellished the final resting places of the affluent and simple gray slabs marked the graves of those of more modest means. Here Granger had learned about death as well as life; here he had absorbed family culture and traditions. He was rooted in this place.
“Oh, I found it.” He waved at Teresa across five rows of monuments as he read the marker that rose only about two feet out of the clay-laced topsoil.

Francis Granger Lee
September 24, 1867
August 13, 1939

“Wow, the stone’s a lot smaller than I remember. Guess things just look bigger when you’re a kid.”
“Okay, you found it. Let’s go,” Teresa blurted out as she adjusted her heavily tinted sunglasses and pressed a handkerchief against her tanned cheek. She felt the dampness in her dark curly hair and craned her neck toward the sound of her husband’s voice. Despite standing on her toes, she couldn’t see over the cedars. “Granger, where are you going? Hurry up. You’ll blister in this sun.” Then, after a moment, “ Granger ! It’s too hot to be out here.” Her voice trailed off as she realized his attentions were elsewhere. Desperate for shade, she leaned up against a towering pine tree and rolled up her sleeves as far as she could.
In the distance, Granger was rattling on. “I was named after him, you know. He was a merchant here in Balfour for a long time. He married late in life….”
Teresa was thinking about the cool air conditioning back at the house and about where they might have dinner later. As she pondered the question of food and Granger rambled about his family tree, she noticed an old slab lying barely above ground level nearby. The badly cracked gray marble lay horizontally atop crumbling bricks walling the sides of the grave. She strained her eyes and lifted her sunglasses to read the barely legible words.

Sarah Ellen Bollinger
Aged 18 Years, 6 Months and 20 Days
Died January 9, 1855

It was simple but poignant. Suddenly, her eyes welled with tears. Granger and Teresa’s daughter Victoria would have been eighteen now, a young woman, perhaps with her mother’s olive skin and her father’s flashing blue eyes. She would surely have been both intelligent and beautiful, the desire of all the boys and the delight of her parents. They had lost their only chance for immortality so long ago. Teresa was still hurting, and the pain was even greater because the accident that took her life didn’t seem to bother Granger any more.
She turned her attention back to the stone at her feet, and, inexplicably, she felt compelled to run her fingers along the indentations of the inscription. In an instant Teresa was overcome, her head reeled, and she thought she was about to faint. She felt a wave of empathy, a stark understanding of the somber ceremony in the cold rain so many years ago.

*****

“Come, Mother, we have to go.” Robert’s hand gently pulled at her shawl-covered shoulder.
“No…no, I can’t leave her here. She needs me.” Vivian sobbed almost silently and touched a lace handkerchief to her eyes.
“She’s not here. Her suffering is over now. You must accept her passing and go on with your life, as we all must.” A tall and ruggedly handsome young man in his early twenties, Robert pulled his cloak a bit tighter as the wind picked up and the rain fell harder. The other mourners had walked away, leaving them isolated, piteous figures standing by the open grave. Two grimy laborers dressed in black waited under a nearby tree to fill the hole.
“If only I knew what happened.”
“Mother, please, not here, not now. We’ll find out, I promise.” He knew the pledge was an empty one, but somehow he had to assuage her concerns, even if it meant lying.
Reluctantly, Vivian relented, and they slowly followed the others toward the waiting carriages and the house beyond.

*****

“He lived here for a long time before he died.” Granger was concluding his genealogy lesson. Looking up from his daydreaming, he searched for Teresa. “Where are you?” Then, more loudly, “ Teresa ! Where are you hiding?”
“Here. I’m over here.” Teresa stepped out from behind a cedar bush.
“Where were you? You wandered off.”
“I just had the strangest experience.”
“What are you talking about?”
Teresa thought for a moment. She wiped her forehead again and walked across a cracked sidewalk toward Granger. Trembling, she grabbed her right hand with her left and pulled both of them up against her body.
“I don’t know. I’ve never felt anything like it. My…my fingers are tingling.” Pointing feebly, she blurted out, “It was that grave over there, the one just sticking up above the ground.” She reached out as she neared him, and, despite the heat, she pulled herself close. She felt breathless, and a pang of anxiety struck her chest.
“What’s wrong, baby?” He could read the fear on her face.
“I can’t…I don’t know.” She backed away and stared into Granger’s eyes.
“What are you talking about?” asked Granger as he began walking in the direction Teresa had pointed.
“ No ! Don’t go over there!” She was almost yelling, but he ignored her warning. “Is this it?” Granger looked down at the slab at his feet.
“Yes . . .yes.”
After he read the inscription, he asked, “Okay, what happened?”
“I had some sort of vision, or maybe it was just a feeling. I can’t say. But it sure was real.”
“What kind of vision? What kind of feeling?”
“It was a scene, as if I were seeing what happened when she was buried. I know it sounds weird, but it was more than just a vision. I felt the sadness, the sorrow.” Suddenly, she started to break down, the tears overflowing, pouring down her face.
“Stop. Don’t say any more right now. Get hold of yourself. Let’s get out of here. We can talk about it then.”
Later, after Teresa had calmed down and they sat in a booth at a roadside café, Granger listened attentively as he swallowed an icy mouthful of tart lemonade.
“I…I don’t really know what happened. Right after you started to talk about your great-grandfather, I saw that broken monument nearby. For some reason, it was intriguing to me, and I walked over to it. I read the inscription, and it reminded me of…well…of the baby and the accident. Our baby would’ve been her age now, you know.” She squeezed her nose with a handful of tissue.
“Yes, I know.” Granger diverted his eyes away from her. “Go on.”
“Well, I could hardly read the inscription, so I ran my fingers over the letters to make it easier to make them out. That’s when I saw this scene.”
“You mean like a picture?”
“That’s the weird part. It was as if I was watching a movie, but I…I felt the emotion too.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. I can’t explain it.” She dropped her head into her hand and closed her eyes.
“You have to try.” There were only a few other people in the café and they seemed not to notice, but Granger stole a glance around their table to make sure. “Uh…keep your voice low.”
Teres