Aftermath Read online

  Aftermath

  A Jericho Novel

  Ann McMan

  Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company • Fairfield, California

  © 2012 Ann McMan

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced or transmitted in any means,

  electronic or mechanical, without permission in

  writing from the publisher.

  978-1-934452-95-0 paperback

  978-1-934452-96-7 ebook

  Cover Design

  by

  TreeHouse Studio

  Front and back cover:

  Ward Manor at Buck Mountain,

  Grayson County, Virginia.

  Photo by Salem West.

  Nuance Books

  a division of

  Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company

  Fairfield, California

  http:/nuancebooks.bedazzledink.com

  Readers everywhere fell in love with Syd, Maddie, David, Michael, Pete, and the irrepressible Roma Jean Freemantle in Ann McMan’s 2011 bestseller, Jericho. Now, return to the tiny mountain town in the much anticipated sequel, Aftermath.

  Over the past eighteen months, Syd, Maddie, and little Henry have become a family, and things are going surprisingly well for most of Jericho’s residents until a devastating tornado strikes. Over the weeks and months to come, Syd, Maddie, and all of Jericho are forced to pick up the pieces and rebuild their homes, their lives, and their town. The task is sometimes hard, sometimes emotional, and sometimes absurd, but is always full of smart and sassy humor and an abundance of good food and wine.

  To the eye candy, from the author.

  Acknowledgements

  Sometimes, the effort it took for me to write this book was as taxing as attempting to run a marathon in lead boots. In the short space of a year, I lost my sister and my father—and experienced other life changes that were nearly as volatile, and continue to be as far-reaching in their effects. Aftermath is a book about how a big storm changes everything. On a personal level, it is the companion volume to how a few more modest storms changed my life while I was writing it. For the Herculean effort it took to finish this book, I am deeply grateful to my real life cast of characters. Dee Dee, Luke, Jess, Trent, Jason, Domina, Winnie, and Georgia—you all know what your support means to me.

  Jenny, Cap’n, Midway, and Montine—fond memories of our shared lives will always abide in the warmest place of my heart. Thank you for your friendship—and for ready access to your glossaries of great southern names.

  Jeanne Magill was a godsend for helping me arrive at accurate depictions of medical procedures. Any errors or inconsistencies in that realm should, therefore, be directed her way (I know she’ll be thrilled to read this).

  Deb Fazzina provided the impetus and the inspiration for the epic flight of The Camaro That Will Live In Infamy. To her, I say thank you from bottom of my heart—and I hope I did you proud.

  I will always be grateful to my friends and followers at the Athenaeum and the Academy of Bards—thank you for believing in me, and for offering me such unbridled support.

  I owe special thanks to Stephanie Tyson and Vivan Joiner, co-owners of Sweet Potatoes Restaurant in downtown Winston-Salem, North Carolina. They serve up just about the best southern cuisine on this side of the Mason-Dixon Line—and they (unknowingly) were the inspiration for the Midway Café, and for most of the recipes Nadine Odell cooks there.

  Heartfelt expressions of gratitude go once again to my tenacious editor, C.A. Casey—and to Claudia Wilde (who didn’t bat an eyelash when I told her that the dog ate my royalty check).

  Charlie Redmond and Pam Sloss are two women who have generously contributed to nonprofit efforts in support of lesbian literature. Thank you for all the good you do. It was an honor for me to partner with you in the writing of this book.

  Thanks, as always, to the Fraternal Order of Wood Huskies, Lodge 251. I’m proud to be among you.

  Salem West, you are, and will always be, the still point of my turning world. Your love and companionship give everything in my life a depth and richness beyond imagining. (And I want to go on record here, and declare that I would have said this even before I tasted your meat loaf . . .)

  I am most sincerely indebted to you all.

  Introduction

  The Greek philosopher Heraclitus (c. 504 B.C.) believed that the basis of reality was change and flux. “You cannot step twice into the same river,” he wrote.

  More than two thousand years later, British mathematician turned philosopher Alfred North Whitehead expanded on Heraclitus’s supposition. “You cannot step into the same river once,” he explained, “because there is no ‘same river.’ ”

  Change, he said, is the most fundamental aspect of reality—and continuity is the exception. And our own life experiences bear that out. With each passing moment, the present becomes the past. The beads of our lives are strung together like moments of change, and there is no time or space in which the patterns they create remain the same.

  We cannot stop the river, and we cannot step into the same river twice.

  Or once.

  Aftermath is not so much a sequel to Jericho, as it is a look inside it—a peek at what happens between the pages, beneath the hood, and behind the curtain. It is the journal of my love affair with a small town, and the quirky people who live there. Writing it was a challenge for me because I know how much so many of you love Jericho. And in writing this book, I didn’t want to disappoint you—any more than I wanted to offend or take advantage of you by churning out a flimsy rehash of the original story.

  So Aftermath is not another Jericho. It shouldn’t be, and it isn’t. In the parlance of the Miller Analogies Test—Jericho is to Aftermath as Dodge City is to Gunsmoke.

  I waded into the river, and it flowed around me. I paid attention. I took notes. And the story, as it was meant to do, went its own way.

  —Ann McMan

  Winston-Salem, N.C.

  Foreword

  by David Jenkins

  Last week on Knot’s Landing . . .

  (Or what you need to know if you bought this book, but haven’t yet read Jericho.)

  Okay. They told me I had five hundred-words to tell you everything you need to know about Jericho—the prequel to the book you’re now holding. So, first, I’ll give you a plot summary—then I’ll quickly run through the list of major characters introduced in Jericho, so you’ll have a shot at figuring out everyone who is anyone in Aftermath.

  Here goes . . .

  Syd Murphy’s marriage to her philandering, rich husband is falling apart, so she leaves her home in Raleigh, N.C., and accepts an eighteen-month appointment as librarian in the tiny mountain town of Jericho, Virginia. In short order, she meets our resident Katharine Hepburn clone, Maddie Stevenson—the closeted local doctor who has recently returned to the community to take over her late father’s medical practice. And, boy, did SHE ever bring some relationship baggage along. Maddie fights her immediate attraction to Syd because she thinks Syd is straight (duh . . . weren’t we all at some point?)—and Syd struggles with how to understand her escalating desire to jump Maddie’s bones. This prompts everyone to drink lots of wine. The two of them engage in this elaborate and annoyingly protracted dance around each other for about five hundred pages (until the publisher decides to print the final manuscript in, like, seven point type to lower the overall page count). The two frustrated and wine-swilling heroines finally come to their senses and make their restrained version of mad whoopee during a dramatic hiatus in Los Angeles. Later, Maddie meets an adorable little boy named Henry on a flight back to Jericho from California—where she had been caring for her estranged mother, who was nearly killed by a centrifuge explosion in her medical lab. She ends up becoming Henry
’s foster parent after his soldier dad is deployed to Afghanistan, and his guardian grandmother suffers a stroke. Hey? Don’t look at me . . . I’m not the one who came up with this flimsy plot. Anyway . . . while in California, taking care of her mother, Maddie learns that the real reason her parents’ marriage broke up a zillion years ago was because of her mother’s discovery that Maddie’s father was having a longtime, homosexual affair with his best friend—Maddie’s beloved Uncle Art. Collective gasp. Of course, they hash things out while sharing a bottle or two of fine, California wine. MEANWHILE . . . the one constant in Maddie’s life continues to be her dashing, erudite, and steadfast best friend, David—gay as a singing flight attendant, and proud of it. He, by the way, was instrumental in bringing the two heroines together through the careful manipulation of several bogus events where much hilarity and even more wine drinking, ensued. Those tales, alone, make Jericho worth the price of a download, IMHO. Let’s see . . . Oh! Maddie hires a savvy parish nurse who looks like a walking plot device, but who actually ends up being just a redhead—and not a red herring. Meanwhile, a lot of other creepy stuff starts happening when a local, ne’er do well, drug addict-cum-stalker develops a hankering for Syd and Lizzy (the new nurse)—and the town library gets burned down. What can I say? Bad stuff happens. People drink more wine. Time marches on. Roma Jean Freemantle trips over all kinds of crap. Maddie fixes a broken Xerox machine. Maddie and Syd eat lots of Crunchy Cheetos to deal with their sexual frustration. Tom Greene acts like an ass. Syd finally comes out to my sober and stalwart partner, Michael, after everyone in NINE counties has already figured out that she sings in the choir at the Lesbyterian Church. Her cheating husband shows up and tries to reconcile. Unfortunately for him, Maddie is way taller, and looks better in tight jeans—so that idea goes no place at, like, warp six. By the end of the book, the two heroines are living happily ever after on Maddie’s ancestral farm with little Henry and Pete the dog. They spend their evenings like the iconic nerds they are—reading the unabridged War and Peace, and drinking TONS of wine. That’s about it. Now you’re up to speed and can launch right into Aftermath—immediately after you review this list of major players.

  Jericho Dramatis Personæ

  Hamlet

  Prince of Denmark

  Madeleine Stevenson (Maddie)

  Annoyingly literal local doctor, private pilot, and resident hottie.

  Margaret (Syd) Murphy

  High-school music-teacher (and formerly straight) town librarian—

  now partner to Maddie. Commonly mistaken for Sandra Dee.

  Henry Lawrence

  Six-and-a-half-year-old foster son to Maddie and Syd, while his

  father, Cpl. James Lawrence, is deployed in Afghanistan.

  David Jenkins

  Social media guru, fashion arbiter, and

  lifetime best friend to Maddie.

  Co-owner of Riverside Inn B&B, and partner to

  Michael Robertson, world-class chef.

  Roma Jean Freemantle

  Perky local teenager with a propensity for falling down—

  especially when Maddie is around.

  Curtis and Edna Freemantle

  Roma Jean’s parents, and owners of the local market.

  By the way, when you meet Curtis’s mother in Aftermath,

  be sure to call her “A-za-lee”—and not Azalea (like the shrub).

  Trust me on this one . . .

  Jessie Rayburn

  Roma Jean’s best friend.

  Jeff Simon

  Syd’s cheating husband—pampered, rich son of Doris Simon.

  Peggy Hawkes

  Maddie’s chatty clinic nurse, who is famous for her

  toxic lemon chess pies.

  Byron Martin

  Sheriff of Jefferson County. Think of him

  as Jericho’s Andy Griffith . . . with less Brylcreem.

  Lizzy Mayes

  Maddie’s nurse practitioner, who is dating

  Syd’s hunky brother, Tom Murphy.

  Janet and George Murphy

  The awesome parents every gay person wishes they had.

  (Syd’s parents don’t show up in Aftermath, but you need

  to know about them, anyway.)

  Tom Greene

  Annoying chief of the hospital ER, and

  perpetual thorn in Maddie’s side. Married to Muriel Greene

  Gladys Pitzer

  Twitchy local florist, and beleaguered mother of the late Beau Pitzer

  (meth addict, arsonist, and sometime stalker…it’s a long story).

  Dr. Celine Heller

  Maddie’s formerly estranged, ultra-brainiac mother, who lives in

  California and teaches in the med school at UCLA.

  Davis Stevenson, M.D.

  Maddie’s late father—former local physician in Jericho.

  Arthur Leavitt, M.D.

  Surrogate uncle, best friend (and more) to Maddie’s father.

  Phoebe Jenkins

  Former high school music teacher and director of local “symphony”

  (don’t even get me started on this one…).

  My mother, and co-shopaholic.

  Hot Dude at Tire Store

  If you could see him, you’d know why he’s listed here.

  Pete

  Maddie’s Golden Retriever (a hundred-pound lounge lizard).

  Let the games begin!

  “And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.” — I Kings 19:11-13

  Prologue

  WHEN THE BIG one finally came, it wasn’t like a thief in the night.

  Nope. This one was arrogant enough to show up in broad daylight. And still, it managed to take everything it could carry from a score of families that had little to spare.

  For weeks it had been predicted. It was all the evening news anchors could talk about. Night after night, wary residents slept with their weather radios on. And in the predawn hours, when the alerts would sound, they’d crawl from their beds, collect the kids and the pets, and head for their basements—if they were lucky enough to have basements. Others did the best they could and took refuge beneath their stairways, or in their smallest bathrooms or closets.

  There were many close calls, but still, the big one never showed.

  Not during the night, anyway.

  Most mornings, during that three-week period, the bleary-eyed locals would get up and trudge off to their jobs. Over Styrofoam cups of coffee or cans of Mountain Dew, they’d talk about the magnitude of the storms that had rolled through the night before. How the wind blew the hood off Zeke Dawkins’ old F150 and dropped it down right in the middle of Eunice Pollard’s koi pond. Or how four inches of rain fell in thirty minutes and completely washed out Powerhouse Road, right near the county school. Or how golf ball-sized hail turned Deb Carlson’s brand new Camaro into a thirty-five-thousand-dollar piece of Swiss cheese.

  But life went on. Stories grew less dramatic. Weather radios sat idle. And soon, the good people of Jericho took all the dire forecasts of catastrophic weather with a hefty dose of salt.

  At least they did until that Thursday morning, when everything changed.

  Everything.

  Chapter 1

  SO IT LOOKED like the school bus wasn’t going to be able to make it.

  Again.

  Maddie looked at her watch.

  It was seven-twenty. Peggy Hawkes had already called. After a ten-minute conversation about everything that had transpired in her life during the fifteen hours since they’d last seen each other, she told Maddie that she’d be late getting to the clinic. Powerhouse Road had washed out during last night’s torrential downpour, and she’d have to take the long
way in.