Jericho Read online

  Jericho

  Ann McMan

  Nuance

  Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company • Fairfield, California

  © 2011 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.

  978-1-934452-67-7 paperback

  978-1-934452-68-4 ebook

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011937166

  Cover Design

  by

  Tree House Studio

  Nuance Books

  a division of

  Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company

  Fairfield, California

  http://www.bedazzledink.com

  For Sheila, who will live forever in my own story.

  Acknowledgments

  I have many people to thank for this book:

  Jessica Hayes, who convinced me I should write it—and who regularly suited up in her dominatrix gear and cracked the whip over my head to be sure I did; Montine, who steadfastly read every fragment of every chapter as I cranked them out, and never complained about getting it piecemeal; my mom (dee dee) who brazenly told me the awful truth about adverbs, and swore she “skipped over” the sex scenes; my dog, Maddie, who allowed me to borrow her identity; Domina, who honored me by reading the entire thing during a long, Vermont winter (I strongly suspect she used it for kindling); Claudia and Carrie at Bedazzled Ink for taking a chance on me; my talented, longsuffering, and esoteric editor C.A. Casey (another ex-librarian), who taught me about dangling participles and women’s basketball—with varying degrees of success; the many wonderful people I’ve gotten to know at The Academy and The Athenaeum; my soul sister, Luke, who always tells me the truth; Michael and Matthew, who graciously permitted me to clone Ward Manor (the best Inn in Virginia); Trently, who always loves me—even when I get how I get; and, finally, an obsessive-compulsive named “bagel,” who loves Maine, muscle cars, and this book—not necessarily in that order.

  I am indebted to you all.

  “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down . . .”

  — Hebrews 11:30

  Chapter 1

  Durham, N.C

  The last couple of boxes barely fit into the crowded station wagon. Syd waited until the last few minutes to pack up the essentials of her daily life—the things that would keep her company for the next eighteen months during her sojourn in the tiny mountain town. The things that would keep her sane and remind her that the rest of the world’s cranky machinery was chugging along, even if her own had frozen to a complete stop. The movers had already been and gone, and the majority of her personal belongings were now on their way to a climate-controlled storage facility west of Raleigh. She’d figure out what to do with it all once she figured out what to do with what was left of her fractured life.

  After closing the tailgate on her car, she walked back inside the shopworn bungalow that had been her home for the last four-and-a-half years. She walked slowly from room to room—five rooms in all. Sturdy, spare, and still resonating with the sounds and smells of the life she had lived there. The familiar shotgun design of the house—one room behind another behind another—again struck her as curious. Why would anyone choose to live in such a straight line? It didn’t make sense. Life wasn’t like that—people weren’t like that. People were bent and contorted by life into all kinds of irregular shapes. Life was anything but linear.

  Architecture like this was a distinctly Southern invention—stubborn in its implied insistence that life was a straightforward thing that would always work out, and always proceed according to some master plan. It was no accident that all of the houses on her street opened onto wide front porches that seemed to converge with nature. They were designed like ludicrous parodies of religious parables—imitating a person’s plodding and unvarying path through life—culminating in a grand and glorious reward.

  Well, sometimes, the rewards weren’t so glorious. And today, she was moving, but it wasn’t toward anything glorious. It wasn’t toward anything; it was just away from here.

  Syd walked back through the house, taking a last look inside closets and cabinets. Something caught her eye in the back of a kitchen drawer, and she bent over to see the corner of a white piece of paper wedged between the drawer and its backstop. She tugged at it gently, and was surprised when it turned out to be a badly creased photograph. It was a picture of her with Jeff—taken outside her parents’ house in Towson, on the day they had packed up to move to North Carolina together. They looked happy and in love as they posed with their arms wrapped around each other in front of Jeff’s impossibly overloaded 4Runner.

  Syd shook her head as she gazed down at the tiny image of herself. Stupid. Stupid. What a waste. She tucked the photo back into its hiding place and closed the drawer. After turning off the kitchen light, she made her way back through the house. On the threshold of the front door, she paused briefly, then exhaled, pulled the door shut, locked it, and slid her key back through the brass mail slot.

  She walked around her car one last time to ensure that it looked fit for travel. The sturdy, ’95 Volvo station wagon was mostly reliable, but a daylong drive in September heat wasn’t like her usual twenty-minute commute to the Carolina campus. She prayed for the millionth time that she’d reach Jericho without incident.

  She climbed into the car, started the engine, and snapped her seatbelt into place. After setting the trip odometer, she popped a disc into the dashboard CD player. Without looking back, she pulled away from the house on Broad Street and drove toward the Interstate as strains from Bonnie Raitt’s “Nick of Time” filled the car.

  Virginia

  Maddie wished for the hundredth time that she’d left Pete back at the house. Her five-year-old golden retriever frantically paced back and forth in the rear of the Cherokee. Any time Maddie made the trek to Charlotte for supplies with Pete in tow, she had to endure his excited behavior whenever the New River snaked into view along the roadside.

  “C’mon, Pete. Please settle down. We’ll stop for a swim on the way back. I promise. Be a good boy, now.”

  In the rearview mirror, she saw only the strobe-like flash of the dog’s tail as he continued his frenzied pacing, which now was accompanied by a high-pitched whine. She only had a few more miles of this to endure. Once they crossed into North Carolina, he would settle down and sleep the rest of the way.

  Maddie brought her eyes back to the road and noticed a blue Volvo wagon ahead—halfway pulled off onto the grassy shoulder. Its flashers were on. A woman stood at the back, leaning into the open cargo area, pulling out boxes and suitcases. As she slowed to pass, Maddie saw the culprit—a blowout on the left front tire. She pulled over and turned on her own flashers, then hopped out of the Cherokee and walked back toward the stranded motorist.

  “Stay,” she commanded Pete sternly, whose curiosity was rapidly overcoming his excitement at stopping. The woman behind the car had stopped unloading, and now stood a little warily as she watched Maddie approach.

  “Having some car trouble?” Maddie asked from a respectful distance.

  “You might say that,” the woman said, gesturing toward the shredded remnants of her front tire. “Funny. It was fine when I put it on the car sixty-thousand miles ago.”

  Maddie smiled. “Well, then, I’d say you definitely got your money’s worth.”

  “That’s me—a shrewd consumer. I just have lousy timing.”

  “It looks like your sense of geography isn’t so hot either,” Maddie noted, wryly gesturing at the wooded landscape that surrounded them. “There’s no semblance of a town within twenty miles of here.”

  The petite blonde threw up her hands. “Of cou
rse. My cell phone can’t get a signal here, either.”

  Maddie pointed toward the open cargo bay. “Let me help you out. I assume you’re trying to unearth a spare?”

  “Thanks. I know I packed one.” The blonde smiled at her—all traces of wariness now absent from her green eyes. She appeared to be about Maddie’s age, or slightly younger. She was very pretty.

  In tandem, they lifted out cartons of house wares, books, and linens, and stacked them along the bank next to the shoulder.

  “Moving?” Maddie asked. The woman nodded. “Where are you headed?”

  “Jericho.”

  Maddie raised an eyebrow.

  “I’m setting up a new library there.”

  “Oh.” Maddie nodded with recognition. “I’m familiar with that project. It’s a wonderful thing for the area—long overdue.”

  “My name’s Syd, by the way.”

  “Sid?” Maddie asked, confused.

  “S-Y-D—like Sydney. It’s a family name,” she explained. “A nickname. My first name is Margaret, but only my mother calls me that.”

  “I’m Maddie.” She smiled at her. “And the stunning natural blond up there is my dog, Pete.”

  Syd craned her neck around the car to look more closely at Pete, whose strong head jutted from an open back window. His nose was bobbing up and down as he sniffed at the air outside the Jeep.

  “He’s gorgeous.”

  “He knows it,” Maddie said with an affectionate glance at Pete. “Don’t let him hear you.”

  Syd laughed. “Are you from this area?”

  “Yes and no. I was born about thirty miles from here, but I’ve only been back here to live for about eighteen months.”

  Syd nodded and gestured toward Maddie’s Jeep. “Hence the PENN sticker on your bumper?”

  Maddie regarded her with interest. “That’s pretty observant.”

  “Librarians. We notice things.”

  “Ah, that accounts for it.” Maddie smiled as she lowered the last box to the ground. “Yes. I went to school in Philadelphia and stayed on there to work—although that seems like a lifetime ago.”

  “So, it’s quite a change being back here?”

  “You could say that. But, on the whole, it’s been a nice one.”

  Syd pried open the door to the spare tire well. “That’s comforting. I’d hate to think that I hauled all of my worldly possessions up here to this lovely roadside only to be miserable.”

  Maddie looked at the litter of items spread out along the shoulder. There were many boxes of books. “I dunno. At least you won’t want for something to read.”

  Syd smiled as they lifted the grimy tire from its mooring and rolled it toward the front of the car. “I sure wish I hadn’t cut driver’s ed the day they did this.” She wiped her hands on the seat of her jeans.

  Maddie walked back to the rear of the Volvo and extracted the t-bar socket tool clipped to the side of the wheel well. She knelt by the front tire and looked up at Syd with a wide smile. “Let’s pray that your lug nuts aren’t rusted.”

  Syd wrinkled her nose. “I just know there’s a one-liner lurking in there someplace.”

  Maddie laughed. “Well, with me, that’s usually a safe assumption.” She forced one of the lugs loose and handed it to Syd.

  “I won’t let myself take too big a hit for this situation. Car maintenance, or lack thereof, was always my husband’s responsibility.”

  Maddie forced another of the stubborn lugs loose. “Was?”

  “Yeah,” Syd replied with a shrug. “I’m now an official member of The First Wives Club—or I will be shortly.”

  “Oh.” Maddie paused, holding the t-bar against the next lug nut. “Am I sorry about this?”

  Syd looked pensive. “No. I’m fine. It’s the right thing for both of us.” She slowly shook her head like she was clearing it of cobwebs. She met Maddie’s eyes. “You seem like you’ve done this before. I feel worthless just watching you work. Isn’t there something I can do to help out? It’s my mess, after all.”

  “Sure. Wanna go to the trunk and bring up the jack?”

  Syd squinted. “Is that a tool-thingy?”

  Maddie rolled her eyes. “Yeah . . . it’s a square, flat-looking tool-thingy . . . and it should be the only tool-thingy left in the tire well.”

  “Right.” Syd nodded as she headed toward the back of the car. “I’m all over it.” She came back with the jack just as Maddie loosened the last of the lug nuts.

  Maddie stood up and brushed the dust off the knees of her pants. “Okay, let’s give this tool-thingy a whirl.”

  Twenty minutes later, she finished installing the spare, and they rolled the remains of the flat to the rear of the car. They then repacked all of Syd’s boxes of belongings.

  Maddie closed the tailgate to the Volvo and turned to Syd. “You’re all set.”

  “I just don’t know how to thank you,” Syd began.

  “Forget about it.” Maddie wiped her hands off. “I needed to stop anyway. Old Bowser up there was about due for a swim break, and this is as likely a spot as any.” She gestured across the road toward the water glinting through the trees.

  Syd seemed interested. “Oh, really? Are you going to let him out?”

  “Can I keep him in is a better question.” She smiled at Syd. “I need to rinse my hands off, anyway.” She stood there quietly for a moment as Syd gazed toward the river. She could hear it roaring along below the embankment.

  “It flows north, you know.”

  Syd looked at her. “Pardon me?”

  “The New River. It flows north, not south.”

  “You’re kidding, right? That’s . . . counterintuitive. Is it some kind of metaphor?”

  Maddie smiled. “Well, it may be, but the New is one of the oldest rivers in North America, and, for some strange reason, it flows north.”

  Syd’s eyes narrowed. “Like the Nile?”

  “Right. I guess your sense of geography isn’t as impaired as I suggested earlier.”

  “Lucky guess,” Syd replied.

  “I doubt that somehow.” Maddie considered Syd. She was impressed by her obvious intelligence and her dry sense of humor. She would make a welcome and interesting addition to the provincial town of Jericho. She hoped they would run into each other again. She mused that it was very likely they would—she had inherited her father’s position on the Tri-County Library Board. She decided not to mention that fact, thinking that it might seem presumptuous, and she was enjoying their easy camaraderie.

  “Why don’t you stick around for a few more minutes—relax and recover from your roadside trauma before heading on up into the hills?”

  Syd wavered.

  “I’ve got a thermos of hot coffee and two cups,” Maddie offered, hopefully.

  Syd shot her an appraising look. “What kind of coffee?”

  Maddie gave her a knowing smile. “Oh, very special coffee. I order it online from A Southern Season in Chapel Hill and grind it myself.” She closed her eyes and hummed. “Oh, yeah . . . it’s gooood stuff—practically like coffee-crack.”

  Syd’s eyes glazed over. “All right, already. I’m in. My last cup was from a Bojangles in Durham.” She shivered. “Trust me. It wasn’t special.”

  “Great. Let me go and unleash the wildebeest.” Maddie strode off toward the Jeep, fishing her keys out of a front pocket. As soon as she raised the tailgate, Pete vaulted from the back in a flash of gold and bounded across the road, heading at a high lope for the riverbank.

  Maddie tossed Syd a bright green tennis ball.

  “Canine pacifier,” she pointed out. “Let me just grab the thermos and a blanket.”

  They slowly made their way down the bank flanking the road and walked through tall grass toward the edge of the river, where Pete was already sloshing about happily.

  “Here, Pete!” Maddie took the tennis ball from Syd and heaved it out into the current. The dog plunged in after it and swam back to shore, his trophy proudly clamped bet
ween his teeth. “The trick now,” Maddie cautioned, washing her hands in the icy water, “is to find a sitting place outside of his shake zone.”

  “I see what you mean.” Syd watched mesmerized as Pete emerged from the water and shook his massive frame. Sparks of sunlight emanated from the shower of spray that flew out from his vibrating coat like shards of glass. Pete then trotted to within ten feet of them, sank to the ground, and chewed contentedly on his tennis ball.

  They spread the blanket out on a relatively flat piece of terrain several yards from the water’s edge. The air was filled with the pungent scent of pine needles and dry grass. Already, the dogwood trees were turning red—one of the first hints of impending autumn. The repetitive droning of a nearby mockingbird floated on the air above the roar of the river. Over the ridge across the water, the hazy outline of the Blue Ridge Mountains could be seen through the trees.

  Syd leaned back on her elbows and looked around at the view. “My god, this is really beautiful.”

  Maddie nodded as she unscrewed the top to the thermos. The wonderful aroma of coffee wafted up. “I know. I forgot about how much I loved this during my years in Philadelphia. Getting back to this river is one of the best things about being at home again.”

  Syd looked at her. “You said your father passed away?” Maddie nodded as she poured out two cups of coffee. “I’m sorry about that. Had he been ill?”

  Maddie handed one of the steaming cups to Syd and recapped the thermos. “No. It was a massive coronary—completely unexpected. He had been in perfect health—or so we thought.” She paused. “It was such a shock. He was so strong and vital. I still can’t quite take it in, and it’s been over a year and a half.”

  Syd tentatively touched her on the forearm. “I’m so sorry.”

  Maddie met her earnest gaze. “Thanks. I miss him a lot.” She raised her cup. “How about a toast?” Syd lifted her cup. “Here’s to happier days and fewer road hazards.” They clinked rims and sipped the hot beverage.