Cleo’s Lies

Betty Miller Buttram

Description

Cleo's Lies: Accompany her on a journey filled with jealousy, rejection, revenge, greed and obsession. She lies to a couple who befriends her and a husband who loves her. She lies to her best friend about the man she loves. Cleo spreads gossip about a woman who stands in her way of getting what she wants. She lies to a young man about the true identity of his birth mother. Her tangled web of lies, secrets and deceit is revealed when three women band together and carry out their revenge against Cleo.

Sujets

• Science Fiction
• Cleo
• Personnages d'Albator
• Lies
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 28 février 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669864196
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

CLEO’S LIES
Betty Miller Buttram

Copyright © 2023 by Betty Miller Buttram.
 
Library of Congress Control Number:
978166986420
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-6421-9

Softcover
978-1-6698-6420-2

eBook
978-1-6698-6419-6
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 01/24/2023
 
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
850088
Contents
PART I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
PART II
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72

 
 
 
For my husband, Clifford Sr., and our sons, Cliff Jr. and Quint
PART I
 
Chapter 1
Cleo Peyton stood under the large oak tree across the road from her house meditating on her impending plans. The crisp autumn evening had a chilling nip in the air. A brisk breeze shook loose a few leaves, and they landed near her feet. She glanced down at the fallen foliage and smiled. They would eventually be swept away by the season’s swirling wind. They were free from their mother’s hold to go dancing with the wind.
Cleo cocked her head to one side as she listened to the distance rumbling of the approaching six o’clock evening passenger train. The engineer blew the whistle three times as the railroad cars rode the tracks passed her house on its way to Savannah. The blasts of the rolling sound played upon Cleo’s ears. Coming through. Passing by. Follow me.
Cleo had lived all of her seventeen years in Little Creek, Georgia, a small hamlet clustered behind the only major highway leading to other places. The road and the train were her tickets out of there. Cleo had to get away from this place where the sameness of everyday life had become habitual, mechanical, and sometimes monotonous. She was tired of the boring routine. She had plans on leaving and had no intentions of letting anyone stop her from doing it.
Cleo had set her sights on Savannah and the anticipated excitement of that city life. She was thankful for the information she heard from visiting friends and relatives of the people of her little community about the world beyond Little Creek. She listened to their stories regarding the new sounds of music called “be-hop jazz” played by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk and the swing music by the big bands like Glen Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington.
Ida Mae and Eddie Joe Peyton, Cleo’s parents, lived in their own world surrounded by peanuts, chicken and hog farmers, peach growers, and churchgoing folks. They were somewhat oblivious of the real world outside of their humble surroundings expect for their ecstatic behavior about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s reelection to a third term.
Ida Mae and Eddie Joe had told Cleo of the scheme that sent her out to meditate under the oak tree. They decided it was time to pawn her off to a farmer who had the good fortune to own his land. To do that, they wanted to kindle her interest in him.
Cleo inhaled and exhaled the brittle air. It was time to confront the issue and get out of town. She left the refuge of her tree, walked across the road up the four porch steps, opened the door, and faced her father.
“It’s about time you got yourself back in here, gal,” Eddie Joe snapped at Cleo as she made her way to the dining room table.
“I’m not interested in that farmer, so stop doing your manipulations, Daddy,” Cleo fired back at her father and sat down to face him. A kerosene lamp was in the middle of the table, adding heat to their conversation and illuminating their faces with its light.
“Shut your mouth, gal. Don’t you talk to your father that way,” Ida Mae shouted from the kitchen. She came out, wiping her hands with a dishtowel and sat down next to her husband.
Cleo eyed them with dislike, disgust, and disrespect. “You two act like you come from money or better still have some money.” She flung those words at them from her place across the dining table.
“Listen here, gal,” her father said and waved his hand in front of him as if he were swatting away a fly. “Nobody’s rich in this family, but we’ve managed to survive.”
“Well, I’ve got news for you, Daddy. I’m not for sale! I won’t ever consider that fool of a farmer you think would make me a good husband. I’m not going to grow old and tired planting seeds in the ground and in my belly! When that time comes, it’ll be my choice!”
“Gal, you better shut your mouth and listen to us,” Ida Mae started to say.
“Stop telling me to shut up! Call me by my name! It’s Cleo! This is my life not yours!”
Ida Mae ignored Cleo’s outburst and kept on talking. “We’ve done a lot for you, and now it’s your turn to give it back.”
“Give what back! Both of you, for all my life, have been so wrapped up in each other that you hardly ever noticed me. I guess in all the touching, hugging, and loving of each other, I slipped up on you!” Cleo’s words circled the air between them and then spat her parents in their faces.
“Don’t you dare speak to us that way!” Ida Mae pointed her finger and leaned across the table at Cleo. She was stopped from saying another word by the loathsome expression on her daughter’s face.
“You gave me the name of Cleo, not Cleopatra, just plain Cleo. Some people call their dogs by that name. I was like the family pet—touched when the mood stimulated you and fed because I was your responsibility . Did either one of you ever think I could have used some hugs, kisses, and loving? Don’t bother to answer that question. I know you saved your loving for each other!”
“Cleo, whereabouts you getting these thoughts? We’ve always been good to you,” Eddie Joe pleaded his case .
“Good to me! Ha! That’s a joke. Did you ever love me? We appeared to these folks around here as a perfect little family. You never touched me. You never hugged me,” she said through clenched lips and stared at both of them.
Ida Mae let out a whine, “Lord, Lord, Cleo, why do you need so much attention? We gave you a good home because that was our duty to you. What more do you want from us?”
“Duty? Was that what I was to you two lovebirds? A burden!” Cleo continued with her hurtful memories. “After church services and other social gatherings,” she said and dug her verbal knife deeper, “I was discarded like a toy that had lost a child’s interest. Well, I’m grown-up, and I want nothing else from you. If you think I’m going to pay you back for your ‘duty’ by marrying that idiot farmer, you’re wrong. It’s time for me to get away from this backwater town!”
Ida Mae suspiciously eyed Cleo. “How do you propose to leave when you don’t have a penny to your name?”
“All those little pennies, nickels, and dimes people gave to me when I was smaller because I was a cute darling to them, finally added up,” Cleo answered her with a twitch of her nose and an air of secrecy. She folded her arms against her chest.
“They didn’t give you that much, Cleo.” Ida Mae rose from her chair and walked back to her bedroom where she kept the family-hidden money stash. She opened the closet door, reached up, and pulled down a doll she had kept as a child. She unhooked the snaps of the dress, put her small hand inside, and felt for the wad of bills. It was gone!
Ida Mae rushed back into the dining area and grabbed Cleo by her arms, pulled her up from her chair, and shook her. “I know you stole that money, you ungrateful gal! Where is it?”
“I’m not telling you! Cleo tried to wrestle herself away from her mother. I’m getting away from here—you, Daddy, and things I don’t want to do.” Ida Mae shoved Cleo from her, and they stood facing each other as bitter enemies.
“Look here, gal,” Eddie Joe interjected as he stood beside his wife, “we’ve done arguing in this household. Give it back!”
“I’m not giving you anything!