Nearly

  Nearly

  Deborah Raney

  Contents

  Title Page

  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

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

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  “Are not two sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”

  Luke 12:6-7 NIV

  To my husband, Ken,

  who keeps romance in my life

  in the truest, most sacred sense of the word.

  Nearly

  (Originally published in 1998 by Bethany House Publishers as Kindred Bond, a Portraits Novel. This edition has been revised and updated for 2016.)

  © Copyright 2016 Deborah Raney.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted to any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission from Raney Day Press.

  Scriptures used from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. All characters are fictional and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Published by Raney Day Press.

  Copyright © 2016 by Deborah Raney

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Chapter 1

  The morning sunlight played off the leaves of the old locust tree bowed low over the flagstone patio. Yellow shafts of light cast dappled, ever-changing patterns across the wrought iron table and the breakfast tray it held.

  Claire Anderson stroked the sleek gray cat ensconced in her lap while a gentle breeze rustled the pages of the newspaper she was reading.

  The Hanover Falls Record was a newsy little paper, full of local gossip and scrumptious-sounding recipes, but it contained very little of interest to a newcomer to the town. Claire was still getting used to calling Hanover Falls home, but she was determined to become familiar with the goings-on in this little Missouri community in the foothills of the Ozarks.

  In five short days she would begin the first real job of her career. Claire had struggled to put herself through school, alternately working and attending university classes. After almost seven years of being tied to a rigid schedule of work and study, she'd landed her first teaching job at the town’s small elementary school. She felt a growing excitement knowing that the life she’d dreamed of was finally becoming a reality.

  She glanced at her cell phone, then gave a silent, humorless laugh. Who did she think would be calling? She slipped the phone underneath the folded newspaper. She rather liked the way this little berg—and the secluded backyard of this little house she'd rented just two weeks ago—made her feel as if she’d traveled back in time.

  It really was something of a miracle that she’d found this rental. A real house! And it was everything she could have asked for. Tiny—no more than a cottage, really—but that was part of its charm. The cozy living room with a working fireplace, the sunny kitchen, and the shady flagstone patio where she now enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, made the house perfect for her. Even Smokey, the huge silver gray tomcat she'd inherited with the house, was part of the fulfillment of the dream she'd envisioned for her new life in Hanover Falls.

  Her house was sandwiched between two larger Tudor-style houses on Brookside Drive, one of the town’s oldest streets. The “brook” of Brookside Drive was more of a muddy creek than the babbling stone-bottomed stream its name called to mind, but its murky waters fed a small copse of birch trees, a hedge of tall pines, and a surprisingly beautiful array of blooming weeds and wildflowers.

  The house was owned by Millie Overman, a delightfully spunky widow of eighty-eight, who had recently been persuaded by her two daughters to move into the town’s senior citizens’ apartment housing. Claire had spotted Millie’s advertisement offering the house for rent in the classified section of the first copy of the Record she had picked up, and by the day’s end she’d signed the contract without so much as looking at another place.

  Smokey was almost ten years old and had been Millie Overman’s dear companion. But the apartment where she was moving had strict rules and “no pets” was at the top of the list. Millie had written Smokey into the rental contract, requiring the renter of the house to care for Smokey “as long as aforementioned renter inhabits the house or as long as Smokey shall live.” When Mrs. Overman had pointed out the clause in the carefully typed document, Claire suppressed her amusement and earnestly assured her new landlady she would consider it a privilege to share her home with the cat.

  Now Claire nudged Smokey off her lap, folded the front page, and laid it aside. She took a cautious sip of tea from the steaming mug in front of her, set it back down on the crumb-strewn tray, and opened another section of the newspaper, shaking it out to straighten the wind-creased pages.

  She gave the first page a once-over, but stopped on a three-column photo. A vaguely familiar face stared back at her. She tried in vain to think why the man seemed familiar to her. Had she met him recently? She looked more closely at the photograph. Dressed in a dark suit and tie, the man wore a wide smile, though Claire thought his expression seemed artificial. Even in the black-and-white photo, his eyes seemed to hold a hint of sadness.

  Claire did recognize the woman beside him in the photograph. She was a teacher Claire had been introduced to at a faculty luncheon just last week. Claire and the woman had joked about the shared, common surname they’d each inherited. “It might be boring,” Becky Anderson had quipped. “But at least it puts us first in line every time!”

  Claire scanned the brief caption beneath the picture:

  MICHAEL MEREDITH, ADMINISTRATOR OF RIVERVIEW MANOR, ACCEPTS A CHECK FROM REBEKAH ANDERSON, PRESIDENT OF THE HANOVER FALLS CIVIC CLUB. THE CLUB RAISED ALMOST $5,000 FOR THE NEW SENIOR CENTER SCHEDULED TO BE COMPLETED NEXT SUMMER.

  Michael Meredith’s name wasn’t familiar to her, but Claire couldn’t shake the feeling she should know him. Perhaps she'd seen him at Riverview Manor. The facility he administrated was part of the complex of residential care homes where Mill
ie Overman now resided. Claire had been introduced to many people from the school and the town over the past few days, and she was struggling to keep all the new acquaintances straight. Still, she felt she would’ve remembered this man with his dark good looks and deeply clefted chin. Maybe he only looked like someone she knew.

  Claire let the paper fall to the table, dismissing the subject. Sighing heavily, she leaned her head against the back of the heavy Adirondack chair and closed her eyes. She’d be glad when the first week of school had come and gone. Though she was eager to begin her new career, she was apprehensive, too. It was a bit frightening to think she was finally about to embark upon the career for which she'd spent seven long years preparing. She’d just begun to realize how much she was depending on this new job to redeem some of the loneliness that had marked her childhood. To finally bring her happiness.

  Claire reached for her mug and drained the last of the now tepid liquid. She replaced the cup on the tray and stretched her arms over her head. The warmth of the sun made her drowsy, and as she drifted off, her memories melted into dreams.

  They were standing in the middle of the vast cemetery in the St. Louis suburb where they'd always lived: her father holding her hand, squeezing it too tightly; her mother kneeling, weeping at a tiny grave marker in front of a hard-packed mound of rich brown earth. Beside it a second identical marker shadowed a patch of sparse yellow-green grass. Claire had always liked the little stone capped with a miniature statue of a lamb. Now the little lamb will have a friend, she thought. She wished her mama wasn’t always so sad when they came to this place. They came nearly every Sunday afternoon, unless it was raining. Claire thought it was such a pretty place with all its shady trees and pathways. And almost always a sea of flowers dotted the pillars of stone, large and small.

  She remembered a few weeks ago when there had been many people here with them. They'd lowered the little white box into the hole in the ground. Her parents had not allowed her to look inside the box, but her five-year-old mind understood that this place was where her baby brothers had gone when they died. She'd been only three when the first baby, Michael James, died. She didn’t remember him, but there was a small picture of him on the dresser in Mama and Daddy’s bedroom. Claire would never say so out loud, but she didn’t think he was very cute. Even in the tiny picture, she could see that his face was all red and wrinkled, and his eyes were scrunched into thin slits.

  Now this new little stone stood beside the first one, though there were no pictures of this baby to remember him by. Daddy had told her this baby’s name was Ryan—Ryan Alan. Unlike little Michael, Ryan had never even come home from the hospital.

  She wished the babies hadn’t died. Then maybe her mommy wouldn’t be so sad all the time, and she would have someone to play with. But as she looked around the cemetery, she thought that if she died, this would be where she would want to be—among the leafy trees and the pretty rocks lined up in tidy rows. This was how she thought heaven must look. She could almost see Jesus walking among the gravestones, His long purple robes flowing out behind Him just like the picture in the little pink Bible she carried to Sunday school whenever she visited Nana.

  That’s where she'd been when baby Ryan died—at Nana’s house in Lee’s Summit. Nana had hugged her and told her the baby was in heaven with Jesus and that she would get to see him someday if she would only ask Jesus into her heart. But Nana had wept bitterly when she told Claire this, which made Claire feel sad—and a little frightened. If heaven was such a wonderful place, why did everybody cry whenever someone went there?

  Being in the cemetery now made her feel happier. Claire pulled her hand from her father’s grasp and reached out to touch the new lamb, relishing the feel of the smooth, cool stone under her small hand.

  Her mother wiped her eyes and blew her nose. She rose awkwardly, steadying herself with hands outspread on the grass, while the heels of her black pumps sunk farther into the soft earth. Claire heard her mother’s deep intake of breath and recognized the same shudder she sometimes heard in her own voice when she'd been crying for a long time.

  It used to make Claire sad whenever Mama wept like that, but now she was used to it. It seemed her mother cried almost every day now. For a time Claire supposed all mommies were that way—until the sleepover at her friend Gretchen’s house. Gretchen’s mother always seemed to be happy. Mrs. Gaylord let them have pizza and ice cream for supper, and she didn’t even get angry when Gretchen’s brother spilled his Pepsi on the carpet. After supper Mrs. Gaylord had played games with Gretchen and Claire, laughing and smiling and sitting right down on the floor beside them. Mama never played games with her. . . .

  Smokey’s loud meow woke Claire from her light sleep. The cat stretched his full length, scratching at the back doorpost.

  “Smokey!” She jumped up and hurried to let the cat in before his claws damaged the freshly painted trim around the door. She had to smile as she noticed—for the first time—deep indentations matching Smokey’s scratching pattern. The marks had been camouflaged by a fresh coat of glossy forest green paint, but there was no mistaking how they’d come to be there. “I guess you can’t teach an old cat new tricks, either,” Claire said wryly, letting the cat inside before she went back to carry in the remains of her alfresco breakfast.

  Chapter 2

  “’Bye, Miss Anderson. See you tomorrow.” The little girl waved shyly from the doorway, then turned and raced down the hall, her thick blond ponytail flying behind her.

  “See you tomorrow, Lacey. Good luck at your soccer game tonight.” Claire’s words were lost in the bustling, crowded hallway.

  Sighing with satisfaction, she turned back to the empty classroom and began to organize the papers stacked haphazardly on her desk. The third week of school was nearly complete, and she was finding her job more fun—more fulfilling—than she could have imagined. There’d been a few tense moments when a science experiment didn’t turn out as well as she’d hoped or when her two troublemakers decided to act up on the same day.

  But even after such a relatively short time, she was beginning to know each of her students individually and to have some insight into the best way to help each of them to learn. Best of all, she had a strong sense that she was a teacher. It felt like the thing she'd been born to do.

  Marjean Hammond, the elementary school principal, had been very supportive and helpful, as had the other teachers in the school. With fewer than three hundred students in the building, there was freedom for Claire to be creative with her curriculum. She'd already lined up several townspeople to come in and speak to her class during an upcoming social studies unit. Each success in the classroom made her feel she could relax a bit and rely on her education and her instincts to carry her through.

  Though there always seemed to be work to take home—papers to grade or lesson plans to complete—she was finally learning to leave the mental stress of her job behind at the end of each day. She’d dreamed school—waking and sleeping—that first week, trying in vain to put names with her students’ faces. One night she’d actually climbed out of bed in the middle of the night to check her files for a name when it simply would not materialize. Now she was surprised there’d ever been a time when she didn’t immediately recognize that charming lisp as Brianne Sizemore’s or the carrot red hair and freckles as belonging to Jarrod Hamilton. She thought with a smile of Missy Harrold’s pixieish face and Talisha Jackson with her meticulous corn-rows and keen sense of humor. Even ornery Lucas Crockett had captured a little corner of her heart. She thought of them as her kids now, and some days she almost felt guilty they were paying her for the privilege of teaching these children. Almost.

  Often she was reminded of the year she'd been a student aide in Raylene Emerson’s classroom her senior year in high school. Until then, she’d never been around small children. But she discovered she adored working with the third graders. Mrs. Emerson had taken Claire under her wing during that year, listening as she worked through her grief
over her own mother’s death and as she processed her guilt at the anger she felt toward her parents.

  It was Mrs. Emerson who’d encouraged Claire to pursue a career in education and had even helped her obtain a small scholarship. Claire had lost track of her mentor over the years, but she thought of her often and silently thanked God for the woman who’d been such a powerful influence. She hoped someday she might be able to let the older woman know what an inspiration she'd been during that difficult time.

  Claire had deposited her first paycheck into a new bank account at First National of Hanover Falls and made—with no small measure of satisfaction—a sizeable contribution to her savings account. She’d also budgeted a small amount from each paycheck for decorating the house.

  Her first weekend shopping excursion netted a great buy on new throw pillows for the comfortable sofa her grandmother had given her. The soft blue and yellow stripes of the new cushions tied the faded blue of the sofa and the living room’s aging floral wallpaper together perfectly. With the lamps turned low and the soft glow of candlelight, the room looked almost elegant. She didn’t need much in the way of furnishings, having saved a few pieces from her parents’ home, but she did have her eye on a tall oak bookcase she’d spotted in an antique shop downtown.

  As the rooms of her first home took shape, Claire realized with pleasure that it was beginning to take on the homey, welcoming ambience of Nana’s house. Claire still missed her grandmother’s cozy little home. Katherine Anderson had lived in Lee’s Summit near Kansas City for more than fifty years, until she'd been forced to move after falling and breaking her hip three summers ago.

  Millie Overman often reminded Claire of her grandmother. Though physically there was little resemblance between the two women, Claire’s landlady had Nana’s spunky, fun-loving personality. And they seemed to share the same intuitive nature—a fact Claire wasn’t certain she welcomed. Millie had managed to wheedle more personal information out of Claire than she ever meant to relinquish. Millie also came dangerously close to making a pest of herself. Claire truly appreciated the woman’s generosity in offering helpful information and advice about both the house and the town of Hanover Falls. But Millie had taken to calling Claire on the phone several times a week with flimsy ruses that were nothing more than excuses to check up on Smokey. When she was a bit more settled, Claire resolved to invite Millie over for dinner.