Evie was almost done with her last call for the day. Her doorbell rang. It was Pastor Sam. She jotted a note for him. Need 5 more minutes. You can wait inside or out. Front porch or back. She pointed to her head set as she handed him the note. He read it and wrote, back porch? She gave him a thumbs up.
She poked her head out the door, “would you like something to drink?”
“Water is fine.”
On the tray, she had 2 glasses and a pitcher of water. Each glass was half full of multi colored plastic stars. And some were floating around in the pitcher. She noticed the look on his face. “I don’t buy bottled water nor do I use traditional ice.”
He smiled, filling up his glass.
“Thanks for defending me.” Evie spoke as she sat down.
“I am so sorry. I was shocked to say the least. Are the accusations true?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“She brought up some good points that in my joy to finally have music back in church, I didn’t think to explore.”
Evie just sat there, stunned. Words had left her. The thought raced across her mind to tell him to get off her porch. She got up, “‘we have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agriculture’,” she quoted. “Get off this property.”
When I thought about an answer for this prompt, I suddenly came up with a whole list of things I’ve been working on. A painting that I posted a picture of today. Sawing up the tree that blew down in my yard. All kinds of stuff on KDP. And of course, me. A constant work in progress.
But the big winner: the next installment of my story Sunshine Valley. I hope you enjoy.
Sunshine Valley
Do we have it right?
Evie sat with her knees under her chin, hugging herself. Dillon had built a small fire. Her mother’s tombstone glittered in her peripheral vision. Her house was right there but he thought out here might be better. Sometimes being outside was therapeutic.
Her voice was dry when she spoke, “do we have it wrong?”
He sat down at her feet, “about?”
“What if the things we believe are wrong?” She sniffed, “what did I ever do to that woman who spouts her Christianity”
“What happened?”
“You should never spend the night. I should fork over a copy of my financial statements and dig out my baptism records.” She sniffed, “that’s what it boils down to. I think she lives on her front porch. Nosy.”
Dillon didn’t know what to say right off the top of his head. Then spuddered, “she said that in private?”
“Oh no, in the open meeting.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I want to go over there and ram my fist down her throat.” She sighed. “Done crying. Hurt. Tired. I’m so tired of fighting. Ever thing I’ve ever done seems like a fight.” A deep breath escaped her, “I know that isn’t Jesus talkin’. It is Satan using ignorance to get to me. Now he can add a gaze of mistrust and embarrassment. How is that loving like Jesus?” She pointed angrily toward the Ledbetter’s. “What would you do?”
What to say? He searched his mind. “‘I have never assisted the sun materially in his rising’. – Maybe?”
A big smile lit up her face, “look at you.”
“I payed some attention.”
She laughed. “You are amazin’. Maybe I should practice Transcendentalism instead of Christianity?”
“I don’t think that would make you..” Happy wasn’t the right word. Complete? Content? “Faith has always been a big piece of your life.” She moved to where she could lay her head on his shoulder, facing her house. Her mother’s stone at her back. He hugged her up, “‘I will weave baskets. It is a thing I can do.’”
“Thank you.” It startled him when she leaned back up. He didn’t want her to move. “I’m sorry.” Now he was confused. “For puttin’ you in this situation. People are gonna talk about you now. Question your morality and ethics. All because you have chosen to care for this failed human experiment.” She fell back into him sobbing.
A ping of pain raced through him. Here goes nothin’. He took a deep breath. “Failed human experiment?”
“Nothing I do is right. Ever decision I’ve made has been wrong.”
Was her lying here in his arms right now wrong? “I’m sorry you feel that way.” His voice was flat and dry.
“You and dad.”
Now he liked the sound of that. His heart ran away with his mouth, “I know how we can fix that.”
Was he saying what she thought he was saying? She rose up out of his arms, studying his face. IF they were on the same page, it wasn’t a bad idea. It was terrifying. Not in a Doug kinda way. In a, I’m 16 all over again, kinda way.
My Jetpack notification goes off and someone has liked one of my posts. 🎉 As I’m reading their site, I come across this post. A lovely poem and a picture:
this picture. The more I look at it the more I think, it beautiful, different. I like it. And I want to try to paint it. In the world of art, painting and drawing, I’m a novice. Still learning. So, my painting looking similar but is very different (I think) from the original. I’m still learning how to use this brush. That brush. And the like. Mine.
Dillon searched all over for Evie. He knew she knew he was here. But she wasn’t answering the door. He could have used his code to get in the house. But he had this naggin’ feelin’ that she wasn’t in there.
Evie was piled up on her mother’s grave sobbing.
Dillon thought he shouldn’t be here. He should leave her alone. But he couldn’t stand it. He knelt with her putting his hands on her shoulders. She fell into him, continuing to sob.
His Evie had been broken and it was more than he could bear.
She lunged out of his arms screaming, pounding at the hard earth. “You lied to me. Everything you ever told me was a lie! LIER!” Dillon laid his hand on her back. “She lied to me.” It came out a whisper among sobs.
She had on the nice outfit he assumed from church. Dillon knew he needed to get her in the house.
“What did your parent’s lie to you about?” Big tears glistened in the moon light.
“Dad told me I was useless and lazy. One day he found out I could play the piano. He dared mom to feed me.”
She snubbed, “I’m sorry.”
“There are a lot of things about my childhood I wish I could change but I wouldn’t trade parts of it for all the gold in the world.”
“She was always tellin’ me I wasn’t feminine enough. No man would ever love me. In her eyes, women needed a man to be complete. And I was unloveable. Less than a woman. I should have had men and boys lined up from here to your house when I was 16. It was a great shame to her that I didn’t. When I got married, late better than never, it would make me whole. Perfect. Life was mine for the taking. SHE LIED!” Evie started beating her grave again. “She lied. Stuffing me in her damn lace. And those uncomfortable shoes. Stand up straight. Smile. Be attractive. Spend hours fixing your hair and putting on makeup. Useless. She lied. I ran away because of her.”
“So, if I’d got a couch or 5 and set them on fire in the middle of the road to stop you, you would’ve plowed through them and left anyway?”
Evie sniffled, just staring at Dillon. “You didn’t want me to leave?”
He mashed his lips together, flattenin’ them out, “no.”
I saw that button there for create a cover with Kindle Cover Creator. Button’s make me nervous so I left it alone. As I’m fighting with margins to use my own cover, over 2 hours later, I thought I’d give cover creator a try.
With one picture I wanted to use, it was hard to adjust the size. But it’s cool overall. If I wanted to, I could have added an overview of the book on the back, a picture and brief bio. But it was midnight and I just wanted to get it finished. Added this information much later.
Also discovered, there is a minimum price KDP will let you charge. Thought it would be best to keep my book under $10.00. That didn’t happen.
I wanted to leave my font Arial. To me, it’s clean and easy to read. With KDP, you have to embed fonts. And for whatever reason I had (at first) 20 pages with fonts that didn’t embed. Even though I told Word to. After changing font to Garamond, surprise, fonts embedded. However, I felt like I had to make the text bigger to read. Which meant one more look through for widows and orphans. I read; having those, your manuscript doesn’t look professional.
A big heart felt thank you to Ted for writing the forward.
Pastor Sam was excited about this business meeting. He was going to pose to the community to hire Evie to be the choir director. He hadn’t been this excited in a long time.
Once the regular business was over, he asked the body in front of him. Everyone was excited about the prospects of having regular music back at Sunday worship.
Widow Blake ooed and awed over Evie’s skills. “Maybe you can git the sheriff to play from time to time.” She gushed.
Light murmurs filled the room.
Rebecca voiced, “pastor, I take issue with this.” The room became deadly silent and all eyes were on Rebecca. Her hands began to shake.
“Continue.” Pastor Sam frowned.
“I can’t count the number of days and nights since she’s moved in that a vehicle has been parked at her house. As a single; I presume, Christian woman, shouldn’t be entertaining guests after dark. Guests that spend the night. I mean,” she forced a giggle. “What message would we be sending to the rest of the church? We don’t know what she does for a living? If she’s paying her tithes? Or,” she looked dead at Evie. “Are you even a member of this church?”
Simon was appalled at this. If he could have, he would have crawled under a pew.
Pastor Sam felt like he’d been punched in the gut.
Evie worked hard to hold back her tears. Her dad laid a gentle hand on top of hers.
Bradley wanted to get up and snack Rebecca. She had no idea. He only had an inkling of that idea. What Dillon had shared with him. The nerve.
Evie reached over and kissed her dad on the cheek before walking out.
Rebecca and Simon were sitting in a corner booth enjoying a quiet lunch when Evie and her dad walked in. They were seated. A strange lady joined them. Then Della. Followed by the sheriff.
Stella walked over to their table. “Stella,” Rebecca asked who is the lady sitting with Della?”
“Miss Evelyn?”
“No, the other one.”
“Well shoot. If you hadn’t asked me. I codda told you.” Stella curled her lip, “ she’s not from ‘round here. It’ll come to me.” When Stella came back with their food, she explained who Povol was.
“Thank you.”
Della giggled as she got up from their table. Almost dancing over to a huge wall calendar. Rebecca could hear her hum. She wrote Evelyn’s name on Thanksgiving, October, and / Christmas.
Rebecca took an angry bite from her sandwich eyeing Simon, whispering, “show off.”
“Honey, that’s all that’s left.”
She just rolled her eyes.
“Della,” Evelyn called after her. “I’d like to do something in the spring. To thank the community for helping with the house.”
Della flipped through the pages, “how about Easter?”
“I figured Easter would get gobbled up first thing.”
“Not really.”
She, Dillon, and her dad talked for a few minutes. “We’ll take it.” She wiggled in her chair as she patted Dillon on the shoulder, “you could be the Easter Bunny?”
Jack laughed.
“Find a suit big enough and you’ll have your bunny.” He answered playfully.
Rebecca smirked quietly at Simon, “I’ll be your bunny.”
“Maybe we should volunteer to do something. Easter is fantastic.”
Dillon noticed on Evie’s calendar that she had scheduled a lunch meeting with Della. Beside of it she had put a badge with a question mark. He smiled all over himself as he played with the idea of how he was gonna answer her. Then it hit him; a bell. He’d be there with bells on. His calendar was simple, work. With a shaky finger he put on his; the emoji of a bell, lunch – Della’s. A yellow box appeared under his schedule containing 💕. He didn’t know how to take that. Perhaps someday he’d ask. But at the moment, he was going to enjoy her two hearts.
Della wasn’t very busy, yet. 11 o’clock was a little early for most folks. Evie was already sitting at a table with Della, her dad, and another woman. Dillon sat down in the empty chair beside her, removing his hat. He recognized the other woman but couldn’t have told anyone anything about her.
Evie smiled at him and as soon as his butt hit the chair, she and Della launched into planning mode. With the summer almost over, the 3 big dates that no one had taken were Thanksgiving and Christmas at Coal Town and one random date in October.
Della spoke, “I know the sheriff’s department always covers Christmas. I’m just puttin’ it out there.”
“That one is important to me. We would appreciate any help we can get. But I’d like my department to keep that one.” Dillon answered.
“Then help I will give.” Evie smiled. “What’s this date in October?”
“That one is us.” This lady had a thick accent. She spoke slowly and enunciated carefully.
Della introduced Irana Povol; director of the domestic violence shelter.
Suddenly Dillon knew why she looked familiar.
“So why does no one want October and November?”
“No one wants October because domestic violence is not popular.” Povol answered. “It is not pretty. You cannot put it in a box or wrap it with a bow.”
“Okay,” Evie smiled. “I’ll take October and November and co-sponsor December.”
Dillon was worried about Evie and domestic violence. He shot her dad a glance; who seemed to understand his silent concern.
Della giggled as she got up from the table. Almost dancing over to a huge wall calendar.
Poetry & More 