A FLOCK OF SPARROWS

Helen Foster Reed

Description

Five widows and the storm of the century...

Just in time to wreak havoc for Thanksgiving, a monster storm from the Arctic blasts south freezing much of the United States. In East Texas, dire weather warnings brings together a unique group of women, all struggling with new and older grief, as well as a host of life issues.

Retta–determinedly fighting to keep her ancestral farm going, while nature, her children, and time were showing her that a need for change was inevitable.

Maggie–Retta's lifelong friend, whose multiple marriages and lust for life constantly leaves her the talk of the community.

Sybil–after single-handedly dragging her family out of poverty to become one of her church's most respected women, she finds herself facing the biggest challenge of her life.

Dana–a promising musical career took an unexpected turn when she fell for a tough soldier. But one too many deployments took its toll on their happiness and, now, her future.

Carly–a girl from the wrong side of town, she married a man old enough to be her father, which turned her into the richest woman around. But is she the gold-digger many believe her to be?

In the end, only part of the drama is outdoors. Hour by hour emotional and psychological upheaval grows, as secrets are revealed, until all are forced to understand that sometimes friendship and love needs to be risked in order to reach life's richest plateaus.

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 09 décembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456627867
• Langue: English

Extrait

A Flock
of Sparrows
 
A Novel
 
Helen Foster Reed

A FLOCK OF SPARROWS
Copyright © 2016
Helen R. Myers, M. June Foster, and M. Gail Reed
All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or otherwise transferred either electronically, mechanically, or via audio, or by any other means known or hereafter invented, without the written permission of the authors.
 
This is a work of fiction, and all characters within are the imagination of the authors. All names and places are fictitious, or if geographically or historically real are used fictionally.
 
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2786-7
 
For more information, visit www.helenfosterreed.com
Cover Art: Stephen Marshall

 
 
In loving memory of our husbands,
Robert Clinton Myers
Albert Wayne Foster
Dennis Michael Reed D.V.M.
Acknowledgments
We have been blessed by a state of grace. This book is a journey that represents over one hundred years of marriage, and (none of your business) years of living. It has brought us to innumerable moments of insight and wisdom, and has rewarded us with countless friendships, along with being trusted with experiences of people who have walked the difficult road that we have walked. We respect—and within these pages—pay honor to you all.
 
In the most personal sense . . .
HELEN R. MYERS: After over fifty books, I’ve tried to keep up with my gratitude to those who have enriched my life and made my professional world so much easier to navigate. Since this unasked for fork in the road, I’d especially like to salute intrepid Leslie King for her diligent and resourceful handling of my online presence through the years. I treasure you and your friendship. And for being there 24/7 to dog sit, lend an ear, help me move, etc., since life turned upside down, special love to Dolores and “Dead Eye” James Dugger.
MADELEINE JUNE FOSTER: For four years, I have travelled a different and new road in life, navigating a journey I couldn’t have managed without the support of my dear family and many friends. I can never name all of the ways you have helped me, but I pray that you grasp my sincere thanks and love. To my children and grandchildren—Kim and Bruce Gatlin, Jeff and Kristi Foster, Tucker, Caleb, Tyler, Madilynn, and Zachary—thank you all for the love and for holding my hand along this path that we’ve taken together.
MARY GAIL REED: I would like to thank my children: Robin and Steven Simmons, Laura and Clint Calvert, Keely and Bryan Sheets, and Michael and Meredith Reed. And I cannot forgo citing my sweet grandchildren: Blakeley and Brooks Briscoe, Sarah Grace Simmons, Evagail, Morris, and Reed Calvert, Thomas, Brylan, and Keegan Sheets, and Emmersyn and Easton Reed. You have not only been my ballast, you have been beyond encouraging. Know that you fill my heart with joy and laughter. I love you all so much.
 
 
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life,
what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what
you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body,
more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not
sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father
feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”
—Matthew 6:25-26
One
ONE INVALUABLE LESSON I’ve learned in the last seven years is that things don’t always fall perfectly into place, no matter how hard you work or will it. Life has its ebbs and flows just like the powerful ocean’s tide, and come a riptide, the flow has a way of sweeping us off balance. It certainly did me. After thirty-six years of marriage, at the very moment I thought my feet had become buried deep enough into the sandy depths of stability to weather almost anything, my husband Charlie died.
I still remember the instant I found his lifeless body. I collapsed from the shock and abruptness of it, as if our land had incomprehensively turned into an ocean, and I had been sucked deep under water like bait grabbed by a single-minded predator starved to feed. I imagined that’s what drowning must feel like, that inability to breathe, the sensation that my lungs were filling with water. Instincts and panic quickly took over; and, after using my cell phone to call 9-1-1, I went to work trying to save him. My eyes, my fifty-four-year-old mind that had absorbed years of experience, knew he was gone; yet my heart, suddenly flooded with almost teenage-like, unconditional love, wouldn’t accept reality. That’s the memory that continues to haunt me. I still miss him so. I’m missing him even more now at sixty-one, as the storm of the century is surging into Texas, bringing God only knew what trouble and danger with it.
It is strange, though, that I’m thinking as if I were a New Englander, a person of the sea. In my youth, I was a romantic and dreamer, an arm-chair adventurer thanks to voracious reading. I also fell in love with the dramatic art of the Wyeths, especially N.C.’s action-driven book illustrations, to the point that sometimes I yearn for the ocean. I guess my mother was right; she’d told me more than once when you’re born under an astrological water sign—in our case, Cancer—you instinctively react and relate with metaphors about water, even if you’re a native of land-locked Northeast Texas.
Full disclosure: We are barely five-hundred feet above sea level here, and the region is richly saturated with rivers, creeks, springs, ponds, and lakes, making this a perfect place to at least benefit from some of nature’s subtler liquid vibrations. Interestingly, Mother and I came into this world with earth moons in our birth charts, therefore, we’re also prone to love home and stability—and we married men born into the farming and ranching life, as we had been, which cinched the deal. We were and are East Texans for life.
Oddly enough, as much as I’m intrigued by such trivia, I almost never read my horoscope. However, like all of the old timers who have farmed land or raised livestock, I pay attention to lunar and planetary cycles, and know when it’s a good time to plant, to dehorn animals, mate stock for the easiest birthing, and the rest. On this late November morning, the TV meteorologist’s report served as confirmation a storm is coming and it is going to be bad. My favorite online website confirmed several of the planets are in water and air signs, indicating the atmosphere contained way too much liquid energy, and it was going to be propelled by a stronger wind than usual.
So far the breeze was from the west, light and mild, although I could tell that a shift was at hand. Soon there would be dramatic changes. Before noon a howling wind from the north would send temperatures plummeting over thirty degrees. Wind-driven snow, and perhaps ice, would be blasting through the trees, especially our more fragile pines, with the force of a hurricane making landfall. No one would go unscathed. As a widow still fending for herself on this big property, I had work to do.
When the phone rang, I had a gut hunch as to who the caller was even before the first jingle ended. Maggie Lamar and I had been friends for nearly six decades and seldom a morning went by that we didn’t talk. Our agenda would be single-minded today.
Without wasting time on any greeting, she began, “Retta, have you seen the latest weather report on TV?”
“You know there’s nothing else on our local channels. Do you have your bag packed?” I asked. “Considering how the power goes out on your side of town during the mildest thunderstorm, you’ll be better off here.”
My place was less than ten miles outside of the city limits of Martin’s Mill, but I wasn’t fully reliant on electricity the way the townspeople were. While the house was lit and warmed by electricity, the cook stove and hot-water heater used propane gas; plus, we had a lovely large fireplace designed in the old-fashioned way to cook a pot of beans or stew like the early pioneers would do it. There was also another fireplace upstairs in the master bedroom.
“I’m a step ahead of you. That’s why I also invited Sybil,” Maggie replied. “Since she lives only two streets over from me, she’s bound to lose power, too. I knew you wouldn’t mind.”
“Of course not,” I told her, glad she’d already thought of that. After changes in their lives, they’d moved into such a nice, new development; however, the city hadn’t yet done the major upgrades in utilities to support the growing residential area. “The more the merrier. We’ll have such a good time, we’ll put adult slumber parties on everyone’s bucket list.”
After a slight pause, Maggie said, “Well, you might not say that when I tell you the rest.”
My mind went on full alert, and my insides did an unnatural something that left me feeling queasy—an all-too-familiar reaction whenever Maggie allowed any pause in a conversation. I just knew she was about to drop a bombshell.
“Oh, Maggie, what have you done now?”
“Dana Bennett and Carly Kirkland are coming, too,” she blurted out.
“You can’t be serious?” My abrupt reaction had me instantly cringing. “Well, Dana, of course. The poor thing is nearly eight months pregnant. But Carly? You can’t stand her.”
“Things just sort of . . . evolved.” Maggie sounded part apologetic and part disgusted. “With all of us being in the same neighborhood now, there’s no way Sybil would leave Dana behind. If you ask me, she’s still dealing with empty-nest syndrome—like she doesn’t get her fill of kids at school. Problem is, in the last few months our sweet mother-to-be has befriended that blond alley cat, and Dana said she’s not coming unless we invite Carly, as well. Thank goodness Dana agreed to extend the offer herself. I would have needed a shot of tequila to pull off sounding believable if I’d been forced to call Carly at eight o’clock in the morning.”
Although I wasn’t the least bit thrilled with this development, and had no time to figure out how it was supposed to